A Gay, Orthodox Jewish R&B Singer

Left: A nice Jewish boy. Right: A bad Jewish man. Photo by Jason Lloyd Miller

I’ve known Ari Gold since we were ten. We went to an Orthodox Jewish Yeshiva together. He was my first big crush because he sang jingles for TV commercials and we both loved Madonna, which, in the Orthodox community, automatically made us freaks. And which, as I of course didn’t realize at the time, made Ari gay. Flash forward 20 years and I’m working at a magazine called Vice while Ari is a successful, dance-chart-topping, out R&B singer who is inclined to perform topless, greased-up, and in a wrestler’s mask, while singing songs with Yiddish lyrics. Like our parents often say, “Oy! Why us? Everyone else grew up normal, why do you have to be so different?” Well, let’s find out.
Vice: Remember how, in eighth grade, we wanted to hold hands but we couldn’t because we were super religious at the time?

Ari Gold: shomer negiya Which is the law that boys and girls can’t touch at all—so we held the ends of a rolled-up paper towel together.
machitzah shul One of my coworkers asked me the other day, “What are those strappy things Jews wear when they pray?”
But they were like, “Why?” and I really had no idea. People ask me that kind of stuff all the time.
Sure!
You would look at people in high school during prayer?

Who did you think was hot in high school?
Ha! Yeah, he was fairly hunky. So here’s the big question: How do you go from being a nice Orthodox Jewish boy to a topless, greased-up, gay R&B singer? And what’s more—unlike me, who has pretty much shunned Orthodox Judaism—you still use words like mishegas [nonsense] in regular conversation and you wear a chai necklace and you wear tefillin in one of your music videos and there’s Jewish lingo in all in your music and stuff. How can you still be involved in Judaism?
Your best friends are all black drag queens and yet you use Yiddish words all the time. Isn’t that weird?
So you still want to be involved in the Jewish community?
Right. Can you give us a quick summary of what you mean when you say you grew up in show business?

American Idol Oh yeah. That one is very pedophile-y.
Oh my God. And then the bear’s voice is all low, like, “Helloooo, young man.” It’s so sick.
Give us a little rundown of your most famous childhood jingles and appearances.
singing What else?
My Buddy! That’s the big one. “My buddy! Wherever I go, he goes!”
Yeah, you were obsessed with it. You would draw her in your notebook over and over and over. And weren’t you on a soap opera too?
All My Children You were very skinny and scrawny as a kid, but once you came out you got all beefy. Now you look like a buff Hispanic guy.
Remember how everyone thought Shuli Weiner was such a slut in seventh grade because there was a rumor that she showed her boobs to her boyfriend and put a pubic hair in a locket for him? I mean, who came up with that? A pubic hair in a locket? And it was the scandal of the century.
It’s so twisted! I always tell people these stories, and they’re like, “Are you serious?” It’s shocking to them.
And the fact that nobody questions it. This is what I always tell people is the quintessential experience of growing up Orthodox Jewish for me. Remember that class Rabbi Weiser taught? One day he was trying to prove that God existed based on the existence of the dung beetle. The dung beetle is so amazing that only God could have created it, was his reasoning. I raised my hand and I was like, “But…” and I started saying something to argue with him, and suddenly Michael Kule, the most popular kid in our grade—I’ll never forget this—he turned around in his seat to face me, and shouted, “Just shut up and accept it!”
That’s it in a nutshell, right? That’s exactly how I feel about religion. Do you keep kosher now?
That’s interesting because I hate shellfish. And it’s not because I won’t eat it cause it’s not kosher, but if you put a lobster in front of me, I’m like, “That is a giant roach with an exoskeleton.” Same thing with crabs, shrimp. They’re bugs, and they’re gross! And everyone thinks that I’m crazy. I guess it’s somehow in my mind, because I didn’t grow up with it, now it’s foreign to me. But there’s lots of other things I didn’t grow up with that I like now.
Ha. But yeah, something was internalized in me that these are disgusting things. They’re dirty, they’re bottom feeders, they eat their own shit.
Mine was at McDonald’s.
It made me queasy. But anyway, whenever there’s an article about you in Jewish Week, my mom clips it out for me. Do you have any gay Jewish fans?
But you could easily not do this Jewish thing. You could also not do the gay thing and just be a normal R&B singer.

What? Change your name to Snake?
Entourage I hate that show. Whenever I see that guy, I think, hey, he stole my friend’s name.
Yeah, it’s a shame—a real shanda!