For the life of me, I never thought that Sabbath services could be fun. I'd see the Orthodox in my neighborhood walk to synagogue Friday nights, wearing their black hats and white shirts and think they were sheep being herded by an imaginary whip. I haven't been to synagogue since my Bar Mitzvah, but I know that my friends who are forced to go by their parents on the High Holidays consider the service a chore. The rest of the year, fewer and fewer Jews are going to synagogue at all. What to do about the dwindling numbers is being debated by rabbis and Jewish scholars the world over and discussed in prominent Jewish journals like Tikkun. They point out that it's not only synagogue that Jews are turning away from. Israelite children in the Diaspora have never been more likely than today to be raised with no semblance of a Jewish upbringing. "The Silent Holocaust" is what many in the Orthodox and even Reform circles are calling it: Jews by the hundreds of thousands shedding all ties to their religion and culture through intermarriage, conversion to other faiths or plain apathy.

Like Victor Hyman three years ago, most of the Jewish kids on the Phish lot wouldn't think twice about having a glass of milk with their breakfast ham. One of my closest friends for nearly a decade, Hyman is 23 and maintains a Woody Allen-esque neurotic-Jew disposition that I routinely tease him about. It's hard to describe how shocked I was the summer he told me about his leap of faith.

Growing up in suburban Toronto, Hyman and I were devout atheists. In the 12th grade we ate bacon double cheeseburgers on Yom Kippur, the holiest of Jewish High Holidays. Another time, he walked out of his family's Passover dinner, proclaiming that they were all hypocrites. After dropping out of college he visited Israel in 1997. Seemingly out of nowhere he found God and became Baal T'Shuva, a secular Jew who embraces God, or, as many of us secularites call them, a born-again Jew. Living in Jerusalem, he now studies at a Jewish seminary called a yeshiva.

Except for Rabbi Skaist and the Israeli-born Esther Zeren, the rest of the Gefiltefish are also Baal T'Shuva. They were chosen specifically because they were once Phishheads themselves, and understand the spiritual yearnings of those who follow the tour. the tour. Obviously, New-Age hippie beliefs didn't die with the '60s, and today they permeate Phishhead culture with talk of "Mother Earth" and holistic Zen-light values.

The four Baal T'Shuva Gefiltefish members were searching for spiritual guidance in their Phish days -- which they readily admit they found more in hallucinogenic drugs than in religion. They figure they know better than anyone how confused most modern Jews are about their own religion, and how appealing a Phish tour can be to a suburban adolescent just beginning to ponder the most basic of existential paradoxes. That's why Gefiltefish is here -- to answer any questions fans might have about Orthodox Judaism and, as Hyman told me, "to provide a Jewish space."

But why, out of all the bands in the world, did they choose Phish?

Ask any teenager growing up in a "Jewish suburb" (most major cities in North America have at least one), and they'll tell you that a disproportionate number of Phish fans are Jewish. Gefiltefish's claim that 30 percent of Phish's fans are Jewish may be exaggerated, but they certainly have no problem finding Jews anywhere on tour.

The surface explanation for the phenomenon is that two of the four members of Phish are Jewish. But that doesn't explain why other bands with Jewish members don't have the same following. Joey Ramone, after all, is Jewish. "Jews are a spiritual people," says 28-year-old Hillel Zeren as we sit around eating lunch. "It only makes sense that we gravitate to Phish tour."

The history of Judaism is one of travel, he says, the early Jews wandering through the desert for 40 years after fleeing bondage in Egypt, then across the world after being expelled from Israel by the Romans 2,000 years ago. Further, he notes how interwoven music is in religious ceremonies and the premium the culture places on community. "What is Phish tour if not a traveling community of music fans?"

But he doesn't stop there, arguing that a quest for spirituality is actually inherent in Jews. To prove his point he cites a story from the Torah: To guarantee his promise to Abraham that one day all Jews would recognize him as their father, God placed a speck of higher spirituality in every Jewish soul. Thus, Zeren theorizes, minus a knowledge of God, Jews search for novel ways to exercise their spirituality.

Assorted hippie kids have joined the Gefiltefish circle for conversation and a free lunch. Except for their curled sideburns and yarmulkes, Zeren and Hyman -- wearing stained slacks and dirty T-shirts, munching on kugel and potato salad -- are hard to distinguish from the rest.

Not wanting to offend, I preface my comments about Jews and Phish by saying, "This is going to come off as crass and materialistic ..."

While hippie spiritualism is youthfully romantic, I say, it is also based more on mammon than piety. "Think about it," I say: Taking the summer off to go on tour requires the kind of money that only a leisurely suburban lifestyle could provide. Plus, as a form of rock 'n' roll, Phish's music is as innocuous as Kenny G's "jazz." The Clash, Phish is not. The lyrics are farcical. Words are used for cadence rather than intended meaning. The jams -- long and trippy -- lack the rebellious anger and intensity of most of today's popular rock. Even the culture, drugs and all, is not so radical; many suburban parents could understand it all from their hippie days.

The lunch crowd goes silent, but Zerzen holds his ground. While my argument may be true, he says, Phish tour, nevertheless, played a large role in his becoming Baal T'Shuva. And he doesn't downplay the fact that magic mushrooms and LSD were an integral part of the process. "It made me realize there was something beyond me," he says, "something larger than myself."

Zerzen was 21 when he first began experimenting with hallucinogens. It was his first year of college, where he was enrolled in a financial program. He had family problems, he says, and he found himself consciously turning to drugs and Phish shows for spiritual uplift. But it wasn't until he had a bad trip that he felt the presence of a higher power.

"July 23, 1991 at a Phish show in Washington, D.C.," he says. "I remember the date."

The acid was working him over. The music was inaudible to him ("which sucks because I heard tapes of the show and Phish was on that night"). The band's legendary 20- and 30-minute jams were drowned out by a monologue running out of control in his head. A friend quoted Grateful Dead lyrics to him in attempt to bring him down, but the words were useless. When he finally came down, he says, his understanding of the world had changed.

He began using acid regularly, about every three weeks, to induce meditation.

"This was a very powerful thing and I wanted to use it for a higher purpose," he says. "But I didn't have a reference point for my new spiritual reality."

Eventually, Zerzen's religious Jewish roommate pointed him toward Judaism. His conversion was slow. At first, he would skip the cheese on his hamburger. Only after he spent his first full Sabbath with friends of his parents did he decide to pursue a pious life. He changed his major to psychology. When he reached graduate school, he stopped dosing. Not completely sold on Judaism, he still preferred to say "higher power" rather than "God." After he graduated with a master's degree, his girlfriend took him rock climbing in Colorado. That summer, on the summit of a mountain, they took off their clothes and ate mushrooms. With the wind blowing across his bare skin and his senses enlivened by the chemicals, he felt the presence of God, in him and everywhere he looked. A Jewish God.

Within weeks he had bought a plane ticket to Israel, where he met and married Esther and has studied Torah at a yeshiva ever since.

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