Rap artist reps for French-Israelis

Meet Shmoolik, A.K.A. Shmouel Halimi, the French-Israeli Chasidic hip-hop artist and graphic designer. As a rhyme spouting ba’al teshuva Chabadnik, the comparisons to Matisyahu are inevitable, but Shmoolik is very much in a class of his own.

Now that you’ve met the man, hear the music. Here’s the video for his track, “Les Enfants d’Israël.” Written and recorded in the midst of the Gaza disengagement, the track samples Serge Gainsbourg’s 1967 coming-out-as-a-Jew song, “Les Soldats Et Le Sable.”