{"id":959355,"date":"2026-07-26T00:21:39","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T00:21:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/959355\/"},"modified":"2026-07-26T00:21:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T00:21:39","slug":"rabbinic-trips-ny-exhibit-blends-groovy-psychedelic-counterculture-jewish-tradition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/959355\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Rabbinic trips\u2019: NY exhibit blends groovy psychedelic counterculture, Jewish tradition"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 In August 1969, as hundreds of thousands flocked to the Woodstock music festival, a New York City rabbi drove to the site, hoping to engage with Jewish hippies.<\/p>\n

At the festival, the rabbi set up a sign advertising \u201cP.O.T. \u2014 L.S.D.\u201d In small print below, the placard said, \u201cPut on tefillin. Let\u2019s start davening,\u201d referring to phylacteries and Jewish prayer.<\/p>\n

The Jewish visual artist Steve Marcus heard the possibly apocryphal story while studying at yeshiva. The anecdote inspired an illustration by Marcus showing a grinning man, sporting a Star of David and sidelocks and flashing a peace sign, reflecting Marcus\u2019s mix of psychedelic-era counterculture and Jewish tradition.<\/p>\n

The image is part of a trippy new exhibit<\/a> in New York City by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Center for Jewish History. The exhibit, called \u201cPsychedelicatessen: A Powerful Dose of Art by Steve Marcus,\u201d blends 1960s and 1970s counterculture with Jewish themes, based in Marcus\u2019s youthful psychedelic bent and midlife turn toward Jewish observance.<\/p>\n

The free show at YIVO and the Center for Jewish History\u2019s shared building in downtown Manhattan opened this month and runs through December. The exhibit displays 30 original works by Marcus, from images reminiscent of 1960s psychedelic poster art and album covers to reworked comic strips and caricatures.<\/p>\n

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The playful images include homages to the Daf Yomi daily Talmud study practice, the Slivovitz brandy associated with Ashkenazi Passovers, and historic rabbis like Moses ben Maimon, or Maimonides \u2014 all with a psychedelic flavor.<\/p>\n

An eclectic crowd<\/p>\n

Marcus said he hopes the exhibit will invite visitors of all persuasions to engage not only with the art, but with each other, in line with his own personal experiences.<\/p>\n

He described a recent chance encounter when he was walking in Manhattan\u2019s Lower East Side with a friend, a tattooed MMA fighter, and ran into another friend, an Orthodox rabbi. He introduced the unlikely pair to each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, I\u2019ll hear from my [fighter] friend, \u2018Hey, I just ran into your rabbi.\u2019 And my rabbi will let me know, \u2018Hey, I ran into your friend,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cArt and creativity should bring people together. Global hegemony is terrible \u2014 it\u2019s the differences that make the world a less boring place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tLeft, \u2018Zig-Zag-Ram-Bam,\u2019 referring to Moses ben Maimon, or Maimonides, 2024. Right, \u2018Slivovitz Rising,\u2019 2024. (Steve Marcus)<\/p>\n

In a similar vein, Marcus\u2019s art career has connected him with a range of collaborators, from established museums and rock stars to psychedelic pioneers and subversive poets.<\/p>\n

His hand-drawn works hang in several permanent museum collections, including The Jewish Museum of Florida and The Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History in Vilnius, Lithuania.<\/p>\n

He has created art for and collaborated with the Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg, the counterculture novelist Ken Kesey, who wrote \u201cOne Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest,\u201d and Timothy Leary, a psychologist who helped popularize LSD in the mid-20th century.<\/p>\n

Marcus has also created artwork for The New Orleans Jazz Museum and The Red Hot Chili Peppers.<\/p>\n

A turn toward faith<\/p>\n

Born in 1969, Marcus grew up in a secular home in the Bronx. He attended Hebrew school, but the family wasn\u2019t religious and didn\u2019t keep kosher, he told The Times of Israel during a tour of the exhibit.<\/p>\n

A Grateful Dead fan, Marcus described how, during the summer he turned 19, he hitchhiked and rode buses across the US to Mexico, from Manhattan to the southern tip of Baja California.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\t\u2018Daf Yomi Agin!\u2019 (Steve Marcus)<\/p>\n

\u201cI had many amazing experiences, like getting a ride with a van full of hippies going to see the Grateful Dead at Laguna Seca Raceway in California,\u201d he said of the more than 2,700-mile road trip. \u201cIt was a great place to catch a ride in almost any direction, though I had a few scary experiences. Overall, it was an incredible journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

