David lashed out after being Disturbed by antisemites

Jewish Telegraph, May 2008

MANY people will be surprised to see rock band Disturbed playing the Download Festival on a Friday night — as frontman David Draiman almost trained to be a rabbi.
But the American nu-metallers are fourth on the bill at the Leicestershire venue so should be well off stage by the time Shabbat comes in at about 9.11pm.
Draiman has made no secret of his Jewish roots. In fact, he talks quite openly about it in this month’s edition of Metal Hammer.
His paternal grandparents were Chassidic and involved in the uprising against the British occupation which led to Israel’s independence.
His maternal grandparents survived Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz concentration camps.
The Brooklyn-born singer studied at yeshiva in Milwaukee and at Jewish schools in Chicago and California.
The 35-year-old triple majored in business administration, political science, and philosophy from Loyola University Chicago.
He was planning to go to law school when he spotted the advert from Disturbed in the Illinois Entertainer in 1996.
The group has sold more than 10 million albums since their debut The Sickness. Second album, Believe, included the song Prayer which was about a conversation between Draiman and God after the death of his grandfather.
Disturbed’s fourth album, Indestructible, is released by Warners on June 3.
Earlier this year, Disturbed performed live in Kuwait, while last month, Draiman appeared on MTV’s Headbangers Blog website, talking about a struggle with a heroin addiction when he was 16.
His addiction was inspiration for the song Inside the Fire from the new album.
Draiman, who claimed in one interview that he was not at all religious, once spoke about his refusal to have his body tattooed because it was against Judaism. Instead, he had his labret (under his lower lip) pierced as that could heal.
In Metal Hammer, Draiman spoke about an antisemitic incident in his youth.
“One time I’d just got my allowance money from my parents and I’d just gone down to the arcade on my bike to play on the machines.
“I had the yarmulke on and I even had the prayer shawl as well. I came out of there and some guys bounced me off my bike.
“They were like, ‘Do you have a lot of money on you, Jew boy? Do you think we can have some of that?’ Then one of them started to pull the wallet out of my pocket so I lifted my heel up into the guy behind me’s n***, then the guy in front of me struck me and I fell down by my bike.
“Then I saw the bike chain and I picked it up and beat the living s*** out of them until they could not get up.
“When I went home I was covered in blood and my mother went into hysterics because she thought it was my blood. My entire upbringing was full of stories like this.”
Also appearing at the Download Festival are rock band Kiss, led by Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons.