Jewish Woodstock
The Woodstock Music & Art Fair took place in August 1969 in the Catskills, in the town of Bethel, Suffolk County, New York, and near the town of Woodstock. Various Jewish music festivals—in the New York CIty area and elsewhere—have been called a “Jewish Woodstock.” Kinky Friedman, a musician who played in the early 1970s with a band called the Texas Jewboys, suggested a “Jewish Woodstock” as early as 1973.
The Camping Trip, dubbed a “Jewish Woodstock,” took place in Sullivan County in 2015 and 2016.
Wikipedia: Woodstock
The Woodstock Music & Art Fair—informally, the Woodstock Festival or simply Woodstock—was a music festival attracting an audience of over 400,000 people, scheduled over three days on a dairy farm in New York state from August 15 to 17, 1969, but which ran over four days to August 18, 1969.
Billed as “An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music”, it was held at Max Yasgur’s 600-acre (240 ha; 0.94 sq mi) dairy farm in the Catskills near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel. Bethel, in Sullivan County, is 43 miles (69 km) southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, in adjoining Ulster County.
23 September 1973, Austin (TX) American-Statesman, “A Jewish Woodstock?: Jewboys Rib Almost Everyone” by Megan Rosenfeld, pg. G16, col. 4:
Both the Jewish Defense League and the conservative Jewish Welfare Board want Kinky (Friedman—ed.) for lectures and charity concerts, and he says there is talk of a “Jewish Woodstock.”
25 September 1992, Baltimore (MD) Jewish Times, “Renewing Ties At A Jewish Woodstock: For New Age Jews, a summer in the Catskills was an alternative experience in community, and a time of healing” by Shira Dicker, pg. 81:
It is the evening hour at Elat Chayyim, The Woodstock Center For Healing and Renewal in Cuddebackville, N.Y., and about 50 adults, including myself, are sitting in a circle with their eyes closed, passing around athletic equipment and toys in a tactile exercise designed to reconnect us with our childlike sense of openness. There is laughter, moaning, grunting, exclaiming, sighing, talking to one another, talking to no one, drawing inward, crying.
30 September 2005, New York (NY) Jewish Week, “A River Of Tears” by Steven Herschkopf, pg. 36:
As a teen in the late ‘60s, the Jews had mostly washed out. Tashlich almost cost me my life. I dawdled too long at the river past dark one year and was chased several blocks by a local gang. That couldn’t be what [Miriam] meant.
It was worth it. Thousands of young Jews from Forest Hills and Kew Gardens Hills would assemble there, literally closing down the roads. We called it “The Jewish Woodstock.”
Jewish Link of New Jersey
The Camping Trip: A Jewish Woodstock
By JLNJ Staff | September 03, 2015
The month is August. A private field in Sullivan County. A music festival, throngs of young people camping out for the weekend, sharing their experience, combining nature with music.
No, it’s not Woodstock and it’s not 1969. Instead of The Who playing to the fans, it’s Pigeons Playing Ping Pong getting the audience tuned in. Rather than CSNY, Zusha is inspiring the campers.
The Times of Israel
‘Jewish Woodstock’ stokes spiritual sparks at NY-area music festival
Without electricity or the perpetual city buzz, young Jews experience a rustic Shabbat at the Camping Trip and other summer retreats
BY MADISON MARGOLIN August 31, 2016, 10:25 pm
JEFFERSONVILLE, New York — On a balmy Friday afternoon in August, hundreds of festival goers descended upon 68 acres of lush green landscape in Jeffersonville, New York. Covered with wooded thickets, wide open fields, and creeks bubbling over slippery, moss-covered rocks, this quaint corner of the Catskills soon became kosher for Shabbat.
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They’re here for the Camping Trip, a shomer-Shabbat-friendly festival nicknamed the “Jewish Woodstock.”