Original article published in the Chabad

Thousands attend Shoreline Jewish Festival in Guilford Green, including Gov. Ned Lamont and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal

GUILFORD, Conn.—The green at the center of this quaint town on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound was once again bustling with Jewish life this week, bringing together the Jewish and general communities for five hours of Jewish music, crafts, storytelling, kosher food, Judaica and camaraderie—all on a picture-perfect midsummer Sunday sporting blue skies and low humidity.

The mother-daughter team of Sharon and Liat Feller were two of the many artisans displaying their crafts, including handmade jewelry and custom crayon party sets, at the Shoreline Jewish Festival. “We’re attracted to the Yiddishkeit of the festival and to the musicians,” says Sharon Feller. “We are fans of Greg Wall, who played at Liat’s wedding, and we are involved in Chabad in our town,” she tells Chabad.org.

Other booths displayed challah boards, jewelry, honey jars, mezuzah covers and Jewish books.

Elon Boms’s two daughters, Arden, 9, and Slater, 11, enjoyed decorating kippahs. Elon offers, “We live locally and came to support Chabad. We love the crafts and the Jewish music.”

Other arts-and-crafts projects for children included Jewish foil art, Jewish scratch art, designing a Jewish puzzle, beeswax Shabbat candles, Shema picture frames, challah covers and Jewish name bracelets.

Many also came to enjoy a wide range of kosher foods prepared fresh at the festival, now in its 16th year under the auspices of Rabbi Yossi and Rochel Baila Yaffe, co-directors of Chabad-Lubavitch of the Shoreline. Dr. Peter Rogol of New Haven, a longtime volunteer with the Chabad center reports that “the food tent was busy,” but notes “the people are very nice and understanding.”

Rogol says that knishes were the best seller, though he had heard “the shawarma was very good. People came with good appetites.” Other menu offerings included Roni’s donuts, pulled beef, hot dogs and hamburgers, falafel and beverages.

A Perfect Spot for a Festival

Like the greens in most quaint New England towns, the Guilford Green is the heart of the community. In the case of Guilford, it has served this role for four centuries. The 16-acre Green was established shortly after the community’s founding in 1639. It served as a pasture for livestock, and provided firewood and construction materials for homes and businesses, and became the center of religion, education and governance, and later a marketplace. Over time, the Green continued its evolution to become a beautiful recreational and gathering space—with lights, sidewalks, flagpoles and benches. Local high school graduations take place here, and each fall, the Guilford Fair parade encircles the Green.

And, thanks to the Yaffes, the Shoreline Jewish Festival takes place on the very same Green.

“It started 16 years ago, when we moved from Branford to Guilford,” about nine miles to the east, explains Rabbi Yaffe, aware that Jews and Judaism were an unfamiliar sight in this area. “We wanted to create an open door, large portal, to make connections and to provide a window for non-Jews into the Jewish people and culture, so it would be unfiltered but accessible,” he said.

Residents and visitors alike mark their calendars each year. “People drove from Texas and from Maryland. People don’t want to miss our beautiful festival,” says the rabbi. Others came from throughout Connecticut, including nearby Shoreline towns, New Haven, Fairfield, Hartford, Stamford and East Haddam.

Jewish Music, All Day Long

The music on the large stage was essentially non-stop throughout the festival.

Greg Wall and his “Zion New Wave” band, which included members of two of his well-known projects—Zion80 and Hasidic New Wave— were first up on the main stage. “The Jazz Rabbi” Greg Wall is a saxophonist and composer, and a pioneer of blending jazz with Jewish music. He also serves as a rabbi in Westport, Conn., and performs weekly at a local VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) hall. He completed his set with an upbeat jazzy rendition of “V’Shamru” from the Shabbat liturgy.

Emmy- and Grammy-nominated singer Peter Himmelman, who is also Bob Dylan’s Jewishly observant son-in-law, performed next and slowed things down with his mostly acoustic performance. He kept the crowd engaged with his anecdotes, stories and observations. Himmelman performed solo, then was joined by talented musicians—most having never played with the guitarist before.

The final musical group of the day, Yoni Lorber, was joined on stage by a keyboard player, bassist and drummer. The band was in fine form jamming to the wordless “Tzippi,” which he informed the audience was written by his uncle and mentor, the late Yossi Piamenta, known as “the father of Jewish electric guitar rock-and-roll.”

Connecticut Governor and U.S. Senator Join In

Lorber paused his performance as the several-thousand-person crowd welcomed the arrival of two special guests. “Shalom, Shalom. Thank you for coming! Thank you for all you do for this state,” Rabbi Yaffe exclaimed as he welcomed Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal. They enjoyed comfortably mingling with excited festival-goers and patiently honored requests for photos.

“I come to the festival because the people here are some of the greatest citizens of the State of Connecticut,” Lamont told Chabad.org. He recounted that he recently returned from a productive economic development visit to Israel in February. “We were the first state to go on a mission to Israel after the pandemic,” he reported proudly.

Blumenthal said he was pleased to attend the festival, saying “I come every year. It is a time of joy, pride and inspiration for me as a Jew.”

