Yoseph Robinson, a Jamaican Jew who was slain in Brooklyn, New York last week in a robbery, was laid to rest in his homeland Jamaica. Robinson is a former hip hop executive who was converted to Judaism. He was shot to death while protecting his girlfriend from armed robbers at his Brooklyn liquor store.
On Monday Tearful mourners remembered Yoseph Robinson as a proud Jamaican – and a proud Jew – who turned his life around only to die at the hands of a gun-wielding thug.
“The Jewish community saved his life,” Robinson’s brother-in-law Shawn Walters told the mourners. “They didn’t judge him because of his past. He was a proud Jamaican. And a proud Jew.”
Born in Jamaica, Robinson moved to New York at the age of 12 and as a teen strayed into “a world of drug deals, street crime and violence,” he wrote in his unfinished memoir.
At the age of 23, a bookstore clerk handed him a Torah, and he gave up a dream of becoming a hip-hop record producer and converted to Judaism.
“I just felt it’s so important to be here. It’s solidarity,” said friend Beth Sabo of Queens. “He was a very special guy.”
