I am a fair-weather sports fan. If the 49ers, Warriors, or Giants are in the playoffs, I’ll watch some games on TV—but while I enjoy watching sports, I really don’t have the time beyond that. I kind of feel like a fair-weather Jew, too. I was Bar-Mitzvah’d, I spent many High Holidays at Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco, we always held Passover Seders, and of course lit Hanukkah candles and danced the hora. But I also skipped many Jewish moments for other cultural pursuits: I saw the Grateful Dead on Passover (March 31, 1980) and skipped the Seder, to the chagrin of my parents. I photographed a Neil Young concert on Rosh Hashanah on September 15, 2004 at the Berkeley Community Theatre, and joked with Neil’s Jewish manager that we were being bad Jews. I did one of my favorite portraits of Allen Ginsberg on Yom Kippur on September 15, 1994 at my Clementina Street studio. When I mentioned to him what day it was, in his very soft-spoken manner, he said he could take care of it, and even though I expected Allen Ginsberg—the author of “Howl”—to have a powerful voice, he mumbled a Buddhist prayer very quietly. Then he said, “We are all good now in a Buddhist-Jewish kind of way.” My kind of Yom Kippur!
 

Jay Blakesberg, Allen Ginsberg, San Francisco, California, September 15, 1994.
 

But there was one year where I went above and beyond to celebrate a Jewish holiday. Forty years ago this September, I was in my final weeks of an eight-month stay in a New Jersey State Prison for possession of LSD with intent to distribute. Yom Kippur was on September 24, 1983, and I was scheduled to be released a few days before that. There was one other Jew in prison with me, Wayne Weiniger. Together, we did whatever we could to mess with the system. We had a lot of time on our hands. Once, we wrote the local newspaper exposing the prison for adding hundreds of additional beds in the facility without the proper community approval.  I did not sign my name to the letter to the editor, but Wayne did. He got a week in solitary confinement.

As (somewhat) “radical Jews” (or so we thought), we were always looking for ways to subvert the paradigm. Earlier that year for Passover, Wayne and I wrote the Rabbinical College of America, which just happened to be about thirty miles away, and asked if they could supply us with “Passover care packages.” The rabbi came to the prison with two large bags each filled with matzah, Manischewitz grape juice, gefilte fish, Haggadahs, and the other items needed for a Seder. Our main course that night while we held our Seder in an empty classroom was matzah with peanut butter (that we smuggled out of the prison storeroom—a story for another time).  I never liked gefilte fish, but there were plenty of other prisoners who were happy to eat it, even though they had never heard of it. I think it blew their minds! Our transaction with the rabbi had to go through the prison priest, and when the priest met the rabbi (yes, there’s a joke in there somewhere) he accepted the two bags of Passover supplies, gave us one bag for our Seder, and said he would hold the other for us until we finished all the food in the first bag. For the record, when we went back to him a week later for our care package, he said, “I don’t have another bag for you.” The matzah must have mysteriously disappeared! 
 

Permission for inmate to celebrate Yom Kippur from the Annandale Youth Correctional Facility, 1983
 

As Yom Kippur 1983 approached, we wrote to the prison chief asking to observe Yom Kippur a week early due to my imminent release date. He probably had no idea what the holiday was, but understood religious rights. We went to a staff office and quietly observed Yom Kippur 1983. A few days later I walked out of state prison, never to see or communicate with Wayne Weiniger again, and start a new life. I might have been a fair-weather Jew, but our celebration that year gave me a Yom Kippur experience I’ll never forget.
 

Polaroid photograph of Jay Blakesberg with fellow inmates, 1983
 

On the eve of Yom Kippur, we can all reflect on the many ways and places we have celebrated the High Holidays throughout our lives. No matter what the circumstance, as a Jew I am keenly aware of the cycle, and whether I am with Allen Ginsberg working/shooting on Yom Kippur, or shooting Neil Young while he sings about the “silver spaceships lying in the yellow haze of the sun” on Rosh Hashanah, we can all tap into our own ritual to be present with intention, and to recognize our Jewish heritage during these holidays.