Punk chefs advise that if you want to ground up matzoh to make matzoh ball soup, you can have the punk rock band in your living room do it for you.

If you don’t have a punk rock band in your living room, this playlist should rev you up for all eight days of Passover. If it still isn’t enough (dayenu?), check out last year’s Passover punk playlist.

Yidcore: Bashana Haba’ah

A key theme of Passover is that while we might face problems now, things will be better next year. The chorus of this traditional song says, “You will yet see how good it will be next year.” In Yidcore’s cover, this rallying cry is more of a scream the last time it’s uttered.

The Shondes: True North

The chorus of “True North” connects the seder-ending slogan “Next year in Jerusalem” with social justice activism. Shondes singer Louisa Solomon said the song is about “utopian ideals” in “revolutionary movements—and the related Jewish tradition of actively imagining a better world.” The band included “Next year in Jerusalem” to “connect with our ancestors’ aspirations toward justice,” Solomon explained.

Gefilte Fuck: Why Don’t We Do It in the Shoul?

The song is modeled after the Beatles’ “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?” and starts off by suggesting sex in a synagogue. There are four questions in total, and two of them are from the Four Questions: “Why do we eat unleavened bread?” “Why do we dip our parsley twice?” Click here to listen.

Schmekel: The Mohel Song

“The Mohel Song” addresses whether a transgender Jew should get circumcised. Toward the end of the song, singer/guitarist Lucian Kahn sings the chorus of “Chad Gadya.” Kahn associated “Chad Gadya” with his family’s inebriated renditions following four cups of wine at Passover seders. He saw in “Chad Gadya” the “drunken revelry of the liberation moment of the seder.” As Kahn put it, incorporating the song fit into Schmekel’s approach of taking liturgical melodies and other familiar elements of Judaism, “commenting on it,” “re-contextualizing it,” and “making it [their] own.”

G-d Is My Co-Pilot: Dayenu

G-d Is My Co-Pilot was part of No Wave, an avant-garde offshoot of punk rock. The band originally spelled out the first word of their name, but when they played overtly Jewish songs, they used a hyphen instead. Their 1994 album Mir Shlufn Nisht (Yiddish for “We Don’t Sleep”) included “Dayenu,” plus a hora, a Chanukah song, and “Hatikvah.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nphRFZg4zQE

Total Passover: Get Kosher

Total Passover qualifies for this playlist because of their awesome name. Their slogan, “Shalom Motherfucker,” wasn’t well received in their home state of Iowa in the early ’90s. In “Get Kosher,” the Jewish narrator tells a non-Jewish woman that he’ll only date her if she keeps kosher. The chorus includes the hilarious line “Lips that touch swine will never touch mine.”

Moshiach Oi!: Eliyahu HaNavi

This Hebrew song calls for Elijah the prophet to come to us soon with Moshiach. Moshiach Oi! have plenty of punk rock in their rendition, but there are also heaping servings of reggae. In addition, Moshiach Oi! discuss the Exodus from Egypt in songs “Yetzias Mitzrayim” and “This Is My God.”

Gangsta Rabbi: 1st Diaspora Egypt

“1st Diaspora Egypt” appeared on Steve “Gangsta Rabbi” Lieberman’s 69th album last year, and now he’s released three more since. The lyrics discuss how Joseph wound up in Egypt, Pharaoh’s order to build pyramids, the splitting of the sea, and wandering in the desert for 40 years en route to Israel.

…You might need to read the lyrics to get all that.

For more information about all these artists, check out Michael Croland’s book, Oy Oy Oy Gevalt! Jews and Punk.

Art courtesy of Tom Meehan/Total Passover

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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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The transgender Jewish punk band Schmekel (Yiddish for “little penis”) is, alas, defunct, but at least we still have their songs about almost every Jewish holiday. For this time of year, there are numbers about the upcoming Tishrei parade of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah. These holidays are vehicles to explore what it was like to be transgender in conjunction with being Jewish, and they used some very Jewish tools to do so— like nerdiness, humor, passion.

Schmekel saw Jewish holidays as a resonant, familiar path to discuss that topic in varied ways. When interviewed for my book, Oy Oy Oy Gevalt! Jews and Punk, Schmekel singer/guitarist Lucian Kahn said that Schmekel aimed to “talk about all of these different times in the cycle of the Jewish calendar and find ways of relating those things to trans experience.”

