Birth name Patrick Beaulier Website rabbipatrick.com Genres Punk rock, Garage rock | Years active 2006–present | |
Also known as Patrick A., Rabbi Patrick Occupation(s) Singer, songwriter, writer, rabbi Albums With The Love Drunks, With Can Can | ||
Patrick Beaulier (born January 4, 1983, Atlanta, Georgia), known professionally as Patrick Aleph, is an American writer, blogger, podcaster, non-denominational rabbi and spiritual leader, educator, and retired punk musician. He has been the lead vocalist for the bands The Love Drunks, Can Can, and Ice Bats. He is also the co-founder and creative director of PunkTorah, a non-profit website and Jewish outreach organization, and its subsidiaries OneShul.org and Darshan Yeshiva, an online synagogue and yeshiva, respectively. He has written for Jewcy, The Atlanta Jewish Times, and The Times of Israel, and hosts the semi-weekly Rabbi Patrick Podcast.
Contents
Early life
Aleph was born in 1983 and grew up in Atlanta. He became religious as a teenager, converting to Judaism through the Reconstructionist movement. He later said that his "decision to become a Jew was about ethical monotheism. God demands of us a righteous life."
Music career
One of Aleph's first bands was The Love Drunks, which released their self-titled debut album through Alive Records in 2006.
In 2007, Aleph formed the punk band Can Can with guitarist Mary Collins and drummer Josh Lamar, whom he met through the local music scene. As the band's songwriter, Aleph incorporated subtle lyrical references to his Jewish faith. The band released two albums, All Hell (2009) and their JDub Records debut Monsters & Healers (2010), before going on hiatus in 2011.
During the hiatus, Aleph and Collins formed a no wave side project called Ice Bats.
PunkTorah
In April 2009, after an unpleasant experience at a synagogue in Atlanta, Aleph began recording his own divrei Torah on the weekly parsha and posting them on YouTube under the name PunkTorah, referring to his background as a punk singer. Following the popularity of the videos, he co-founded PunkTorah with Michael Sabani as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, under which he created PunkTorah.org, a combination blog, multimedia network, and online community aimed at disaffected Jews.
Aleph and Sabani started a fundraising campaign in August 2010 to create OneShul.org, an expansion of the online distance minyanim they had been hosting via PunkTorah. That same year, they founded another PunkTorah subsidiary, NewKosher, through which they published Birkat Hamazon, a bentcher incorporating recipes, essays, and poetry from Jewish writers like Matthue Roth, Leon Adato, and Michael Croland.
Aleph is the founder and rosh yeshiva of Darshan Yeshiva, a virtual school training students for Jewish spiritual leadership. The yeshiva currently includes an online Jewish conversion course.
With The Love Drunks
With Can Can
Songs
In Like a Lion Out Like a LambAll Hell · 2008
All Hell Breaks LooseAll Hell · 2008
WidowmakerAll Hell · 2008