He smoked pot daily for about six years, he said, and became addicted to heroin.

Along the way, he made sponsored trips to Israel, first through Taglit-Birthright Israel, then through Young Judaea, a Zionist youth group. By the time of the second trip, he was mostly off drugs and curious. In Torah studies he found something that hit him as hard as punk rock.

“One day I hadn’t believed in God at all, and the next day it was like, boom, I had this intense spiritual awakening,” he said. “So O.K., I got to change a few things. Like, duh.” He ended his relationship of three years with a non-Jewish woman and came up with an idea for a band that combined his passions. “Punks scream oi, Jews scream oy,” he said. “In Yiddish it’s oy vey, oy this; in punk rock it’s oi, oi, oi. I saw it as a common ground for punks and Jews.”

Though there have been many Jewish punk rockers, and subgenres of punk are dedicated to overtly religious Christian, Islamic and Krishna-core messages, the band remains a scene of one.

Through their own label, Shabasa Records, they have put out two albums, but shows — whether at clubs or synagogues — are infrequent, and the musicians have other obligations. Mr. Alpert, the drummer, got married and moved to Brooklyn; the bass player, Mitchell Mordechai Harrison, moved to the Bronx and became a father. Even at Chulent the band has not always felt welcome.

“The first time we played there, we got kicked out,” Mr. Romanoff, now a soft-spoken father of two, said. “As open as Chulent was, and it is, they were not so open to Moshiach Oi!”

For women, expressiveness is even more circumscribed. Ms. Droz, a musical theater major who converted to Orthodoxy during college, gave up the stage for her faith. Doctrine prohibited a woman from singing in front of men, or dancing in a way that called attention to her body; performing on Fridays was out of the question.