Behind the Headlines: for Jewish Deadheads, It’s a Long, Strange Trip

It’s spiritual, it’s lyrical and Jews come from all over to be a part of it; No, it’s not a synagogue service: it’s the Grateful Dead.

After 30 years on the road, the 1960s rock group continues to be a magnet for Jews and others searching for spiritual meaning.

For these “Deadheads” — devotees of the band who leave behind kids, jobs, spouses and even synagogues to go “on tour” — it is natural to cast the experience in biblical terms.

“I wouldn’t say that going to a Dead show is the closest thing we have to experiencing matan Torah (the giving of the Torah), but yeah, there are aspects of that,” explained Dovid, who spent six years in an Israeli yeshiva and nearly a decade in pursuit of the Dead.

A mile out of Manhattan and on the road to the band’s show in Vermont earlier this month, Dovid, who asked that his last name not be used, has just turned down the music to hear tefilat haderech, the Jewish traveler’s prayer.

Dovid — an office manager — compared the concert experience to the biblical verse in which the Jewish people saw, rather than heard, a voice coming from Mount Sinai.

“A Deadhead will not say he ‘heard a concert.’ He will say he ‘saw a show.’ It’s the same imagery, the same language. I don’t take these things for granted,” he said.

In the backseat of the car is Susie Marcus, mother of three with a doctorate in statistics and an electric tie-dyed T-shirt. She said that following the Grateful Dead to concerts around the country is a religious experience.

“Just the way in the Torah the Jews all got together at the Temple, we all get together at the shows,” said Marcus, who has been following the Dead since the 1970’s and now averages 18 shows per year.

Some people have tried to take advantage of the link.

‘AN IMMEDIATE BOND’

Stuart Wax — professional music manager, observant Jew and Deadhead for the past eight years — uses his Grateful Dead connection to bring unaffiliated Jews into the fold.

“When a Deadhead meets another Deadhead it’s an immediate bond. It’s easy when someone has that bond to say ‘come for Shabbos,’ ” said Wax, who regularly hosts Deadheads for chasidic-style Shabbat dinners at his Los Angeles home.

When the Dead play San Francisco, Deadheads can get tickets for Sunday night shows by coming to a “Grateful Yid Shabbos” at the local Chabad House, the outreach office of the Lubavitch chasidic sect.

Rabbi Yosef Langer, executive director of Chabad of San Francisco, said chasidic philosophy and Deadheads are a natural match.

“The people that are attracted to the Dead are looking for spirituality,” said Langer. “So when you give them something from their own background that’s not stiff and has spirit and drink and food, it connects them.

“We’re just making Judaism fun,” said Langer, “breaking down people’s stereotypes with a smile, a lavish table and an open door.”

Before Rosh Hashanah one year, Langer took a shofar and 10,000 donated apples with honey to a concert, encouraging passing Jews to put on tefillin and inviting people to visit Chabad.

“Since people don’t go to shuls today, we go to the people,” said Langer, who has plans to host a Grateful Yid dinner at the Woodstock ’94 music festival in August.

He will also hand out “Grateful Yid” T-shirts featuring a Chasid coming out of a grave, with the Hebrew caption “techiat hametim,” a pun on the biblical expression for the messianic rising of the dead.

Langer said that the late Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, knew of his outreach work with Deadheads and gave it his blessing.

“The Deadheads think of themselves as a big family; this idea of roots is already there,” said Langer. “All you have to do is show how to do it from a Jewish perspective.

“The approach to Chabad chasidus is ‘just a little light,’ ” said Langer, quoting from a Grateful Dead song.

Many Jewish Deadheads are quick to point out the similarities to religious Judaism, comparing the traveling of Deadheads from show to show to the historical wandering of the Jews from nation to nation.

‘TOURHEADS OF THE TORAH’

Steve Silberman, co-author of the soon-to-be-released book, “Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads,” likened the touring Deadheads to Talmud students in turn-of-the-century Russia, who would travel from town to town to hear the teachings of different rabbis.

“They were the tourheads of the Torah,” Silberman explained.

For Bruce, a New York social worker who long ago abandoned his Orthodox upbringing, the Grateful Dead experience is a stand-in for the spirituality he could not find in the Jewish world.

“It sort of accomplishes what I had hoped Judaism would accomplish,” said Bruce, who said he often runs into old yeshiva buddies at shows.

The band itself acknowledges the influence of Jewish music and thought, including Kabbalah and klezmer, among other religious traditions.

Publicist Dennis McNally said there are religious aspects to the band’s elaborate improvisational style. “They are psychically open when they’re playing,” he explained, “using the music as a vehicle to get to a transcendent state.”

McNally said the band has always had a disproportionately large Jewish following, possibly because one of its first East Coast shows was on Long Island, which has a large Jewish population.

Although drummer Mickey Hart is the only band member who is Jewish, the group holds a Passover seder backstage each spring.

Hart’s religiosity — at least among observant Deadheads — is the subject of much ritual lore.

Many claim that the shows around Passover and Rosh Hashanah are in the New York area so that Mickey can be with his mother for the holidays.

Spokesman McNally denied the report.

“That’s a folk tale,” he said.