Jeff Rosenstock is only 34, but he’s been in the punk scene for half his life. From ska-band The Arrogant Sons of Bitches to the capitalist-subverting Bomb the Music Industry! (the music was free), Rosenstock has been around, but he’s come to greater prominence recently, releasing three solo albums in five years.

These albums are a delight, because they are the most punk look into the Jewish psyche since, well, lots of punk music is Jewish, but the point is, Rosenstock is neurotic AF and is here to rock about it.

After all, the man’s latest album, from 2016, is called WORRY.

Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

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1. The Schleps: “Adir Hu”

Joshua Sherer handles vocals, guitar, bass, drums, and recording for the Schleps. Sherer said that while Passover has some of his “favorite holiday songs,” he covered “Adir Hu” “simply because it was the easiest and quickest song to record.” One could debate whether this metalcore song is more metal than hardcore/punk, but the guitar sound has a great, heavy crunch, whatever you want to call it.

2. Gefilte Fuck: “Diyanu”

Multiple Jewish punk bands covered “Diyanu,” but Gefilte Fuck was unique in adding “Fuck you!” to the chorus. “I thought the Passover song ‘Dayenu’ that I remembered so vividly from Sunday school needed to be screamed and played fast,” wrote guitarist Adam Bregman in the zine Mazel-Tov Cocktail. The band didn’t limit its Passover celebration to music, throwing matzoh and gefilte fish at fans during live shows.

3. NOFX: “The Brews”

The number-one Jewish punk anthem of all time is “The Brews” by NOFX. The song hailed the Brews (short for “Hebrews”) as an Orthodox street gang that celebrated Shabbat by drinking Manischewitz wine and beating up non-Jews. The Brews were described as skinheads with “anti-swastika tattoos.” The song ends by chanting the chorus of “Dayenu.” 

4. Yidcore: “Ma Nishtana”

Yidcore’s “Ma Nishtana” begins with a young boy reciting “Why is this night different from all others?” and making fart noises with his mouth. Yidcore then plunges headfirst into a screaming, full-throttle rendition of “The Four Questions” that’d make your zayde scream too (from being appalled, that is). It was hard to pick just one Passover song by Yidcore, seeing as how they’ve also covered “Dayenu” and “Vehi She’amda.” Yidcore front man Bram Presser noted, “The running gag for a long while was that Yidcore was started with the express primary purpose of speeding up the interminably long and boring seder. Anything beyond that was just a bonus.” 

5. The Shondes: “At the Water”

“At the Water,” from the Shondes’ The Red Sea, tells the story of Nashon from Exodus. Nashon led the way by walking into the Red Sea until it parted. Shondes violinist Elijah Oberman explained, “It was specifically inspired by Passover and that moment when Nashon goes into the Red Sea—and the idea that you have to go as far as you can on your own before G-d comes in and makes a miracle.” The band members found the story inspirational for social justice advocacy, as it suggests that people have to take risks in the pursuit of doing the right thing.

6. Schmekel: “Pharaoh/Moses Slash” 

The transgender Jewish punk band Schmekel wrote songs about most Jewish holidays, including Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Simchat Torah, and Purim. “Pharaoh/Moses Slash” addressed “the part of the Exodus that the haggadah leaves out”: a sexual relationship between Pharaoh and Moses. The chorus celebrates, “Shtupping is a mitzvah, and I’m a matzoh man.” Schmekel also played with “Chad Gadya” in one of their best songs, “The Mohel Song.”

7. Electric Menorah: “Let My People Go”

As the name suggests, the one-man band Electric Menorah started out with Chanukah songs in 2003. In 2008, singer/guitarist Brett Singer released Passocore. The EP featured punk covers of traditional Passover songs, including “Let My People Go.” Whereas the 2003 songs required his friend’s assistance with a drum machine and Pro Tools, Singer recorded the new songs on his Mac using GarageBand. This time around, Singer was truly a DIY one-man band.

8. Gangsta Rabbi: “Shout in Mizra’im”

In January (while he was in a medically induced coma, no less), Steve “Gangsta Rabbi” Lieberman released The King of Jewish Punk, his 30th album (68th if you count his prior cassette recordings). In 2003, his song “Shout in Mizr’aim” topped the Jewish/Israeli chart on MP3.com for eight days. The lyrics recall how the Hebrews built the pyramids and Moses told Pharaoh, “Hey, let my people go!”

You can learn more about all eight artists in my book, Oy Oy Oy Gevalt! Jews and Punk.

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1. Yidcore: Punk Rock Chanukah Song

Adam Sandler took Jewish holiday music to the next level with “The Chanukah Song,” but Yidcore one-upped Sandler with this parody—and circumcised him in the (arguably NSFW) music video. Yidcore proudly recalled the many prominent Jews in punk rock. Yidcore declared, “Joey Ramone ate matzoh at the seder/Just like Richard Hell and most of the Dictators.” Sure the Maccabees are important, but this is an important history lesson too.

