DISTURBED Frontman Talks About His Jewish Upbringing In New Video Interview

Metalist.co.il conducted an interview with DISTURBED frontman David Draiman late last month during the singer's visit to Jerusalem, Israel. You can now watch the entire 32-minute chat below.

Draiman recently gave a lengthy interview to the Jerusalem Post in which he spoke in detail about his Jewish upbringing, spending part of his childhood and teen years in Israel, and how he confronts anti-Semitism among rock fans. Draiman recalled, "I came (to Israel) many times as a kid with my family. I think the first time I was six. I used to come here for summer camp a couple times in my childhood, and I spent the year after high school here studying at Neve Zion yeshiva."

Draiman told The Pulse Of Radio that during his year of religious study, his life could have taken a very different course. "The level of study that I was at, I was probably only about two or three years away from being ordained as a rabbi, so I really needed to figure out in my head where I wanted to go with things," he said. "And I just couldn't do it habitually anymore. I grew a very strong dislike for the organized aspect of religion over the course of time."

Draiman also told the Jerusalem Post that he attended five different Jewish day schools as a teenager, including the Wisconsin Institute for Torah Study in Milwaukee — where he was asked to leave after the first year.

The singer admitted that the strict religious code at the school led him to rebel, revealing, "I'd set my friends up on dates with girls that I knew, in defiance of the school . . . Or I'd smoke a little bit of weed here and there, I'd get my buddies high, so I was the drug dealer on campus even though that's not what I was doing."

Asked by the Post about running into heavy metal fans who are anti-Semitic or sometimes even neo-Nazis, Draiman replied, "I'm incredibly defiant against neo-Nazis and skinheads," adding that he convinced one fan who used to come to the band's early shows in Chicago to get a swastika tattoo removed from his head after he learned that Draiman was Jewish.

A song called "Never Again" on DISTURBED's latest album, "Asylum", deals with the Holocaust and calls out people who deny it.

DISTURBED will hit the road with KORN for the "Music As A Weapon V" tour, beginning on January 14 in Bloomington, Illinois.