Jews in punk rock
"Joey Ramone ate matzah at the sederJust like Richard Hell and most of The Dictators" As early as the 1970s, musicians of Jewish descent played a prominent role in the development of punk rock, particularly in the New York scene.
)[5][6] Jews were also present in the California punk scene of the early 1980s, such as Bad Religion's Brett Gurewitz and Greg Hetson, NOFX's Fat Mike and Eric Melvin, and Operation Ivy's Jesse Michaels and Dave Mello.
[8][9] In the 21st century, notable Jewish punk musicians have included Fall Out Boy's Joe Trohman[10] and Steve Klein,[7] Say Anything's Max Bemis,[7] and Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss.
[14] In the 1980s and early 1990s, many of Israel's prominent alternative rock acts drew from punk, new wave and post-punk, including artists like HaClique, Mashina,[19] Minimal Compact, Berry Sakharof, and Aviv Geffen.
Known for their left-wing and anti-Zionist politics, they released two albums, 1994's Renounce Judaism and 1997's Hail The New Regime, and played multiple shows with Useless ID in Tel Aviv and Haifa.
[23] Man Alive are outspoken pacifists, while Useless ID expanded their focus to address international politics, such as appearing on the anti-war compilation Rock Against Bush, Vol.
Although equally short-lived and only recording five songs between 1992 and 1993, Gefilte Fuck gained notoriety for their live performances, during which they would wear kippot and tallitot onstage, start hora dances in the mosh pit, drink Manischewitz wine, and throw matzo, Hanukkah gelt, and chunks of gefilte fish at audiences; Hallis, an art student at UCLA at the time, was inspired by the food-based performance art he'd been studying, and the group's antics were later likened to a tamer version of GG Allin.
Per Nirenberg's memory and research, the band formed in Williamsburg, Brooklyn but avoided playing in New York for fear of being discovered by the Hasidic community, had a lead singer who went by Mickey Mohel, and recorded an eight-song cassette tape with titles including "I Sat Shivah" and "Ki Lo Yitosh".
Golem, a New York-based klezmer punk collective, received media coverage in 2005 for performing a Catskills-inspired mock Jewish wedding at the Knitting Factory venue in New York City.
"[36] The Shondes, a New York-based Jewish riot grrl punk band who became known for their feminist and anti-Zionist views, found critical success in 2008 with their debut album The Red Sea.
[38] German-based Yiddishist klezmer punk group Daniel Kahn & the Painted Bird also debuted in 2009 with the album Partisans & Parasites, gaining a following in both Europe and the United States.
Shortly afterward, the all-transgender queercore/folk punk band Schmekel garnered attention with their humorous lyrics (likened to Frank Zappa, Tom Lehrer, and Pansy Division) about the struggles of being a Jewish trans man.
In a more serious vein, the Chabad duo Bulletproof Stockings gained attention for both their alternative rock/post-punk sound and their decision to perform for exclusively female-only audiences in accordance with Orthodox laws of tzniut, including a prominent 2014 show at Arlene's Grocery in Manhattan that was filmed for the Oxygen network.
