Celebrate the release of the highly anticipated book, This is Your Song Too: Phish and Contemporary Jewish Identity, as co-editors Ariella Werden-Greenfield (Feinstein Center, Temple University) and Oren Kroll Zeldin (University of San Francisco) and Rabbi Eli Freedman (Congregation Rodeph Shalom) take the Weitzman Museum stage for a conversation about the band Phish, their diehard fans, and Jewish identity.

Phish concerts and the community that surrounds the band are avenues through which many American Jews find cultural and spiritual fulfillment outside of traditional and institutional Jewish life. In effect, Phish fandom and the live Phish experience act as a microcosm through which we see American Jewish religious and cultural life manifest in unique and unexpected spaces. 

Browse fun Phish items or purchase copies of the book at the Weitzman Museum Store.

About the Panelists

Ariella Werden-Greenfield is the associate director of the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History at Temple University. She also serves as the university’s special advisor on antisemitism and chair of the interfaith council. She is co-editor, with Oren Kroll Zeldin, of This Is Your Song Too: Phish and Contemporary Jewish Identity (Penn State University Press, 2023).

Oren Kroll-Zeldin is the assistant director of the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice at the University of San Francisco where he is also an assistant professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. He is the author of Unsettled: American Jews and the Movement for Justice in Palestine and the co-editor, with Ariella Werden-Greenfield, of This Is Your Song Too: Phish and Contemporary Jewish Identity.

Rabbi Eli Freedman was ordained at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion after receiving his undergraduate degree from Brandeis University. Prior to joining the clergy team at Congregation Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia, he served as Rabbinic Intern at the NYU Hillel, spent three years of rabbinical school in London and ran the outreach and engagement program at Columbia/Barnard Hillel.

Presented by the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in partnership with the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History and Congregation Rodeph Shalom