Josh Davis
Josh Davis

Josh Davis is a singer-songwriter who competed on the American singing reality competition show The Voice in 2015. Davis joined the Run Across Palestine marathon in 2012 to raise awareness about fair-trade olive farming in the Palestinian West Bank. He shared his experiences in an interview and in an album released the following year.

Josh Davis gave a TED talk on his Jewish American experience visiting the West Bank.

“I felt like there was a gap between what I saw happening in Israel and between those ethics at the core of Judaism, those things that we talked about at the Seder table at Passover, compassion, freedom from oppression, equality, liberty, justice.”

He was offered the chance to visit the West Bank for an ultra-marathon to raise funds and awareness in support of fair-trade olive farming communities in the Palestinian West Bank. “I was afraid that I wouldn’t be safe as a Jew among Palestinians,” he said.

“But ultimately, more compelling, was my curiosity, and the need to answer those questions…the need to see what was going on over the wall separating Israel and the West Bank.”

After the visit, he said, “I was torn up inside by all the things that I saw, all the shame that I felt, all the oppression I saw, but also invigorated by all the hope and the compassion on both sides of the wall.”

Josh expressed his experience in his songwriting on his return: https://joshuadavismusic.com/music/2017/5/10/a-miracle-of-birds.

Josh talks more about his experience on WMNU-FM in, “An interview with Joshua Davis”: https://www.wnmufm.org/post/interview-joshua-davis#stream/0.

You can find Josh on the web at his website.

Josh was on “The Voice” in 2015.  You can hear much of his music on the show at these links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulJBHC3eLMs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQOjxoKIzzk

With Maroon 5’s Adam Levine

With Sheryl Crow

America: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEWNmkZPtr8

Fields of Gold: https://www.metatube.com/en/videos/273797/The-Voice-USA-2015-Joshua-Davis-Fields-of-Gold/

In My Life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdq2TrZb1Is

Semi-finals: https://www.metatube.com/en/videos/274996/The-Voice-USA-2015-Joshua-Davis-I-Cant-Make-You-Love-Me-Semifinals/

Latest Posts

A Burglary Motivated by Racism

A Burglary Motivated by Racism

Haaaretz journalists Gideon Levy and Alex Levac reported on a West Bank burglary case in 2020 in which a small Palestinian business was repeatedly burglarized by Jewish settlers. Was this burglary motivated by racism? Mohammed Mahmadi, 29, left his restaurant job in...

read more
Curt’s Hebron

Curt’s Hebron

Curtis Bell, President of Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East, spoke to the First Unitarian Church’s Department of Social Justice about his two months in Hebron and what he learned about the Palestinian experience under Israeli occupation. Video...

read more
Virginia Tech GPSS

Virginia Tech GPSS

The Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS) at Virginia Tech passed a resolution in October 2021 demanding that the University’s administration enact an academic boycott of Israel and institutions “complicit in maintaining the Israeli occupation.” The...

read more
Jerusalem