Tonic Reducer (The Call for More Jewish Content)

Three boys who grew up in Silver Spring, MD (official birthplace of the YM, Holy Cross Hospital, oddly enough): now an Orthodox Jew, an Orthodox Muslim and younger brother Dave Chappelle. One of them, Rabbi Charlie Buckholtz, is the director of ZooZ which hosts bi-weekly open winebars in the East Village. Next one is this Friday at Grape and Grain, 6th Street between B and C, 9:30pm.

From this week's New Yorker: "Spielerfrau, a highly literate and slightly suave Brooklyn-based pop quintet, is the brainchild of the Russian musician and journalist Michael Idov (he moonlights as a staff writer for New York magazine). Idov's sophisticated and sometimes ironic lyrics take on everything from pheromones to Vladimir Putin's repressive presidency. Their new record, "Do the Stalinistka," features a darkly funny anti-Putin title track that loosely mirrors "The Hokey Pokey" and is generating a good deal of buzz in Russia."

They play tonight at Tonic and with lines like "I want to kick someone in the face / See if it brings back better days" and a G.G. Allin cover, we consider Spielerfrau to be the YM summerhaüs band. Idov is Jewish, of course, and needs grooming.

Nextbook is the Jewish New Yorker. Too much good stuff to single anything out, but their podcasts, features and digests all meet our highest standards - on tippy-toes, no less.