The Jewish threads running through Woodstock
From the dairy farmer who hosted it to the four men who built it, Woodstock’s story runs through the Jewish Catskills.
On the second morning of Woodstock, 17-year-old Deborah Fineblum was walking through Bethel, New York, looking for a bus out of town when she spotted a picnic table.
A middle-aged couple had set out peanut butter sandwiches and lemonade, and were letting festival-goers use their kitchen phone to call their parents.
Fineblum, now a journalist based in Israel, was one of an estimated 400,000 to 500,000 people at the festival, which ran from August 15 to 18, 1969.
The land belonged to a Jewish dairy farmer, Max Yasgur, and the festival was organised by four Jewish men: promoter Michael Lang, music executive Artie Kornfeld and financiers Joel Rosenman and John Roberts.
Lang, from Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, had spent his bar mitzvah money on a head shop in Miami. Kornfeld had been named Capitol Records’ first vice president for rock at 21, and has introduced himself as a kohen born on Rosh Hashanah. Roberts was an heir to the Block Drug fortune, the company behind Polident. In another notable Jewish connection, the festival’s poster, a dove perched on a guitar neck, was drawn by Arnold Skolnick.
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