2. Golem: Freydele

Golem is a klezmer-rock band with a punk edge. The first few times I heard “Freydele” live, I was blown away that Golem had come up with such a catchy, poppy, dance-y song. Just like most songs that meet that description, there’s some rapping in Yiddish. The lyrics discuss a maydele, named Freydele, who plays with her dreydele.

3. Shira: Hanukkah Song

Although Shiragirl was a punk rock band, as a solo artist Shira focused more on dance music, while still incorporating punk-inspired distorted guitar. “Hanukkah Song” mentions the oil that lasted for eight nights, latkes, chocolate gelt, and doughnuts. The lyrics include a tutorial on how to play dreidel. As far as Chanukah songs go, it’s all encompassing in discussing both the historical and celebratory aspects of the holiday.

4. Schmekel: I’ll Be Your Maccabee

Schmekel frequently relied on Jewish holidays as a familiar, resonant vehicle to discuss the transgender Jewish experience, (Remember all their High Holy Day songs?). Singer/guitarist Lucian Kahn explained that “I’ll Be Your Maccabee” was about “a young, Jewish, trans guy who goes to a Hanukkah party” and tries to seduce “a very handsome, Christian, non-trans guy.” The song includes a keyboard interlude of the more traditional Hanukkah ditty “Maoz Tzur.”

5. The Schleps: Maoz Tzur

If you’re looking for a full version of “Maoz Tzur” (Rock of Ages), The Schleps recorded a 37-second “koshercore” rendition. For Hanukkah 2008, JDub Records (z”l) featured the song on their blog and “predict[ed] that koshercore will finally take off in 2009 (maybe).” Koshercore did not hit the big time in 2009 or, as of press time, ever, but Jews are good at waiting.

6. Gefilte Fuck: Dreidel Song

Gefilte Fuck’s “Dreidel Song” is a medley of “I Have a Little Dreidel” and “Hanukkah, O Hanukkah.” Front man Howard Hallis recalled that he and the band’s guitarist thought it would be “really funny to take some of these old songs” and “make them punk rock style, because there are some really lovely melodies there that can be bastardized and put into the punk rock format.”

7. Electric Menorah: Charmonica for Chanuka

Brett Singer played guitar in a hardcore band under the stage name Bozo Foreskin. He had the idea of “Bozo Foreskin years later exploring his Jewish roots,” so he formed the one-man band Electric Menorah. Electric Menorah released the EP Chanucore, which consisted of three songs uploaded to MySpace. After a Passocore detour, Electric Menorah returned with “Charmonica for Chanuka.” Singer began the song by chanting “Shin! Hey! Gimmel! Nun!” before saying, “Shin sucks. Gimme Gimmel!”

8. Gangsta Rabbi: My Last Chanukah

Finish up your Chanukah with some end-of-life music. Steve “Gangsta Rabbi” Lieberman is battling cancer and finds it difficult to keep making music, but he hasn’t given up. He’s working on his 30th album (68th if you count his 38 cassette recordings), The King of Jewish Punk. He included “My Last Chanukah” on 2014’s Cancer Ward, but it wasn’t his last Festival of Lights. In a July interview, the Gangsta Rabbi had a unique take on his health situation. He wondered, “Has the God of Israel written a scorching rocker for me to play in Heaven—but not until I get there?”

You can learn more about all eight artists in my book, Oy Oy Oy Gevalt! Jews and Punk.

Photo of Shira: Andrina Farago, Hair/Makeup: Paul Mojica

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In retrospect, it was inevitable that I’d write Oy Oy Oy Gevalt! Jews and Punk. I feel a personal connection with many of the featured artists, and had circumstances allowed, I gladly would have seen them live more often. Many of them are based too far away, or don’t play often enough. Yet, there are two bands in the book that I’ve seen far more than any others, and I saw both for the umpteenth time last week. Golem, a klezmer-rock band with a punk edge, is the center of attention in my chapter about punk influences on klezmer and other types of Jewish music. Moshiach Oi!, a “Torah hardcore” band, is perhaps the most prominently featured group in my chapter about overtly Jewish punk rock bands.

Why do I keep going to see these bands over and over again? Of course I enjoy the music, and for a long time it was research for my book. Golem and Moshiach Oi! are based in New York and have been around a while (since 2000 and 2008, respectively), which gave me numerous opportunities. But the reasons I went again and again ran deeper.

Golem and Moshiach Oi! reaffirmed for me that Jewish punk (or klezmer-rock with a punk edge, if you will,) was not just a collection of isolated examples. So many of the bands in my book were spread out by time and geography, but they were an exception. Seeing Golem and Moshiach Oi! so often made my research subject—and my passion—tangible. I wasn’t only covering a band that played a few shows or a defunct band from halfway around the world. Jewish punk—and its variations—was still going strong.

