Yoni Z

Yonatan Zigelboum (born November 4, 1991), known by his stage name Yoni Z, is an American Hasidic pop singer. He has released two albums and several music videos. His songs mix Western pop and Mizrahi music.

Early life

Zigelboum was born on November 4, 1991 in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City. He also has family members who survived the Holocaust. He attended yeshiva at the United Lubavitch Yeshiva of Crown Heights and then Yeshiva of Lubavitch in Monsey, New York.

At age fifteen, his rosh yeshiva reportedly told him that he was not suited for yeshiva. He left and tried working with video editing and working at a museum, and studied psychology at Touro College.

As a child he had stage fright. He started singing Haredi music at weddings after his first successful wedding in Toronto, Canada in August 2007. For two years, he performed every night exclusively in Crown Heights in order to gain experience. After people struggled to pronounce his surname, he adopted the stage name Yoni Z.

In October 2018, Zigelboum was chosen as Israel's Kikar HaShabbat's Best New Artist of the Year and Music Video of the Year for the Israeli video "UP". He has performed singing the national anthem at a Miami Heat game in 2014, a Brooklyn Jewish Heritage Night performance hosted by the Brooklyn Nets in December 2015, and a Miami Heat Jewish Heritage Night half-time concert in December 2016. He also performed at a Passover program in Montego Bay, Jamaica, in 2018.

Music videos Zigelboum has released several lavish music videos, including several prior to his debut album. In August 2018, Yoni released the music video "Kadima", setting a record for the number of music videos released from one Jewish music album. The video for "Ma Naaseh" was shot in the snow in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania, and he video of "Kadima" was filmed in the Eilat Mountains in Israel. The animated video for "UP", created by a team of fifteen people, uses a child-friendly approach to convey its message. His music video for "Hallelukah" was fimed in Ukraine and shows various types of people dancing at a silent disco, and was the first Jewish music video to show women prominently. They got married on April 27, 2025, in Brooklyn, New York, and had a daughter in March 2025. he lives in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York.