“The Binding of Isaac” is a poignant song, in part because of an evocative “Avinu Malkeinu” interlude. The lyrics discuss how a transgender Jew named Isaac presents himself as male, binds his breasts, and sits in the men’s section in shul on Rosh Hashanah. “Old Marvin from the Y,” whom Isaac has known since childhood, asks Isaac’s father how his daughter is doing. The father brushes off the question by saying Elaine (Isaac’s birth name) “is fine,” as if Isaac isn’t present. Heartbreakingly, while the father just continues praying, Isaac looks down in dismay and his knees buckle.

As the listener hears the story, Isaac’s father is to blame for failing to acknowledge the presence of his transgender child. But Kahn explained that the situation was “based on snippets of truth” and wasn’t so straightforward.

Kahn said, “Old Marvin’s not a real person, but he might as well be, because all of us have had an experience … running into … some sort of not core person in your life, and having that experience of, okay, they don’t recognize me … because the last time they saw me, they thought I looked like a woman. … Should I reintroduce myself? Should I pretend I’m someone else? Should I just ignore them?” These questions represent complex practical considerations related to transgender transitioning. “The Binding of Isaac” puts them into a fictional context where listeners can understand and relate to the plight of a transgender person in this situation.

Whereas “The Binding of Isaac” was one of three Tishrei holiday songs on Schmekel’s 2013 album, The Whale That Ate Jonah, “I’m Sorry, It’s Yom Kippur” appeared on 2011’s Queers on Rye. The lyrics discuss “atoning for some shit I might have done wrong.” The atonement included transgender-related examples like assuming a heterosexual person was ignorant, coming out in an “awkward way,” and putting breast binders in the drier. The song includes a shofar blast as well as Schmekel’s take on the “Al Chet” prayer from the Yom Kippur liturgy.

The prestigious Jewish Music Research Centre at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem praised the song as a venue for “atonement through punk (and traditional Jewish music).” In the article, Kahn explained that the notion of “screwing up” was more relatable—and applicable to his life—than “sin.” He said that it was “more productive” to “reflect with a sense of humor upon my mess-ups.”

“I wrote that song when I was not supposed to be writing that song; I wrote it while I was fasting,” Kahn told me. “So I was also really amused that a song that I wrote, definitely breaking a commandment or a mitzvah or something to actually write it, ended up getting analyzed by” the Jewish Music Research Centre.

“Occupy My Sukkah” is a Sukkot-themed, X-rated song about a “broke-ass queer” looking for “somebody from the one percent.” The song includes Hoshana Rabba, the seventh of Sukkot’s eight days. The lyrics ask: “If you’ve got abundance, won’t you be my sugar abba [daddy] / And smack me with your arava [branch of a willow tree] ’cuz it’s Hoshana Rabba?”

“Maybe She’s Shomer Negiyah” has the strongest lyrics of the Tishrei songs, but it adheres the least to a holiday theme. The setting is a Simchat Torah party, but the holiday isn’t discussed beyond the opening line of the song.

Shomer negiyah refers to men and women not touching each other, and in the song, the transgender male narrator dances the hora with other men. He realizes that the men probably wouldn’t want to hold his hand if they knew he was transgender. He also discussed not shaking hands with a woman when he said “chag sameach” because “she’s keepin’ it kosher like Shmuley Boteach.”

Schmekel’s songs were more than just catharsis for the band members as they dealt with their transitions. The humor in their songs served a larger purpose: Schmekel deliberately used humor to lower the defenses of non-transgender audiences and make the topic seem more approachable. From there, people could learn about and empathize with the transgender experience.

The Jewish part of making the transgender experience seem relatable had to do with Schmekel’s expertise with Jewish topics. Kahn explained, “It’s probably a little unusual to have within one band somebody who has a master’s degree in history of religions and somebody who studied Jewish education and someone who was a Jewish studies major. It’s like … a brain trust of people who have studied Jewish history.” Writing clever lyrics like the “sugar abba”/Hoshana Rabba couplet would be beyond the capabilities of most Jews with casual knowledge of their religion.

Schmekel disbanded in 2014. Kahn still has a decent chance of making some High Holidays music, though. He lives in Crown Heights, and in his own words, “I cannot make it between my building and the subway two blocks away on Rosh Hashanah without being handed a shofar at least three times.”

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