Golem’s and Moshiach Oi!’s music—and concert experiences—also give me satisfaction in my identity as an outside-the-box Jew. This happens at a cultural level with Golem and at a religious level for Moshiach Oi!

My first article about Jews and punk in 2005 began by quoting Golem’s then-violinist, Alicia Jo Rabins, and Golem has been a key part of my Jewish punk journey ever since. I recalled my first Golem show, in San Francisco, in my book:

A 2006 concert showcased Golem’s potential to give fans a wild, fun Jewish experience. … When Golem played a hora, two or three women wearing sexy dresses danced in front of the band and helped get a hora dance going. They were called the Hanukkah Horas—with emphasis on the first syllable of the second word. About half the crowd exuberantly joined hands, kicked their feet, and circled around a mid-sized concert venue. After starting out with the standard Hebrew lyrics of “Hava Nagila,” singer Aaron Diskin frantically sang in English about wanting another tequila with lime and salt. Diskin rolled around onstage, stripped down to “A Great Miracle Happened Here” Hanukkah-themed underwear, which two of his bandmates also showed off.

As I moved around the club intertwined with presumably Jewish strangers, I had a euphoric high and felt “Jewishly connected” on my own terms. I wasn’t getting that in Virginia, where I was living at the time. This was fun Jewish culture mixed with debauchery and edginess. I’d waited a long time and come a long way for this. I don’t get as excited every time I see Golem, but that experience is ingrained in my mind as the benchmark for what a Golem concert is.

This past Wednesday was my 19th time seeing Golem, and I’ve written about the first 18. I’ve started a hora, gotten a hora to switch directions and circle to the left, and danced the hora outside in the rain in December. I’ve seen Golem at an Oktoberfest gig, multiple Chanukah shows (latkes were involved), a holiday season concert, and a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony. I’ve even crashed a wedding that Golem was playing at!

Whereas Golem is the band I want to play my wedding when the time comes, Moshiach Oi! was the band at my book release party. I’d been in touch with guitarist Menashe Yaakov Wagner since 2006 about his band White Shabbos, and in 2008, Wagner told me that his friend Yishai Romanoff had started “perhaps the world’s first hardcore vegan straight-edge Orthodox Jewish punk band.” Needless to say, I was intrigued! Around the time Wagner helped expand Moshiach Oi! into a quartet later that year, the label was shortened to “Torah hardcore.”

In November 2008, I went to Wagner’s house and was the first person to interview Moshiach Oi! They’d only played one show, and I was dubious about the band’s prospects. I was wrong, and since then, Moshiach Oi! has released two albums, with a third in the works. The group has been featured in one documentary (Punk Jews) and interviewed for a second (Tikkun Olam) and been profiled in The New York Times. Romanoff graces the cover of my book.

On Thursday I saw Moshiach Oi! for the 10th time, and like for Golem, I recounted every show. A Moshiach Oi! concert is an intense experience, not just because the music is heavy. Romanoff has described the band’s music as “a punch in the face of godliness.” When Romanoff is screaming “Baruch Hashem,” it’s not just art inspired by Judaism. It’s a religious expression of Judaism. “When I’m onstage screaming, I’m trying as hard as I can to only focus on one thing, that I’m doing this for the sake of G-d … only to make G-d’s name great in the world,” Romanoff explained in Punk Jews. Romanoff hopes that his punk rock version of “Shema Yisroel,” for example, makes the prayer more relatable for people who don’t connect with a conventional rendition.

When the opening chords of “Am Yisroel Chai” strike, I get into a focused state. When the lyrics kick in, I scream along with the message of the Jewish people persevering. At my book release party, Romanoff passed me the microphone so I could sing, “We are the children of Abraham… He was the first man to break apart and raise up a fist and smash his culture’s lies and scream ‘Resist!’” Romanoff doesn’t merely tell the story of a Biblical character. He recites it as a battle cry that seamlessly melds his Jewish and punk identities.

When the bridge of “Avoda Zara” kicks in and the musical intensity picks up, I have an out-of-body experience. “No, no, no, I only bless Hakodesh Baruch Hu [the Holy One, Blessed Be He],” Romanoff screams and so do I, before repeatedly screaming “Hey!” in the coda to sustain the momentum just a little longer. During that song, I am filled with a fierce, fierce love for Hashem. That might sound like an oxymoron, but the praise for God is genuine and it’s wonderful. Nothing else brings me closer to God with such concentrated passion in the moment.

I know that that not everyone is reassured in their Jewish identity or feels an unparalleled connection with God. I do, and with these concerts I keep going back for more.

Oy Oy Oy Gevalt! Jews and Punk was published in April by Praeger (an imprint of ABC-CLIO).

Image credits: Cover of Oy Oy Oy Gevalt! Jews and Punk

Golem via Golemrocks.com

Moshiach Oi! performing at the Oy Oy Oy Gevalt! Jews and Punk book release party in June. By Michael Shields.

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