This weekend, Rapper Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) will perform in Tampa. I have some complicated feelings about that.

At summer camp, I posed the question to a group of teenagers: If you were a booking agent, would you have booked this concert at your theater? I expected consensus. I didn’t get it. Some said free speech is sacrosanct; we can boycott or picket, but the booking itself is defensible. Others said they wouldn’t book him at all. A third group said they’d be happy to attend, after all, they love his music – they chalked his statements up to bipolar disorder.

Hey kids – Did you know: Rapper Ye (formerly Kanye West) has made a series of increasingly explicit antisemitic statements and actions, including declaring “I am a Nazi” on X and releasing a song titled “Heil Hitler” that samples a 1935 Adolf Hitler speech. He has also aired a Super Bowl ad directing viewers to his Yeezy website, where the only item for sale was a $20 white T-shirt printed with a swastika? (Bruhh, What???)

Ye has been banned from venues across the United States and barred from the United Kingdom, where authorities determined his presence would not be “conducive to the public good.” Given that record, how did he get booked in Tampa? The Torah is pointed: “You shall not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor” (Leviticus 19:16). Indifference is not neutrality. Booking a performer with Ye’s........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)