We're independent, just like you.
“A lot can get done with a dance party. If you watch movies from the 80s, how did everyone save the community center? With a dance party!” DJ Lil Ray is the bat mitzvah DJ you wish you’d had. She’s cool, young, and she knows what you want to hear…and plays it. Top 40 and [...]
DeLeon, Girls In Trouble, Moshav & More @ PunkTorah.org
I met Russell Gottschalk at the Limmud Southeast Festival last year. One of the few indie dudes at the family fun fest, I was instantly impressed by his love of the Jewish people, his taste in music, and the fact that I had a wing-man to help me with the ladies that weekend. Russell told [...]
“You should post this.” A single line email with a YouTube link from our friend and PunkTorah contributor Heshy Friend (of the infamous FrumSatire.net) is not something you want to pass up. The video is called “Get” and the band is The Groggers. A post-emo, indie-punk song about the orthodox community and divorce fills my [...]
OK fine, I broke Shabbat to go see robots sing cover songs by Journey and Rick James. Got a problem with that? For what it’s worth, I also davened (prayed) with the Atlanta Chevre Minyan, a pretty cool group of independent people doing a mixed Orthodox/Progressive service and one of the best oneg pot lucks [...]
By Patrick Aleph I was thrilled when my friend Russell from the Atlanta Jewish Music Festival told me about an Israeli hip hop/reggae group he was helping called Axum (named after the Ethiopian city which folklore says holds the Ark of the Covenant). The duo features two MCs, Tedros (of Ethiopian descent) and Judah, whose [...]
By Matthew Gindin I was recently listening to the punk band Bad Religion’s album Recipe for Hate. The song Skyscraper centers around the metaphor of the tower of Bavel (Babel). I can’t claim to understand the lyrics to the song in toto, but it does seem to use as its central motif the destruction of [...]
When you run a non-profit organization called PunkTorah, it’s fairly easy to get pigeon-holed. I can’t count the number of times that someone has raised their hand in my face, made rocker “devil horns” and said, “yeah, PunkTorah guy” in a Sid Vicious voice. It’s for that reason that people might be surprised that my [...]
