During the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, nearly 100,000 people descended on Indio, a scorching desert town 23 miles east of Palm Springs. The annual event, which ran for two three-day weekends earlier this month, has become the world’s highest-grossing music festival.
For most normal humans, the festivities double as an extreme endurance test. Temperatures regularly creep toward 100 degrees during the day — without the added heat from large dancing crowds — and the music blasts for 12 hours, starting at around 11 a.m.
Just outside the main concert grounds, where thousands of people slept in tents, festivalgoers found respite in the Shabbat Tent — described by its leader as an “oasis of hospitality in the crazy festival environment.”
“It’s a little bit like the Jewish people in the desert,” said Shabbat Tent Director Rabbi Yonah Bookstein. “I think putting up a tent and welcoming people is in our DNA.”
The Shabbat Tent, now in its third year at Coachella, is exactly what it sounds like. Under Bookstein’s direction, 10 or so volunteers (all in their 20s) helped run a Shabbat service and dinner on the Friday nights before the main acts hit the stage (this year’s Friday headliners included rock groups Tame Impala and AC/DC). On the Saturdays, the tent held 11 a.m. services followed by lunch. Jews from all over the world, of all denominations (and presumably varying levels of sobriety) stopped in to hang out, meet new friends or just snack on some challah. After the music ended on Saturday night, the tent hosted an open jam session.
Bookstein, 45, is the rabbi of the newly formed Pico Shul in Los Angeles and is the rabbi-in-residence at the University of Southern California Hillel. He runs a Shabbat Tent at various festivals with his wife, Rachel, and tries to see a few of the musical acts, but he usually gets caught up in the tent’s activities and social atmosphere.
“People are coming in and out all day and all night,” Bookstein said. “Maybe at 3 a.m. there’s no one there.”
As an organization, Shabbat Tent has existed since 2000. But since Bookstein took over five years ago, the venture has broadened its scope, setting up shop in as many as seven festivals per year. Among others, Shabbat Tent has visited the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee; the High Sierra Music Festival in Quincy, east of Chico; and the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
Musicians and artists often join in the services. Bookstein credits Matisyahu’s visits to the Shabbat Tent at festivals like Bonnaroo and Florida’s Langerado Music Festival for boosting the organization’s profile.
The premise has been such a success that Bookstein is working to develop a Shabbat Tent app, which would keep users informed about the organization’s events and help Jews at festivals without a Shabbat Tent create one on their own.
At Coachella two years ago, Bookstein said a young woman with tattoos and dreadlocks asked him about the tent as the festival was winding up on Sunday. “She said, ‘If I had known that being Jewish was this cool, I never would have left after my bat mitzvah,’ ” Bookstein recalled.