Juda Maccabi
© AFP/File Yoav Lemmer JERUSALEM (AFP) - For both artists, hip hop is a weapon. Jew Da Maccabi, 30-year-old Amnon Arama's nom de guerre, wields it to "bring people closer to God." Boikutt, aka 20-year-old Jad Abbas, to "resist the occupation."
Jew Da is a self-described "modern-day Maccabi warrior," deriving his moniker from Judah Maccabee, the legendary leader of the Jewish rebellion against the Greeks in the second century BC.
Raised in the United States, he wears a religious Jew's version of American "gangsta" garb -- oversized jeans, Nike trainers, a Miami Heat basketball jersey over his prayer shawl and a white baseball cap over his kippa head covering. A shaggy chest-length beard completes the ensemble.
Born in Israel, he moved to the United States after only a year and has lived most of his life in Miami, where he rapped about drugs and debauchery at parties on Florida beaches.
But after meeting the woman he eventually married, also Jewish, he began to explore his religious heritage, a search that slowly led him to the Orthodox strand of Judaism and culminated seven months ago in his return to Israel.
He settled in the El Ad village east of Tel Aviv, where he studies the Torah and the Talmud at a local yeshiva religious school.
But his new-found religious fervour has not dampened his passion for rap -- he jots down lyrics in his spare time and is recording his first album at a sound studio near Tel Aviv.
And while his passion for rap remains strong, the subject of his rhymes has changed since his beach party days.
Juda Maccabi
© AFP/File Yoav Lemmer "My music is doing the work of teaching people to get closer to God. My message is redemption. The world is about to switch, to become religious. We are going to see the reality. Everything now is a lie," he said.
Jew Da does not see any contradiction between the medium -- influenced by irreverent American artists like Eminem, Dr Dre and the Beastie Boys -- and his deeply religious message.
"My rabbi told me: Whatever you did before returning to religion, flip it to your new spiritual life," he said.
His songs, which combine English lyrics and Hebrew prayer chants, steer clear of politics because "if people go back to religion, everything will be fixed."
But while he does not rap about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he takes a hardline view of it, insisting that Israel should not give "what land we have" to the Palestinians.
"The Torah says this land is ours. I'm not for a Palestinian state in Eretz Israel (Greater Israel). Maybe in Jordan. Every time we gave back more land, the blood of Jews was spilled."
Rap is as popular in Israel as it is in the United States and Europe, and is tolerated in the Orthodox religious circles that form Jew Da's milieu.
"My manager is an ultra-Orthodox as well," he said.
While Jew Da conjures rhymes in the tranquil interior of his yeshiva, several dozen kilometres (miles) away Boikutt weaves lyrics of resistance in his parent's house in the restive West Bank city of Ramallah.
There he and his "crew," Ramallah Underground, wage a war of words against the Israeli occupation.
"Rap is an art form, but also a means of resistance," he said. "I rap about what I see every day -- the separation wall, the roadblocks, the house demolitions, the occupation. It is a part of my life."
Juda Maccabi
© AFP/File Yoav Lemmer Boikutt's life, like that of many Palestinians, has unfolded in the confines of a vast network of Israeli checkpoints stretching across the West Bank and by the grim concrete separation wall that runs near his home, all of which Israel says is necessary for its security.
In his lyrics Boikutt calls for an international economic boycott of Israel to force it to abandon the nearly 40-year occupation of the territory.
"The whole world revolves around money. We don't have to blow things up. We can resist in other ways," he says.
"Israel divides the Palestinians. You got one Palestinian in Jerusalem with one card, you have another Palestinian from Gaza and yet another from the West Bank. We are all divided. I'm not against the Jews, I'm against Zionism."
Boikutt started rapping when he was 15 and a year later went to study music in Washington DC. He returned to the West Bank two years ago.
"I came back because I have my family here and at the end of the day, it's my country," he said.
As he raps against the Israeli occupation, Boikutt faces obstacles on the home front. Rap, born in the inner cities of the United States as a means to vent anger at racism and poverty, has yet to strike a chord among Palestinians.
"There is some respect but at the same time it's not very accepted," Boikutt said, adding that many view it as a suspicious Western import.
In his home town of Ramallah, for example, there are few clubs in which he can perform, no stores to sell his CDs, and no proper recording studios.
So Boikutt records at home, posts his songs on the Internet sharing website MySpace and tries to perform concerts abroad.
He has already appeared on stage in London, Lausanne in Switzerland and Amsterdam and plans to play Cairo and Amman this summer, albeit with restrictions.
"The Egyptians told me that I can't touch on political subjects. But hip hop is music of the street, made for protesting and speaking politics."
©AFP