A Festival Torah to Go

JConnectLA, a grass-roots organization that holds events for Jewish students and young professionals, has launched the Festival Torah Project.

The project aims to raise $50,000 to $60,000 for the purchase of a Torah that can be brought to the country’s biggest music festivals, like Coachella and Langerado, where JConnectLA hosts Shabbat services in a tent for festival-goers.

“People are used to buying a Torah for a stationary place, [like] a temple or synagogue,” said Rabbi Yonah Bookstein, director of JConnectLA. “But we live in a world where people are moving — especially young people — and not fixed in a specific location. This Torah will be equipped to travel.”

JConnectLA announced the Festival Torah Project during the week of Yom HaShoah, the holiday for Holocaust remembrance. Donors have been dedicating parashahs and books that will appear in the festival Torah to deceased family members or loved ones who perished during the Holocaust.

In addition to a high-quality Torah, JConnectLA hopes to purchase accessories that reflect the artistic and alternative nature of the organization, such as a tie-dyed mantel, and the ark will be a “custom, weather- proof travel case,” Bookstein said, made by people who build cases for transporting musical instruments.

It was a random festival-goer who participated in JConnectLA’s Shabbat tent during a Phish festival last October who suggested the idea for the festival Torah, Bookstein said. Noting a worn miniature Torah that JConnectLA had borrowed and brought along, the festival-goer suggested to Bookstein that JConnectLA purchase its own Torah.

“We want this Torah to be such a spiritual creation that it will be an inspiration to just be around,” Bookstein said.