Video: The Maccabeats at the White House
Remember the Maccabeats, who took the country by storm with a Chanuka song that (the last time I checked) has more than 5 million views on YouTube?On May 17, 2011 President Barack Obama hosted a reception for Jewish community leaders from across the country in honor of Jewish American Heritage Month. Yeshiva University President Richard M. Joel was in attendance, as well as YU's a cappella group, The Maccabeats http://www.maccabeats.com/, who provided musical entertainment.
Let's go to the videotape.
Now, there are rumors that the President wanted the video removed from YouTube (Hat Tip: Will). But here's the very first comment on the video (from Yeshiva University):
While we support your right to express your opinions we cannot condone hate speech and will have to close the comments section if it persists. Regarding the rumor of the video's removal see the Maccabeats comment on their facebook page.So I went to their Facebook page (which I reached through their website) and found this:
So there's a really interesting rumor circulating online about how the White House demanded we remove a video of us privately singing for the President. Never happened. We only posted the video privately in the first place, out of respect for our host. especially after we were treated so well by the entire staff. We think the White House has more interesting things to do than hunt down Maccabeats videos.And then if you read further down, you see that there was something to the story:
ZeeTwo PoliCorkster "Mordy Prus, a baritone with The Maccabeats, told Matzav.com that following the President’s request, the group removed the video from Youtube. They then asked Matzav.com, which had hosted by the video on its own server, to remove it as well."I am NOT connected to Matzav.com (and don't want to be). In fact, as far as I am concerned, they stole my name, because I was doing email updates as "The Matzav" as far back as September 2000. Whatever....
10 hours ago
The Maccabeats ZeeTwo - that never happened. Mordy Prus asked them to take it down, it was not following the President's request.
about an hour ago
While I was at the Maccabeats' website, I found this video, so once again, let's go to the videotape.
Labels: Barack Obama, Maccabeats
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:48 AM
3 Comments:
this was copied from matzav.com's website in the comments section to this story Matzav Editor responds:
We know what we were told and have the emails documented. Now that it has erupted into a national story following Matzav.com’s report, there may be some people trying to backtrack and attempting to change the story, but, as we said, we know what we were initially told, and that was that the Office of the President clearly requested that the video be removed. End of story
Lost opportunity. They should have sang "Ve'hee Sheh'amdah".
I don't get the whole Maccabeats thing. I'm thinking the actual Maccabees would have slaughtered the Maccabeats.
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