Tokio Hotel: wearing their hearts on their sleeves and their skulls on their t-shirtsEver feel like you just can’t fully appreciate the Song of Songs until you can read and understand it in Hebrew?Well, according to German-translating friend of Jewcy Jewlicious, an article that ran in the Jüdische Allgemeine recently reports that young Israeli girls feel the same way about their new favorite band, Tokio Hotel.Apparently, the teens are OMG-ing so much over the German emo-popsters and their trademark guyliner demand for German language instruction in Israeli schools has vastly increased.

Tokio Hotel first gained mega popularity in Israel last year, spending months at the top of the Israeli music charts.After the dedicated efforts of their young, Israeli fanbase (including extensive petition campaigns to the Israeli embassy in Berlin), Tokio Hotel played its first concertat the Israel Trade Fairs and Convention Center in October of last year.

“The fact that our Israeli fans are singing our German lyrics shows how music can connect people emotionally.There are no prejudices, no boundaries or barriers,” says the feathered-haired teen heartthrob lead singer Bill Kaulitz.And that’s great.Except we sort of agree with Jewlicious that Israeli teens might have rather found their great passion for German language and culture in something other than the High School Musical of German emo.

Yeshiva Teens: Not quite.Wow!

The Lockers is a really really interesting site, and one I suggest you visit right this very minute. From their front page:

Welcome to TheLockers.net - - where Yeshiva teens speak freely. The place where Yeshiva teens say what we believe in, and challenge what we don’t. Each and every one of us has our core beliefs – the stuff that we live by. Maybe it’s friends, maybe its family. Maybe it’s our own self, or truth, or some idea of God and Judaism. Or maybe its money, image, or power.

And then there’s the stuff we don’t buy into. The places where the things our parents and teachers and rabbis have taught us simply don’t match up with our personal reality. And who are we supposed to talk to about all that stuff?

So here it is – a place that we can let our guard down, where each of us is totally anonymous, but where we all share a common background of having grown up in the Yeshiva world. There are no agendas here – no expectations of what conclusions we each might decide.

It’s not all deep and gushy and spiritual or anything. In fact, what makes it fascinating is how regular it reads. But it comes from a corner of the world that secular/pluralistic/academic Jews like me could only imagine… until now.

For instance, in the Faith section, this thread called “What is a reform Jew?”

There’s just something really weird and addictive about reading the thoughts of people for whom a “reform Jew” is a foreign element, a strange beast.

I mean, Reform Jews are normal, right. It’s the frumsters who are curious and fascinating and bizarre and worth discussing….

Dude… It’s like we’re all the same or something… it’s like… how we feel about them, that’s how they feel about us!