Jews

Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News

Woodstock In Print

This past \veek marked the 40th
anniversary of the Woodstock music
festival (Aug. 15-17, 1969). Just out
are two new books centering on Max
Yasgur (1919-1973), whose dairy
farm became the festival site.
Max S. Yasgur: The Woodstock
Festival's Famous Farmer is a biog-
raphy by Max's son, Sam Yasgur,
67. Sam told me his father's large
dairy farm was in
the mostly non-
Jewish, histori-
cally anti-Semitic
western part of
Sullivan County.
The famous
Jewish Catskills
"Borscht Belt"
Max Yasgur
resorts and most
Jewish dairy farmers were located
on the other side of the county.
Sam says that after his father
rented out his farm, he got wind of
a town zoning board maneuver to
ban the festival at the last minute.
He confronted the board members,
saying at the end of his speech:
"What are you planning to do next?

reeding into negative stereotypes.
"Honestly. I knew that Beth was
Jewish and her family is Jewish, in
terms of the outline, in terms of mak-
ing up the story, long before there was a
legal issue in the story:Mayer explains.
"I guess once there was a legal issue in
the story, I didn't really want to bring
those things too close together."
A slightly shy fellow in his mid-50s
who picks his words carefully. Mayer
allows that he may have inherited his
artistic inclinations from his mother, an
actress with the USO who entertained
the troops in Italy and Germany during
World War II.
"I got very ambivalent signals from
her about that Mayer says."She said
that theater was a dog's life and I should
stay away from it, and also that it was
the only thing worth doing. So I was
confused, essentially, until I went to col-
lege and got involved."
Mayer confides that his mother, whose
maiden name was Helen Wren, worked
undercover for the Haganah (the under-
ground army of volunteers and civilians
formed to protect Jews living in Palestine
before it was the State of Israel), first
while she was still in the USO and after

Are you going to try to throw me
out of town because I am a Jew?'"
Max Yasgur's cousin Abigail
Yasgur has just written an illustrat-
ed children's book, Max Says Yes.
It is a charming account of the fes-
tival (no sex or drugs in the book),
and the title is accurate; Max said
"yes," and Woodstock happened.

Musical Jews

I've confirmed that
some 20 Jewish
musicians played
at Woodstock. (For
a complete list,
e-mail me at mid-
dleoftheroad1aol,
Jorma
com.)
Kaukonen
By coincidence,
four of these musicians had virtually
the same ethnic/religious/politi-
cal background — Jewish mothers,
non-Jewish fathers, raised culturally
Jewish but almost secular, politically
left parents: Arlo Guthrie, Country
Joe McDonald and Barry Melton of
Country Joe and the Fish and Jorma
Kaukonen of the Jefferson Airplane,
All identify as Jewish today.

Contact Nate Bloom at
middleoftheroadl:_i'aol.com.

the war when her cover was correspon-
dent for the New York Star.
She took a boatload of mostly illegal
Jews from Genoa to Haifa and eventual-
ly was arrested and held by the British.
When she returned to the U.S., she
wrote The Buried Are Screaming (1948),
whose purpose was to raise money for
the State of Israel.
"She wrote about her experiences Ln
Europe, but she couldn't write about any-
thing that was secret, so it's less interest-
ing than it could be: Mayer says.Waren
also wrote Out of the Dust (1952). a novel
about a kibbutz in the desert.
Mayer has his own connection with
Israel, forged when he was 13. At the
Western \Vali with his parents, he met a
Chasidic boy who was horrified to learn
that Max hadn't been a bar mitzvah.
"He wrapped me up [in tefillin
and very seriously had me go over the
prayers after hLrn, correcting me at
essentially every word:Mayer recalls.
"So in some spiritual sense. I was [a bar
mitzvah' at the We st ern Wail,-

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