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Thirty years after Woodstock and four years after the demise of the Grateful Dead, a generation of neo-hippies has turned to Phish to keep the torch of peace and love aflame. Here in upstate New York, 70,000 are expected for three days of concerts and camping.

Amid the growing swell of dreadlocks and Birkenstocks, a small group faces east toward Jerusalem, bows forward in prayer and commences Friday night Sabbath services. Wearing a long, black satin jacket that looks like a robe and a large black hat, Rabbi Shmuel Skaist leads the prayers. Tall, lanky and stoic, he doesn't use a prayer book. The rest of his group, who number six and call themselves Gefiltefish, help me and a few stragglers by pointing to English translations of the Hebrew prayers everyone else is singing.

Above us, an Israeli flag with inverted colors hangs from a pole attached to Gefiltefish's luxurious 37-foot motor home. The Gefiltefish crew rented it two weeks ago in New York after flying in from Jerusalem. From New York they drove to Atlanta for the first Phish show of the summer tour to begin a form of Keruv, or Jewish outreach. It's a highly unorthodox approach to one of Orthodox Judaism's most deeply revered practices. In their attempt to raise money for their project, Gefiltefish organizers Skaist and Victor Hyman had claimed that upward of 30 percent of the kids on the Phish lot are Jewish. But even with that estimate, the two organizers were turned down several times. They were told that a Phish tour wasn't an appropriate place for Orthodox Jews and that their presence would lend tacit approval to the tour's hedonistic practices. Pleasures everyone in Gefiltefish is keenly aware of: Collectively, they have seen more than 100 shows between them.

Still, the two organizers managed to raise about $40,000 from Hyman's wealthy relatives, who control a Jewish philanthropic organization, and from a private benefactor who is underwriting the bulk of the expenses but who prefers not to be identified because of the radical nature of the Gefiltefish idea: in the words of Rabbi Skaist, "to demonstrate that Judaism is viable in any situation and under any circumstance."

A man of his word, the rabbi tilts his head to the heavens while gawkers stand in a crescent at the periphery of the campsite, dumbfounded by the prayers. Some snap pictures. Others trickle in to join the services. The men stand apart from the women. I decide to join in. We start humming to ourselves, but soon we're singing out loud. The men join hands, as do the women, and form circles that spin in dance. Faces beam. I feel like I'm taking part of some kind of Dionysian revelry. "Shabbos! Shabbos!" we yell out in song, arms reaching for the heavens with the passion of teenyboppers at a Spice Girls concert.

It's a strange juxtaposition of celebrations. Religious law holds that on the Sabbath Jews are forbidden to light a fire. Meanwhile, roman candles explode above us every few seconds. On the opposite side of the Gefiltefish RV, over where the drug dealers duck in to make their deals, a shirtless, buff man twirls two strings with fireballs at their ends, his body and arms swaying to the rhythm of a drum circle beside him. And people look at us like we're weird.

Next page | They took off their clothes and ate mushrooms. He felt the presence of God