No doubt about it, we Jews do festivals well. Purim, Pesach, Shavuot, Rosh, YK, etc: we smash ’em all. Making my way with the family to our first music festival, I wondered if any of those festival hacks might be applied to their irreligious counterpart.
First up, security. At musical festivals you queue at the entrance, show your ticket to get checked in and are then searched for drugs and other prohibited items. Slightly easier than getting into shul, then.
However, it turns out that you don’t have to personally thank every single security guard for their good work, and grassing up all the dodgy people you’ve noticed is frowned upon by the other festival goers. It’s also unlikely you’ll bump into the Solomons in the queue and have a nice catch-up. Underneath your yarmulke remains the best place to hide drugs, though.
Next step, putting up your tent. Compared to building a succah, it’s an absolute doddle. However, there’s still the same screaming of instructions at the kids until you banish them, accepting that it’s just easier to do it all yourself. And actually, a leafy roof would’ve probably offered better protection from the clouds than our tent did. Then again, I’d never buy a succah from Aldi.
Depending of the size of your synagogue and your music festival, you now have a choice: who are you going to watch? Your natural inclination might be to head to the main stage/bima, but that can be a mistake: there’s the stress of pushing to the front; the kids can’t see anything; the people behind get annoyed when you put them on your shoulders, and your offspring aren’t familiar with the songs and get bored and ruin it as you try and sing along to them. And all this happens without your knowing if the headliner/rabbi is going to do some new material, or stick to their tried and tested bangers.
For all these reasons I sometimes suggest the children’s area/services instead. The kids can run about while volunteers do their best to engage with them, and you’re passed out in the corner. Mobile phone use is of course discouraged for all teens, but the bonus of a music festival is that once their battery is depleted they can’t recharge it. This means you might even get to see their face and be reminded what their voice sounds like.
Toilets. Here, the Jewish festival wins out, of course. It’d have to be a particularly rumbustious Purim to top the devastation I witnessed in the portaloos.
Meanwhile, my wife insisted on paying extra to camp in an area with an organic toilet. An organic toilet being, essentially, a raised platform with a hole where you’re provided with sawdust instead of a flush. It may be good for the environment, but it wasn’t good for my constipation. So on the basis that no one used them and they therefore remained pristine, I’ll recommend them to the synagogue sustainability committee. Maybe they can get some installed in time for Yom Kippur.
Speaking of which, food prices are so extortionate at music festivals it actually makes fasting easier. Same too with not brushing your teeth or indeed washing, what with the tap being a ten-minute muddy schlep away.
Side note: wellies are halachically acceptable in either festival. Ditto fancy dress as long as it’s the Purim spiel. Any excuse to get more usage out of your Power Rangers costume.
Drawn as we are to what we know, I ended up spending most of my time in the so-called spoken word marquee. Partly because it was the only place I could find with a functioning roof, and partly because sessions like ‘A History of the Lung’ and ‘How a Nail changed the World’ reminded me of Limmud.
For those unfamiliar with Limmud, well, it’s exactly like a summer music festival: debauched revelry, with a bit of focus on Jewish learning. Plus, it’s at Christmas. But if you’ve ever been to Latitude you’ll know what to expect: everyone’s pretty pleased with themselves for attending. I have performed at both festivals, but I’ll leave it to you to guess which one saw an elderly lady come in late, slowly make her way to the front through the entire audience, and then complain about being given wrong directions. And then spend ten minutes walking out again.
So, if Jewish festivals aren’t quite doing it for you, do give their musical cousins a go. Having emerged sodden and exhausted after three days, I can definitively state they’re the next step up in suffering.