And he notes the singularity of the event taking place each year: “To be on the Guilford Green … it goes back centuries to a time when people of our faith were not allowed here. It is an amazing thing. That’s what America is all about.”

Original article published in the Relix

Finding Silo Restaurant in Jerusalem‘s First Station, the site of the original 1890’s Jerusalem Railways Station turned entertainment, culture and dining center, is no small feat. But the search for the funky outdoor concert venue just off of a big parking lot–and the wait for the acts to take the stage at the thrice yearly Jerusalem Woodstock Festival–was worth the wait.

The Jerusalem Woodstock Festival, the brainchild of American born addictions counselor, youth and family worker, self-described “creative therapist,” and longtime Jerusalem resident, Tracey Shipley, has been taking place one to five times a year since its inception in 2006.  “I like to create things and I did what I wanted wasn’t available,” reports Shipley, whose target audience seems to be mostly American immigrants to Israel “of a certain age,” many clad in Grateful Dead or tie dyed shirts—and yarmulkes..  Native born Israelis—mainly teens and 20 somethings—were also in attendance, perhaps to catch a glimpse of an era they had only heard about from TV or films.  “I have become a band producer,” adds Shipley, pleased that she has brought bands covering King Krimson, Country Joe and the Fish, Lynyrd Skynrd and Santana to music fans of Israel who don’t often have current stars or even rock legends passing through the Middle East.

The festival, which feels more like a backyard gathering, consists of a makeshift stage, lawn chairs set up on dirt in the restaurant’s courtyard, a single sound guy, and a mini Shakedown Street selling jewelry and sparkles—run by the funkily and modestly dressed wife of the lead guitarist and singer of the Grateful Shefa Band, the Grateful Dead cover band from Safed in the north of Israel.  The long haired, bearded musician, Rabbi Shalom Leibowitz, grew up in a Chabad (Hasidic) family in Boston.

Tracey opened the evening by grabbing the microphone and shouting out “Calling Yonaton, our sound guy,”  She then asked, “Who came to hear music of the 60’s”  The 120 attendees—all wearing colored leis to indicate they had paid the admission fee—responded with cheers and clapping.  Tracey laid out the order of the 7 pm to 11 pm evening:  four warm up bands and three “adult” feature bands.

Shipley’s choice of youth bands—and her commitment to the youth of Jerusalem is impressive.  Shipley founded SoBar, a play on the words “sober bar)–Jerusalem’s first alcohol-free live music club for youth, she regularly puts on cultural programing for Ethiopian Jewish teens, and she founded the Jerusalem School of Rock which now receives support from the municipality of Jerusalem.  The Jerusalem School of Rock affords talented teens in love with rock music to form rock bands, rehears and perform live in Jerusalem, including at the various Woodstock Festivals.

The various combinations of junior performers (who often played in each other’s’ bands) were impressive for both quality and unexpected nature of the songs performed including Dark Side of the Moon, Wild Horses, Castles Made of Sand and Wild Thing. “Who knows Melanie? She’s the bestest” asks and answers Shipley before Shevy and Ora Leah, young singers and guitarist, launched in to a beautiful rendition of “Look What They’ve Done to My Song, Ma.”

The first of three adult bands of the evening, Wild Thing Band,” played familiar songs like Dead Flowers, Midnight Hour, and Jonny B Goode.  The large group of mostly older musicians were decent but might have opted to play way fewer songs—especially with Shlomo Mizrachi, the Jimi Hendrix of the Middle East and Grateful Shefa Band still to come.

When Shipley immigrated to Israel and started organizing the Woodstock Festival, she had never even heard of the legendary in-these-parts, Mizrahi.  Mizrahi, 73, was a member of the Habama Hahashmalit (The Electric Stage) rock band in Jerusalem when the actual Woodstock Festival was taking place in 1969.    Once Shipley learned of Mizrahi’s unusual guitar playing talents, she immediately included him in Woodstock.  He played expected Hendrix classics like All Along the Watchtower, Little Wing, Foxy Lady, Castles Made of Sand and Red House to perfection.  Hearing a few riffs of The Star Spangled Banner during his set was a welcome surprise.  Playing the entire Hatikvah, Israel’s National Anthem Hendrix-electric style was shocking and wonderful.

Shipley always closes her shows with a Grateful Dead cover band.  “By the end of my shows, people are always dancing!” she reports.  Grateful Shefa didn’t disappoint—and fans seemed to enjoy I Know You Rider, Shakedown Street, Morning Dew, Franklin’s Tower and Fire on the Mountain—even with the occasional sprinkling of Jewish religious references and Hebrew phrases within the well-known Dead lyrics.  As an example, in Fire, Lebowitz adds, “We’ve got geulah (redemption or deliverance) b’chol dor vah dor (Hebew or “in every generation”).

While Shipley’s Jerusalem Woodstock will never be half a million strong—like the slightly better known upstate New York festival–she will consistently attract up to a couple of hundred loyal music fans at her several times a year music festivals, she will consistently break even or turn a profit, and perhaps most importantly, she will feel great knowing she is keeping an important era and genre of music alive in a place 6,000 miles and 60 years from where it was born.