What Boy George Taught Me About Being Jewish

There are all sorts of ways to stand up to tyrants. Some do it with sequins and eye shadow.

Last night, I took my 15-year-old daughter to see Boy George perform before a sold-out crowd at Tel Aviv’s Menora Mivtachim Arena. It was the day after the US midterm elections, and regardless of one’s politics, it was hard for Jews not to feel frightened about what might come next.

In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed had just been elected to the Senate, days after a political action committee supporting him released an ad essentially blaming American grocery prices on Israel. Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance pointed to America’s relationship with Israel as a reason for the Republican blowout. Apparently, blaming Israel has become one of the few things that unites the American left and right.

And then, at the absolute perfect moment, in walks Boy George, with his massive smile, his caked-on makeup, his sequin hat, and his simple message of moral clarity. He hates war, he told the crowd, but he’s not confused about where he stands. “I’m not a scaredy cat,” the 65-year-old pop star declared to thunderous applause.

Looking around the arena, I saw just about every kind of Israeli imaginable. There were women covering their hair for religious modesty and others who had dyed theirs hot pink for 1980s campiness. There were men wearing kippot and others wearing stiletto heels. And probably a few wearing both. Israel, too, had just emerged from a bitterly divisive election, and I spotted friends whose ballots I knew had been the polar opposite of mine. But for two hours, none of that mattered.

Somehow, this gender-bending pop star, raised in an Irish Catholic family in southeast London, had brought us all together. And it occurred to me he was teaching us something profound about what it means to be Jewish.

Last month, I heard my friend Dara Horn speak in Denver about her new book, The Final Solution to the Jewish Question. Over dinner afterward, we discussed her argument about antisemitism and the persistence of what she calls the Big Lie: that Jews are supposedly responsible for destroying whatever a society values most. In Christian Europe, we undermined Christianity. In communist societies, we were capitalists. In capitalist societies, we were communists. Today, in a world that increasingly prizes social justice and human rights, we are the world’s worst violators of those ideals. The accusation never changes. Only the thing we’re supposedly destroying does.

But Horn makes another observation that explains why people cling to this Big Lie. Judaism itself is an anti-tyrannical movement. From Abraham challenging polytheism to Moses confronting Pharaoh, the Jewish story is one of refusing to surrender moral judgment to the prevailing powers. Jews have survived for thousands of years by refusing to bow down to idols, emperors, and tyrants. And as Horn concludes, when you refuse to bow down to tyrants, you tend to piss them off.

Which brings me back to Boy George.

When Culture Club exploded onto the music scene in the early 1980s, Boy George was unlike anything most people had ever seen. Here was a male pop star wearing lipstick, heavy eye shadow, and flamboyant clothing, unapologetically blurring the lines between masculine and feminine. Today, that might barely raise an eyebrow. But in 1982, it was revolutionary. He was mocked and ridiculed, but he refused to let society dictate how he dressed, how he looked, or who he was.

He wasn’t a scaredy cat.

Four decades later, the rules of conformity have changed, but the pressure to conform hasn’t. Look at almost any gathering of celebrities and you’ll see the same familiar symbols: red-hand pins, kaffiyehs, and carefully rehearsed declarations about Gaza. Artists who spent their careers celebrating individual expression suddenly seem reluctant to express an individual opinion. For many, the easiest option is to follow the crowd or remain silent.

Boy George chose neither. He watched in horror as Hamas massacred young people dancing at the Nova music festival on October 7. He released a song, “We Will Dance Again,” in which he sings, “If you’re ever confused, I stand with the Jews.” He refused calls to boycott Israel, and endured condemnation from former friends and colleagues. And then he got on a plane and came to Tel Aviv.

The man once considered a radical for challenging society’s conventions about gender is now considered a radical for standing with the Jews. But there’s no contradiction. He’s doing precisely what he did 40 years ago: refusing to let the dominant culture tell him what to think.

The eyeliner hasn’t changed. Neither has the courage.

As Dara Horn observes, the essence of Jewish survival has never been the ability to fit in. It has been the determination to stand apart when standing apart is the right thing to do. To question the powerful, challenge conventional wisdom, and refuse to trade truth for acceptance.

Boy George isn’t Jewish, but he has spoken about his deep kinship with the Jewish people. Perhaps he recognizes something of himself in our story.

Last night, as he stood before thousands of Israelis—religious and secular, left and right, gay and straight—I thought about what a remarkable lesson this was for my daughter. Not just about standing up for Israel. Not even about standing up against antisemitism. But simply about standing up. About having the courage to be different, the confidence to think for yourself, and the moral clarity to say what you believe even when everyone around you insists that you’re wrong.

We Jews have been doing that for thousands of years. And it has never been particularly fashionable.

Last night, a 65-year-old man in a sequin hat reminded us why it matters. And he made it look fabulous.