Concert review: The Botzer Project Yellow Submarine, Jerusalem September 23

Botzer the band plays an exuberant mix of religious rap and rock, with soaring guitar solos balanced by passionate ballads.

By BRIAN BLUM
ELIEZER BOTZER (center) and his Botzer Project 370 (photo credit: Brian Blum)
ELIEZER BOTZER (center) and his Botzer Project 370
(photo credit: Brian Blum)
For over 30 years, the name “Botzer” has been synonymous with the founder of the Livnot U’Lehibanot (“To Build and be Built”) work-study program that began in the Old City of Safed. So it was a bit perplexing when posters began appearing around Jerusalem advertising the performance of “Botzer” at the Yellow Submarine music club.
It turns out that the Botzer in question was not program founder Aharon but his son Eliezer who, at 32, is trying his hand as a fledgling rock star.
Botzer the band plays an exuberant mix of religious rap and rock, with soaring guitar solos balanced by passionate ballads that sometimes call out directly to the heavens and, at other times, in the best Song of Songs tradition, play out on multiple levels: evocative poems lingering on the love between a man and woman, with the never-far-from-consciousness hint of God lingering in the background, like a hidden camera in the Big Brother house.
Botzer’s song “Mi Atah” (“Who Are You?”) is a good example.
The video clip is filled with scenes of urban America and birds soaring through clouds; the lyrics can be easily read both as individually contemplative or religious allegory.
“Again you are afraid to deal with the unknown, with yourself, putting on a face, as if you’re in control of what’s happening.
Another era of denial.”
Botzer’s eponymous lead singer is a beast of a man – a hulking giant at well over six feet tall, dressed in an all-black suit that’s a couple sizes too tight, a black shirt and charcoal grey tie, with a velvet black kippa perched high on his head betraying the Breslov hassid he still is. While many ultra-Orthodox religious men sport some kind of peyot (sidelocks), Botzer’s are a wonder – a cascading wall of hair that, if he didn’t turn around to reveal a closer-cropped back story, one would not be entirely mistaken in assuming was the long hair of an 80s metal rocker. Add to this a long pointy beard and various scraggly bits and Botzer is, well, a bit scary on stage.
First impressions aside, Botzer clearly has a talent for communicating – his lyrics are multifaceted with infectious rhymes and he frequently sits himself down on a tall stool to tell stories between sets, mostly of a religious nature. Then he’s back on his feet whirling like a man about to have an epiphany, epileptic fit or perhaps to reveal himself as the Messiah.
The crowd at Botzer’s Jerusalem concert was, with a few rare exceptions, entirely religious. That suggests that, in at least its current form, the band isn’t going to be attracting the same audience as, say, rockers Erez Lev-Ari or Ehud Banai, both of whom appeal to secular fans as well.
That’s a bit surprising: Eliezer Botzer the man has been involved in outreach activities to secular Israelis for many years; after serving in an army combat unit, he spent time in India where he established an alternative kind of Chabad which he called Bayit Yehudi (“the Jewish Home”) – no relation to the political party. He lives today in Tel Aviv with his wife and six children.
Botzer’s freshman album has the clever name of Attention. Deficit. Disorder. The band will be performing next on October 10 at the In-D-Negev rock festival.