Observant Jew -- Joshua Nelson

As part of our Martin Luther King weekend observance, Congregation Beth Emeth of Herndon, VA was privileged to have Joshua Nelson, The “Prince of Kosher Gospel Music”, present a concert on Saturday, January 17, 2015. Kosher Gospel is the marriage of Jewish religious lyrics and meanings with the soulful sounds of American gospel music. While the word “gospel,” a Greek word meaning good news, is usually associated with African-American Christian churches, the musical styling is African, and these African rhythms predate the West Africans’ introduction to Christianity.

These same sounds have been retained in the musical cultures of Black African Muslims and Jews, and such soul-inflected vocalizations filled the Black Hebrew synagogue Joshua attended as a child with his family, observant Jews who traced their lineage back to Senegal.