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Writer's pictureThomas Tittmann
Oct 116 min read

Jews for JERRY: A gathering of two wandering tribes...

Updated: Oct 12

Offering these reflections in honor of the High Holy Days...There are many more in the wilderness areas online...So, go wandering and wondering on your own or, share your journeys with a friend...or a whole tribe...




Some appropriate music before we continue...Let's combine honey and horns...


--the Shofar is used to signal the start of Rosh Hashanah and the end of Yom Kippur.




As I wrote, I enjoyed some honey with my afternoon tea...



"There's a Grateful Dead song for every occasion!"


So quips my surfing friend and VW mentor Steve Bermont...

He's always been right...so, here goes...


The secret Jewish history of the Grateful Dead - Forward


The group, led by Jerry Garcia, inspired ‘Jews for Jerry’ and ‘Blues for Challah.’


This "Grate" read (see link at end of the article's excerpts) was authored by Seth Rogovoy - the same guy that penned a biography of Bob Dylan. My sister-in-law Debbie gave it me as a gift. MAZEL TOV!


Excerpts:


For a group with a significant Jewish following, there was never much on the surface that was Jewish about The Grateful Dead. Over the course of the band’s 30-year existence from 1965 to 1995, at least a dozen musicians held positions in the band, but only one member, drummer/percussionist Hart, was Jewish. Born Michael Steven Hartman on September 11, 1943, in Brooklyn, and raised in the heavily Jewish Five Towns area of Long Island, Hart is best known for bringing non-Western rhythms and time signatures to the band from Asia, Africa and Latin America, but these never included any Jewish nuances.


Still, Jews were, and to this day remain, a visible presence among the fanatical followers of the Dead, who are known as Deadheads. In the tent villages that popped up around arenas and stadiums wherever the band was playing, there was often a contingent of “Jews for Jerry”...


...integrating their own version of Jewish practice with the rituals of Deadheadism, including wandering around, following their Moses-like leaders to an unknown destination, often in search of a “miracle” in the form of a concert ticket or manna from heaven — a decent meal.



Today, “Jews for Jerry” lives on as a Facebook group and has given birth to annual events such as “Blues for Challah” at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in the Berkshires, an ingathering exploring whatever Jewish influences participants can find in the music and culture surrounding the Dead. (Full disclosure: I presented a session at the second “Blues for Challah” retreat, albeit one focused on Bob Dylan, whom the members of the Dead themselves worshipped as a prophet and as a provider of songs). A similar gathering, “Unleavened Dead,” took place at a Jewish summer camp outside St. Louis last summer.


While no one has yet found enough connections between Judaism and The Grateful Dead to make for a full-length book, in the manner in which Jewish-inspired singer-poets including Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan have easily lent themselves, The Grateful Dead have clearly touched something in Jewish fans and scholars to make for a cottage industry of community and speculation.


Even the rabbi of the first Jewish congregation I belonged to as an adult — a Reconstructionist community in Vermont — was fond of working references to The Grateful Dead, from his days following the band, into his Torah lectures whenever possible (much to the annoyance of some of his congregants).


And there are, indeed, a number of touch points to make for a kind of parallel Jewish history of the Dead:


Follow more...at this link:



Kabbalah and the Grateful Dead


I'm drawn to religions' mystical teachings that live in the deserts, wastelands and basements of their traditional beliefs and practices. So, I went looking for a connection between the Jewish mystical tradition known as "KABBALAH" and the Grateful Dead. What I found reminded me of Seth Rogovoy's comments about that Vermont rabbi.


"Is there a link between Kabbalah and the lyrics of the Grateful Dead?

...hear Rabbi Adam Jacobs explaining that link during our last event!"


Wait til you hear which song he picked to make his connection...



“Shalom Aleichem," Jerry


[more from Rogovoy] Mandolinist David Grisman was the closest thing to an unofficial member The Dead ever had. He contributed the signature mandolin part on the studio version of the popular Dead song “Ripple.” Garcia’s lifelong friendship and musical collaboration with Grisman, who played on The Grateful Dead’s “American Beauty” album as well as on duet albums with Garcia, led Grisman — who has also enjoyed a successful duo career playing klezmer with fellow mandolinist Andy Statman — to play “Shalom Aleichem” at Garcia’s funeral.


I was unable to locate that "Shalom Aleichem" but after some wandering...found this duo featuring David and Jerry playing "Ripple" - the very song the rabbi in New York used as he connected the Jewish mystical Kabbalah with the lyrics of the Grateful Dead..



--It was Groundhog Day


Ice Cream Break


[from Rogovoy] As everyone knows, Jewish ice cream makers Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield immortalized Jerry Garcia in the ice-cream flavor Cherry Garcia.



Hmmmm...another Vermont link...Something in the water???


Next stop: the Promised Land...


A modern version of mules and camels...




Moshiach Jerry leading the wanderers...



--on my 29th birthday!


[Rogovoy] One of the greatest Grateful Dead concerts of all time was the Summer Jam at Watkins Glen in upstate New York in 1973, which featured just two other bands besides The Dead — the Allman Brothers Band and The Band. The festival set an all-time record for attendance. The crowd numbered 600,000 —


the same number of attendees at the original rock festival, where Moses gathered his tribe to Mount Sinai to receive the Word of God.


Jews for Jerry





Robert Hunter: Psalmist of the Grateful Dead



(RNS) — Note to Deadheads: There is a hidden link between Robert Hunter and Rosh Hashanah.


Link to full article follows these excerpts...


(RNS) — One of the largest “churches” in America has no building.


Which is perfectly fine – because it has a liturgy; a sacred story; prophets and priests – and a congregation that numbers in the hundreds of thousands.


I am referring to the passionate devotees of a particular classic rock band – those whom we call Deadheads.


The liturgy was the music itself. The invisible liturgy was that sense of being part of a tribe, that sense of being in a community.


If the Dead was a religion, then Hunter was its psalmist.


What “admits” Hunter to this column? Was he Jewish?

For that matter, did Hunter have a religion? Did he have a religious vision?


If there could ever be such a thing as a universal religious vision, it appeared in his lyrics.


And finally, the greatest [of the examples in the article] – IMHO:

“Ripple” (1970).  Check out this international version [see second link below] – it will move you immeasurably, and will testify to its hymn-like qualities. 

Several years ago, I performed a funeral for a young man who died too young.

He was a Deadhead, and his family requested that I include a Dead song.

There was no contest. Here is “Ripple” in full...




Looking into Mitzvah...Mitzvot...


I write because I like to learn. The next article helped me see "mitzvah" as more than a "good deed." What affected me most were the statements about how "mitzvot" (plural) connect us to everyone and everything else.


With these reminders, the writer sends us back into our homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces, as Gandhi said, "to be the change we want to see in the world":


"Additionally, it’s hard to keep up the performance of mitzvot without a renewable source of inspiration. Mitzvot done with joy and enthusiasm lift a person a step above the world and have an enormously greater impact on the person’s environment. Again, the key is study and communal participation."




Jerry & the Grateful Dead Friends & Families are still making RIPPLE's...still practicing Mitzvot...


Those who read my posts know how excited I am about sharing the Playing for Change movement. Besides great...Grate...music, they give back...they perform "MITZVOT"... These including building schools in poorer areas of our shared world, so children can enjoy the benefits of the arts.


This video features musicians from around the world, including these "locals":



Jerry's daughter...









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