His approach to Judaism shifted 18 years ago when his father died of a heart attack on Rosh Hashanah.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt rang my bell. I started saying [the mourner\u2019s] kaddish every day, three times a day. I gave my parents a lot of worry when I was growing up and my dad stood up for me, even when no one else did. The least I could do was to say kaddish every day,\u201d he said. \u201cAround five and a half months into it, I felt that I wanted to know more and so I ended up studying at a yeshiva. I\u2019ve been learning ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those experiences came together in artwork like the \u201cP.O.T. \u2014 L.S.D.\u201d illustration, which, at first glance, seems a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Summer of Love. The image shows a bearded man wearing red-tinted glasses, a sizable Star of David, and sandals, sitting cross-legged against a wavy purple and white checkered background.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\t\u2018P.O.T. \u2014 L.S.D.\u2019 (Steve Marcus)<\/p>\n

Marcus heard the story of the Woodstock rabbi at his yeshiva, Mesivtha Tifereth Jerusalem, in Manhattan\u2019s Lower East Side.<\/p>\n

There doesn\u2019t appear to be documentation of the double entendre being used at the Woodstock festival, but at least one member of the Chabad Hasidic movement deployed the phrase during the Vietnam War era.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Nosson Gurary, who manned a Chabad House in Buffalo, New York, used the slogan<\/a> during those years to inspire Jewish students to find Judaism.<\/p>\n

Schmaltz, dancing turtles and rabbinic blotter art<\/p>\n

Other works at the exhibit also made use of wordplay and double meanings.<\/p>\n

One work, \u201cPublic Service Warning,\u201d was inspired by the Jewish artist Lorraine Schneider\u2019s famous 1965 poster, \u201cWar is not healthy for children and other living things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\t\u2018Schmaltz is not healthy for children and other living things.\u2019 (Steve Marcus)<\/p>\n

Marcus\u2019s re-imagined poster, in shades of cotton-candy pink, citrus yellow, and lime green, reads, \u201cSchmaltz is not healthy for children and other living things.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Marcus\u2019s humorous take on the laws of kashrut. Because dairy can\u2019t be used in meat dishes, kosher cooks traditionally used schmaltz, or rendered chicken and goose fat. Yet, as Marcus points out, most doctors would agree that, because schmaltz is high in cholesterol, it\u2019s not heart-healthy.<\/p>\n

One of the most playful mashups in the exhibit is \u201cTerrapin Hora,\u201d referring to a type of turtle and a traditional Jewish dance.<\/p>\n

Marcus\u2019s image shows a Hasidic man dancing with a giant turtle against a kaleidoscope of colors. It\u2019s a nod to \u201cTerrapin Station,\u201d the Grateful Dead\u2019s ninth studio album, which shows two turtles dancing joyfully in front of a train station on its cover.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have been painting Hasidic men dancing for hundreds of years. It\u2019s an iconic image but also not that interesting, and in the thousands of [images of] Hasidic men dancing, this is the only one with a turtle,\u201d Marcus said.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\t\u2018Terrapin Hora.\u2019 (Steve Marcus)<\/p>\n

His series \u201cRabbinic Trips\u201d melds Jewish learning with counterculture, reflecting Marcus\u2019s ceaseless quest to learn more about Judaism.<\/p>\n

During an 18-month trip, Marcus traveled to Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Lithuania, as well as Israel and New York, to visit the graves of revered religious figures.<\/p>\n

Afterward, Marcus used photographs from the sites to create blotter art. The perforated paper is traditionally soaked in LSD and consumed by users as a delivery mechanism.<\/p>\n

While the pieces hanging in the exhibit don\u2019t contain LSD, they do hold a double meaning.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\t\u2018The Chazon Ish Blotter Art.\u2019 (Steve Marcus<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an idea that could only come out of [Marcus\u2019s] brain. It seems contradictory at first, the idea of rabbinic trips and acid trips, but like all his pieces it engages in word play,\u201d Eddy Portnoy, YIVO\u2019s academic adviser and director of exhibitions, said.<\/p>\n

As the exhibit tour wound down, Marcus reflected on how the exhibit doesn\u2019t only braid hippie culture, pop culture, and Jewish culture; it weaves together his own past and present.<\/p>\n

\u201cI look at it like this. Abraham was Avram, but we only call him by his new name. His past was erased. Yaakov\u2019s name was changed to Yisrael and we only call him by his old name,\u201d Marcus said, referring to the biblical figures. \u201cSome people should forget their past. Some people should remember their past. It keeps them rooted. For me, I\u2019m proud of my roots and culture.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 In August 1969, as hundreds of thousands flocked to the Woodstock music festival, a New…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":959356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,1037,349527,28918,164483,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,385811],"class_list":["post-959355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-art","tag-center-for-jewish-history","tag-grateful-dead","tag-jewish-culture","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-yivo-institute-for-jewish-research"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116983425477512250","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=959355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/959356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=959355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=959355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=959355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}