'This is their song too': A look at Phish and their Jewish fans - review

Jewish Phish “phans” are gearing up for their favorite band’s annual Madison Square Garden run in New York City. Perhaps thanks to divine intervention, none of the four shows falls on Shabbat. The home stand starts on Saturday night, December 28, which is the fourth night of Hanukkah. The 7:30 p.m. start time means Shabbat observers will have plenty of time to get to the world-famous concert venue after Shabbat ends at 5:08 p.m.

Observant Jewish fans of the four-member band, which has been touring on and off since forming in Burlington, Vermont, in 1983, have decades of experience navigating complex scenarios that sometimes put seeing their favorite jam band and adherence to Jewish law and tradition at odds.

However, religious fans have done such creative things as erecting an eruv (enclosure) at three-day festivals, which always take place over Shabbat, to enable the carrying of tickets and other possessions. And they have no doubt tackled such questions as the permissibility of seeing shows during the traditionally music-free weeks leading up to Tisha B’Av.

Jews – from the fully observant to the somewhat traditional to the nostalgic – many of whom were first exposed to Phish at Jewish summer camps, have always had a close relationship with the band and with the entire fan experience. Many even look forward to lighting Shabbat candles and making Kiddush before Friday night shows.

This relationship between Phish and their Jewish fans is carefully and somewhat repetitively chronicled in the fun-to-read book This Is Your Song Too: Phish and Contemporary Jewish Identity, edited by Oren Kroll-Zeldin and Ariella Werden-Greenfield, with chapters written, unsurprisingly, by rabbis, cantors, academics, and music writers who, expectedly, are diehard Phish fans.

The book, clearly written for a very narrow audience of Jewish fans – many have seen several hundred shows – details every possible point of connection between Phish and Judaism.

Detailing every possible point of connection between Judaism and Phish

The editors, both of whom are Jewish studies professors and big phans, give credit for the idea for the book to Stephanie Jenkins, organizer of the 2018 Phish Studies Colloquium at the Gorge Amphitheatre in Quincy, Washington, and the 2019 Phish Studies Conference at Oregon State University. I admit to not having known about these scholarly undertakings prior to reading the book. 

Contributors and their intended readers likely know the words to every song in Phish’s extensive catalog, chiming in at the right times with the necessary call and response during songs such as “Wilson” and “Harry Hood.”

They can also tell you how many times the band – which consists of guitarist Trey Anastasio, keyboardist Page McConnell, and two members of the tribe, bassist Mike Gordon and drummer Jon Fishman – has played the classic Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur favorite, “Avinu Malkenu” (according to phish.net, 83 times since 1987, or 4.08% of all Phish shows).

It is fairly safe to say that no other book appearing in English or Hebrew (including the High Holy Days prayer book) contains more references to this traditional prayer. Another unlikely song of interest to Jewish fans, “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav,” has been played only a handful of times, only in 1993 and 1994.

The book sets out to answer one simple question: What is the connection between Phish and Jewish identity? 

In Chapter 1, “From Summer Camp to Summer Tour: Phish and the Cultivation of Jewish Cultural Identity,” Kroll-Zeldin describes his first encounter with Phish at summer camp in 1984. “For many, meaningful Jewish experiences cultivated at camp often extended to the Phish experience... Phish provides an alternative venue to build Jewish community, and a Phish show becomes a site where fans can have meaningful Jewish experiences outside the confines of traditional Jewish life.”

Chapter 2, “Performing Jewish Identity and Community through Phish’s ‘Avenu Malkenu’” by musicologist Jacob Cohen – all 25 pages plus six pages of footnotes – recounts his first Phish show in 1997 at age 16 and is devoted to the song usually performed seasonally by cantors in synagogues.

Other somewhat self-referential chapters, like “Finest in the Nation: The Food of Phish and the Jewish Experience” by food journalist Evan Benn, begins by describing his bar mitzvah trip to Israel in 1995, where he first discovered falafel and tahini. He updates readers on his rediscovery of falafel – along with Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream – at Phish shows.

He movingly writes, “The nostalgia and sense of family and identity that I felt from tasting the familiar flavor of tahini on a falafel as a Jew, a reminder of my bar mitzvah experience in Israel, brought it all together. In that moment in the Phish lot with my falafel sandwich and new friends, I was where I was supposed to be.”

The 240-page book includes 10 full pages of index. The 17 chapters are broken up into Set 1, Set 2, and Encore – familiar terms for live music fans. Set 1 addresses such topics as queerness, race, and cancer with such titles as “Exploring Jewishness and Queerness on Phish’s Dance Floor,” “I’ve Been Wading in the Whitest Sea: Reflections on Race, Judaism, and Phish,” and “Feeling Weightless in the Sea:  Phish and Overcoming Cancer.”

Set 2 is subtitled “God on Tour: Judaism and the Live Phish Experience.” Its six chapters address “Avenu Malkenu” (again), “How Phish Brought America to Shul,” sacred pilgrimages, and more.

Encore consists of interviews with five people – from a religious female super fan to Jewish bassist Mike Gordon.

While the book captures the Phish scene, it only offers a scattered taste of an actual concert. It is a bit “inside baseball,” assuming the reader is familiar with the structure and shtick of a Phish show.

They are entertaining, unpredictable, gag-filled marathons, which may include set lists with hidden themes, covers of songs by other artists, costumes, and possibly the Jewish drummer playing a song on an Electrolux vacuum cleaner. Shows will always feature Fishman wearing the same donut-patterned muumuu he has worn at nearly every show since 1985. 

This Is Your Song Too: Phish and Contemporary Jewish Identity makes for a fun, though somewhat exhausting, read, which I completed over long summer Shabbats. The purple cover with blue and white big print letters also got some attention while sitting on my table at a Manhattan kosher pizza and bagel store. While the book is way longer and more detailed than necessary, the editors have no doubt made their case.

Jews and Phish are inextricably linked. 

• THIS IS YOUR SONG TOO: PHISH AND CONTEMPORARY JEWISH IDENTITY
• Edited by Oren Kroll-Zeldin and Ariella Werden-Greenfield
• Penn State University Press
• 260 pages; $40