Already in 2011, a new arrival in Jerusalem attracted international attention: Rapper Shyne had become an Orthodox Jew in prison and landed in Israel after being deported after release.

But Shyne soon disappeared from the Holy City, joining countless others in making it a temporary home.

Now, more than a decade later, a new documentary is shedding light on why Shyne left — and where he’s been since. “The Honorable Shyne” premieres this week on Hulu and includes the former rapper’s response to the sex-trafficking scandal that has fallen on his mentor Sean “Diddy” Combs.

In an interview about the new film, Shyne — born Jamal Michael Barrow — talked about his Jewish identity, the nightclub shooting that resulted in his 10-year prison sentence, and his new chapter as a politician and leader of the Belize United Democratic Party, the Central American nation’s leading opposition party.

“People have been asking me to do a documentary for quite some time, over the last two decades,” says Shyne, who now goes by the name Moses Michael Levi Barrow. “But I required the right partnership, which meant we had to be aligned as well as the story we wanted to tell, as many different stories that could be told, and I didn’t want to be in the business of bastardizing history, prostituted myself for sensationalism.

“I wanted to tell a unique story about integrity, about tirelessness,” he said, “and just all these amazing things that people have inside of them.”

Born in Belize before moving with his mother to Brooklyn as a child, Shyne began his rap career as a teenager in the 1990s and enjoyed a meteoric rise as part of the Bad Boy Records label founded by Combs.

Shyne was arrested in 1999, and convicted two years later, in connection with a nightclub shooting in which both Combs and Combs’ then-girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, were present. Shyne was convicted of assault, reckless endangerment and weapons possession and sentenced to 10 years in prison, while Combs was acquitted.

Shyne emerged from his nine years in prison as a practicing Orthodox Jew. He was deported from the US in 2009 and lived in Israel for two years, residing in Jerusalem. He teamed up with musician Matisyahu in 2010 and attracted a lot of media attention for his striking transformation, which included wearing side locks and changing his first name to “Moses”.

In 2013, he returned to Belize, where his father, Dean Barrow, is a former prime minister.

The new documentary, directed by Marcus A. Clarke and produced in partnership with ESPN and Disney-associated brand Andscape, traces Shyne’s music career, trial and incarceration, and his thoughts on Combs, who recently drew federal extortion and sex trafficking costs.

The film also touches on Barrow’s uniquely compelling Jewish journey.

Although it was reported that Barrow “converted” to Judaism during his imprisonment, that is not entirely accurate, he said in the interview.

“I didn’t convert, I was born (with) Jewish heritage,” he said. He said his grandmother was of Ethiopian Jewish heritage.

“To me, being Jewish is not a racial thing, it’s not an ethnic thing, it’s a spiritual thing,” he said. “Judaism, for me, came about in Brooklyn, where I faced death and imminent danger every day that I would walk out of my house, and I’d say friends get their heads blown off right next to me. I needed to pray to survive, to exist beyond the statistical deadline of prison or death at age 21.”

Barrow grew up in Brooklyn’s East Flatbush section, where he said he was often in trouble and was shot in the shoulder when he was 15.

“So that’s why I started praying … I started praying to God, I just wanted to be alive,” he said. “I am 46 years old, and for the last 30 years I have prayed every day, I have prayed to the Most High.”

In June 2001, he was convicted of assault for the nightclub incident and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

“And so when I went to prison, what happened is I codified my spirituality,” he said. “I had prayed in a monotheistic way, my inspiration was Moses, and all these figures, Abraham and David, the king, and Joseph the tzadik (the righteous). And so you had to go from just reading about this in the Torah, to “what are the actual customs?” So that’s what I didn’t have before I went to prison.”

Both in prison and during his stay in Israel, Shyne suggests that he was not always accepted in Jewish spaces, as a black man and person of Caribbean heritage.

He spoke of being rebuffed by a rabbi at Rikers Island, where he was incarcerated for part of his sentence, who told him, “What do you mean you’re Jewish?”

“I had a hard time being a Jew in prison,” he said. “Sure, it was an anomaly, I guess, because most (Africans and Caribbean Americans) who go to prison, they become Muslims.” But during that time, he began donning tefillin, maintaining a strict kosher diet, and keeping the Sabbath.

He recalled a man who came to Rikers who “smelled like oil” and happened to be Jewish.

“He was talking about Kabbalistic teachings — not like Madonna Kabbalah,” he said, the latter a reference to the Los Angeles-based movement best known for teaching a version of Jewish mysticism to Hollywood celebrities. “I read some books he gave me that really got me thinking.”

Barrow says in the film that after he was released, he went to Israel to celebrate Rosh Hashanah and ended up staying for more than two years. As part of becoming more observant, he even underwent a ritual circumcision in his 30s. Shyne returned to Israel and filmed interviews in the Old City of Jerusalem for the documentary.

At one point, Barrow says, he was turned away by Ohr Somayach, a yeshiva in Israel that caters to Jews who were not raised Orthodox.

“For me, the experience, the studies, the mentorship had their limit,” he says in the film. Barrow finally concluded that “I thought being ultra-religious created more division and barriers for me.” He moved away from haredi orthodoxy and eventually returned to Belize.

Barrow, who now serves as the main opposition leader in Belize’s House of Representatives, is seen in a still from the new documentary “The Honorable Shyne.” (Andscape)

Barrow, however, remains a practicing Jew, even producing and displaying his travel bag during our interview, monogrammed with his Hebrew name, “Moshe Ben David.”

“I’m a hybrid,” he told JTA. “I fast on Yom Kippur, I wrap the tefillin every day.” But on Friday night, if I have to do something, I do it. So I don’t observe at that level.” In Belize, he observed Sukkot, the fall harvest holiday.

“I keep a kosher diet, in the sense that I don’t eat non-kosher food,” he added.

At no point did Barrow testify against Combs or anyone else in the shooting case, and he even attended an onstage reunion of Bad Boy Records at the 2022 BET Awards. However, in the film and in recent interviews, he has been critical of Combs for calling witnesses to blame him for the shooting – a charge Combs denies.

The documentary was in production for about two years and includes an interview recorded after Combs’ home was raided in the spring of 2024, months before “Diddy” was charged with, according to the US Attorney, abuses women and engages in sex trafficking.

“Before the raid there was one trial to come on out where a gentleman (producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones) claimed Diddy told him he shot the club and he made me do time,” Barrow told JTA. “And that was really a trigger. And then you had a victim who came out and said what she had been saying all along, that Diddy was the one who shot her in the faceand it wasn’t Shyne. So I’ve said I was only defending myself, and I’ve said there were other guns fired in the club that night.”

Combs denies all the allegations against him.

In the film, Barrow responds to a 2016 video that allegedly depicts Diddy assaulting his ex-girlfriend. “I had to distance myself from him and condemn these actions,” he says in the film.

In November 2020, Barrow won a seat in Belize’s House of Representatives promising lower interest student loans and a crackdown on crime, as a member of the center-right Belize United Democratic Party.

As a political figure and one who was deported to his home country after his release from prison, Shyne struck a neutral tone on the recent election of Donald Trump to a second, non-consecutive term.

“The relationship between Belize and the United States has been 43 years, and we have seen many presidents,” he added. “We’ve really benefited greatly from President Biden and Vice President Harris,” referring to a $250 million grant from the Millennium Challenge Corporation.

“On behalf of the Belizean people, it is very important for me to remain impartial, for me to have relationships that transcend partisanship,” he said. “I wish the president-elect the best of luck, and I also extended my best wishes to Vice President Harris, for putting forth a formidable candidacy.”