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The Jerusalem Post

Rapper Cardi B tweets then deletes picture of Orthodox Jews after legal triumph

 
 Cardi B performing at the Openair Frauenfeld music festival, July 11, 2019. (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Cardi B performing at the Openair Frauenfeld music festival, July 11, 2019.
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Cardi B tweeted and then deleted a Wikipedia photo of Orthodox Jews after finding out that she would not be charged for an incident at a Las Vegas concert.

Soon after Cardi B learned that police in Las Vegas would not charge her in connection with an incident at a recent concert, she turned to Wikipedia.

The rapper tweeted a picture that illustrates the digital encyclopedia’s entry for “Jewish religious clothing.” The picture shows two Hasidic Orthodox Jewish men walking in Borough Park, Brooklyn. One wears a fur hat called a streimel as well as a tallit, a prayer shawl, over his clothes; the other has long peyos, the sidelocks worn by some Orthodox men.

“Remember … ” she wrote.

Fans immediately connected the post to a lyric in her 2018 song “Bickenheld,’ in which she sings, “Lawyer is a Jew, he gon’ chew up all the charges.” Jewish lawyers are a sustained theme in rap music, and Cardi B’s legal team on the Las Vegas incident included multiple Jewish attorneys.

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But even as some interpreted the tweet as praise for her Jewish lawyers, others decried it as offensive because Cardi B appeared to attribute her attorneys’ success to their Jewish identity, not their skills. (The men in the picture are not Cardi B’s attorneys.)

  Cardi B performing at the Openair Frauenfeld music festival, July 11, 2019. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Cardi B performing at the Openair Frauenfeld music festival, July 11, 2019. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Responses to the Tweet

“Appreciate you @iamcardib, but tweeting out a vague picture of a visible minority that has been subject to rising hate crimes in NYC to your 31 million followers is just not acceptable,” tweeted David Bashevkin, a prominent Orthodox voice on social media. “When hate is an option don’t leave anyone guessing what you meant.”

Amid a social media backlash, the tweet was removed without comment. “Lawyer is a Jew” continued trending on X, the platform that was until recently called Twitter, for some time.

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