Ye (formerly Kanye West) met with Rabbi Yoshiayao Yosef Pinto on Tuesday to apologize for his antisemitic remarks about the Jewish community.
“I feel really blessed to sit here and take accountability,” West began while holding Pinto’s hands. “I was dealing with various issues. I was dealing with bipolar also, so I would take the ideas I had and forget about the protection of the people around me and myself. So I wanted to take accountability.”
The Chicago native continued: “So it’s like if you left the house and you left your kid at the house and your kid went and messed up the kitchen and messed up the garage and messed up the living room. Then when you get back, it’s your responsibility because that’s your job. That’s the way I look at it. It’s like I gotta go clean up the kitchen, I gotta clean up the living room, I gotta clean up the garage.”
Ye said he “wanted to come and take accountability,” as he believes these are the “first steps” in building “brick-by-brick” for the “strong walls” in repairing his relationship with the Jewish community.
“A person is not defined by his mistakes, but by the way he chooses to correct them,” Rabbi Pinto, who serves as the leader of the Shuva Israel institutions, said in a translated statement. “This is the true strength of man: The ability to return, to learn, and to build bridges of love and peace.”
West has been under fire for his repeated antisemitic commentary, which included him tweeting he was going to go “death con 3” [sic] on Jewish people in 2022. Ye’s inflammatory remarks resulted in corporations such as Universal Music Group, Balenciaga, Gap and Adidas cutting ties with him.
While he’s been releasing music in recent years, Ye hasn’t operated inside the major label system since the UMG split in 2022, and he hasn’t performed a concert in the U.S. this year.
Although he’s taken his performances global with a July show in South Korea and has concerts lined up in South Africa in December and a show in Mexico in January. The 48-year-old has also continued to delay the release of his forthcoming Bully album.
Watch Ye’s meeting with Rabbi Pinto below.
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