The Jewish Education of Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder
Rabbi Jason Miller
Twenty summers ago in 1992, I was a Jewish sixteen-year-old on a teen trip with USY on Wheels. We were halfway into the trip when we arrived in Palo Alto, California. When we pulled into the parking lot of the five star hotel, we realized we were not the only tour bus there. Rows and rows of luxury rock star buses filled the lot. Only when we walked inside to check into our rooms did we learn that all of the performers from Lollapalooza were staying at the same hotel.
My first encounter was with Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I spoke with him for a few minutes in front of the hotel elevator until he told me he was losing his voice from that night’s show and needed hot tea before heading to bed. I laughed at the idea that a hard rocker was calling it a night around 11:30.
One of the other Chili Peppers turned to our group and told us not to do anything stupid in the hotel. Not thirty seconds later, a large group of us squeezed ourselves into the hotel elevator and promptly got stuck. Fortunately, our bus driver’s husband was a firefighter and managed to rescue us from between floors.
That Saturday morning, after our Shabbat services, several teens from our group met Pearl Jam’s front man Eddie Vedder. Pearl Jam would soon become my favorite rock band and remains so today, but in the summer of 1992 I had not even heard of them yet.
The teens from New York already adored Pearl Jam and immediately recognized Eddie Vedder. Eddie and his girlfriend at the time, who had purple hair, were headed to the tennis courts to hit some balls. Although USY policy discouraged using cameras on Shabbat, some teens took photos with Eddie Vedder and even had him autograph their paperback prayer books.
When one of our counselors saw what was happening, things became interesting. The counselor explained to Eddie Vedder that we were a Jewish teen group that was not supposed to be taking photographs on the Sabbath. Vedder told us that his girlfriend was partially Jewish and that he respected our observance.
One of the counselors invited the two of them to join us for our afternoon study session. It is traditional during the summer to study Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of our Sages, on Shabbat afternoon. The teens who had asked for autographs were reprimanded and Eddie Vedder headed off.
If the story had ended there, it still would have been a great memory from our summer together. But about twenty minutes into our study session, Eddie Vedder and his girlfriend walked in. The room filled with whispering as everyone pointed toward the back. Our quiet study session suddenly became much more lively.
Vedder and his girlfriend sat in the back and listened as we discussed Jewish values and theology. After half an hour they were ready to leave. Eddie Vedder raised his hand and said something very strange about the existence of cows. We all sat there bewildered.
We left the hotel on Sunday and said goodbye to our new acquaintances, which included rock stars, groupies, and roadies from Pearl Jam, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden, and several other Lollapalooza bands. As our tour bus pulled away, we snapped our last photos of the tour buses.
At our first highway rest stop, I walked into the store and bought Pearl Jam’s Ten on CD. I would listen to that album thousands of times over the next decade and return to it many times after that. Eddie Vedder’s music carried me through the rest of my teen years and into college.
Earlier this year, to mark the twentieth anniversary of Ten, the documentary Pearl Jam Twenty was released. Watching it late one night, I thought back to that memorable and life changing summer out west. I had not even known who Eddie Vedder was when he sat quietly in the back of our Shabbat afternoon study session. Yet knowing that I learned Torah with Eddie Vedder the same year Ten was released still gives me chills. I do not know if he ever studied Torah again after that day, but I feel blessed to have witnessed the Jewish education of Eddie Vedder.