Focusing on punk rock's beginnings in New York, this exhaustively researched book is certain to change how we view not only punk music and culture, but the nature of Jewish identity since the Holocaust. It draws on new interviews with more than 125 people--among them Tommy Ramone, Chris Stein (Blondie), Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Group), and Hilly Kristal (CBGB's owner)--to show that punk was the most Jewish of rock movements. This fascinating mixture of biography, cultural studies, and musical analysis begins with Lenny Bruce, "the patron saint of punk," follows the story through pre-punk progenitors such as Lou Reed, Jonathan Richman, Alan Vega (Suicide), and Handsome Dick Manitoba (The Dictators), delves into the lives of Jewish punks Richard Hell and Joey Ramone, and ends with post-punk pioneers such as John Zorn and Marc Ribot. Originally known as New York Rock, punk began in that city because it could begin nowhere else--it was all about outsiders in the shtetl-like East Village, wiseasses with sharp minds and wounded psyches; it reflected the irony, the romanticism, and, above all, the humor of the Jewish experience. And via New York-dwelling Jewish Brit Malcolm McLaren, punk eventually made its way to England and then the world. Ultimately a tale of changing Jewish identity in America, The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGBs reveals the conscious and unconscious forces that drove New York Jewish rockers to remake both themselves and popular music as we know it.