Join Skidmore alums Oren Kroll-Zeldin (Class of 2003, Religious Studies) and Ariella Werden-Greenfield (Class of 2004, Religious Studies) to celebrate the release of This is Your Song Too (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2023), a collection of essays exploring Jewish identity through the band Phish and their diehard fans. As this book shows, Phish is one avenue through which many Jews find cultural and spiritual fulfillment outside the confines 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.

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.

Ariella Werden-Greenfield is the associate director of the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History at Temple University. She also serves as Temple University’s special advisor on antisemitism and chairs the university’s Interfaith Council. Ariella is co-editor, with Oren Kroll-Zeldin, of This Is Your Song Too: Phish and Contemporary Jewish Identity.

https://www.skidmore.edu/perlow/

Sponsored by the Office of Special Programs, the Religious Studies Department, and the Music Department.  Funding is provided by endowments established by Jacob Perlow and by Beatrice Troupin.

About the Jacob Perlow Series: A generous grant from the estate of Jacob Perlow - an immigrant to the United States in the 1920s, a successful business man deeply interested in religion and philosophy, and a man who was committed to furthering Jewish education - supports annual lectures and presentations to the College and Capital District community on issues broadly related to Jews and Judaism. Additional funding was provided by a bequest from Mrs. Beatrice Perlman Troupin.