"A sad day in Jewish parody rap"
50 Shekel was a Orthodox Jewish parody rapper. He got 15 minutes of fame with "In Da Shul," a painful track stuffed full of Ashkenazi-Jewish American references. He got articles in Q, Rolling Stone, and Heeb for his spiel.

Not everyone was in love with him. He got bad reviews from Jewish hipster blogs like Jewschool. He got challenges from fellow rappers. He even got another parody group, Ju Tang Clan, calling 50 Shek "a bad jewish parody of jewish parody rap," "a suicide bomb of talent," "a talentless Israeli whose former career highlights include production assistant for ABC's T.G.I.F.," complaining "you only had one song and they put in Rolling Stone, what the fuck, I quit," and gently suggesting he commit suicide. Yeah, OK. So, how does he deal?


He redesigns his website and record new songs--complete with 'Hebrew-Christian' links and his Reese's Cup/Jesus t-shirt. This could be a a joke, a publicity stunt, or another 'Jew for Jesus.' Most assuming the conversion is for real.

BangItOut blames this on blogtopia (no, I didn't coin that phrase) not giving love to a Jewish guy trying to have fun with his religion, and particularly Jewschool.

50 Shek responds to BangItOut:

I say this respectfully, hopefully one day you will start having a relationship with Elohim and not your Rabbis. After all...who do you serve? Elohim or your Rabbi? Stop hatin n start paticipatin :) You might be surprised, the one that some call a dumb Jewish joke parody might be helping to save yo tookus from a lot more than you are aware of. Elohim uses the most unlikely people to deliver a most important message. Don't act like you haven't ever seen that happen before. I ain't no prophet but I surely am a friend who cares about you. And most of all, if Jew know me, I am a Jew who has always wanted to Jew the right thing. Now that I came to faith...it all makes sense. The least likely place I thought I would ever find Elohim's Truth was in da church. Think outside the teffilin box. There might be more to this "Jesus" thing than you think. Ask Elohim, He'll show you. Feel free to contact me.

The fine folks at Jewschool post about it, remind BangItOut that not everyone is going to love a rapper, and apologize for any mean things said by the Jewschool posters, and Ju-Tang Clan. Some folks say that Jewschool shouldn't apologize, J4Js go after the confused and hurting anyway. Some former 'Messianic Jews' call for people to reach out and show him love. The BangItOut guy strikes back, and Ju-Tang Clan take exception for being blamed for 50 Shekel's conversion.

We find out that 50 Shek converted after seeing The Passion and because he was getting static from his rabbis, too. That brought out the South Park jokes.

Christianity Today seem to be giggling a little over this.