Music: Orthodox Jewish song: Matisyahu Miller, the guy with the beard no longer has one

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Huffington Post (December 12, 2k11)
ReWrite for refWrite by Musikos
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Matisyahu [Miller] shaves his beard, and cantor-watchers speculate on its symbolic important.  Has he left Hasidism?  and with it, left his role as "Hasidic reggae superstar'?

Sorry folks, all you get is me…no alias. When I started becoming religious 10 years ago it was a very natural and organic process. It was my choice. My journey to discover my roots and explore Jewish spirituality—not through books but through real life. At a certain point I felt the need to submit to a higher level of religiosity…to move away from my intuition and to accept an ultimate truth. I felt that in order to become a good person I needed rules—lots of them—or else I would somehow fall apart. I am reclaiming myself. Trusting my goodness and my divine mission.  — From the performer's website.

"The always-irreverent Heeb Magazine claims this leap of face means that the musician has gone completely secular:"  And: "We take Miller’s words to mean that he’s done with Orthodoxy and is going to trust his own inner-spirituality.  He is also no longer calling himself Matisyahu and intends to rebirth himself as a secular, albeit spiritual, musician. "  Probably not so, it turns out.  He simply shaved his beard and continued his daily Orthodox observances.  

Last year, Huff Po explained the context of Matisyahu's overture:

Hasidic Reggae Hanukkah Tour Opens 

Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, which begins in the evening on Dec. 1, is all about exposing what is hidden, uncovering mysteries and embracing unbelievable miracles. Matisyahu, the hometown Hasidic hero of New York City and a cultural icon for Jewish America, crafted his own light-filled musical mystery at the Brooklyn Bowl on Nov. 29, opening his nine-night Festival of Light tour with a nearly non-stop, two-hour set that covered the span of his career while peeking into the unknown future. 

This show was the first spark, the shamash of Matisyahu's touring menorah. Let me explain: There are eight days of Hanukkah, which celebrates the miracle of one day's worth of oil lasting for eight days as the successful revolutionaries of the Maccabee family rededicated the once-desecrated Holy Temple. Modern Jews celebrate the holiday by lighting a nine-branched candelabra, called a menorah, the number of flames increasing with the number of days. 

So why does the menorah have nine branches instead of eight? There's a special commandment that one may not use the lights of the menorah for any practical purpose other than proclaiming the miracle of the holiday. An additional flame, the shamash, is needed to symbolically help the other flames be revealed in the world. Hence, eight days, nine flames. So too, if each show in Matisyahu's Festival of Light is it's own unique flame, then the shamash, this opening show, was a helping of pure holiday fire. 

Other parallels abound. Born Mathew Miller, Matisyahu took on his Hebrew name after becoming religious in 2001, and it is that moniker that has become a household code name for observant Judaism in the face of cultural and spiritual Jewish assimilation. In that context, there's nothing new about a Matisyahu today because there lived, more than 2,000 years ago, another Matisyahu, also a symbol for strengthening Jewish roots in a spiritual desert. He, of course, was the father of the Maccabean revolt that reclaimed the Second Temple in Jerusalem from unholy Hellenist hands and therefore created a new Jewish festival.  — Josh Fleet (November 30, 2k10)

Hanukkah begins a week from today at sunset on Tuesday, December 20, 2011, and ends at sunset on Wednesday, December 28, 2011.