30 June 2025, 15:33

By Jamie Peston

I always wanted to go to Glastonbury. For years, it had been on the list — the music, the madness, the myth. Last year, I finally made it, complete with camper van, kosher BBQ, and a carefully curated playlist. I fell in love with the chaos and the joy, the conversations with strangers, the music that throbbed through the ground and up into your chest. I went back this year for more of the same.

But something shifted. And I’m not going back.

This isn’t about one band, or one tweet, or one awkward moment. It’s about the quiet but growing realisation that for Jews like me — observant, visible, connected to both Jewish identity and British civic life — Glastonbury no longer feels like a safe or welcoming place. And that says something deeply worrying about where British culture is heading.

Glastonbury offers something rare: anonymity. In real life, I wear a kippa, serve as a governor of a Jewish school and as a lay leader in my synagogue. I’ve spent years in Jewish education, but I’ve also spent three days in Ramallah with my MBA class. I sit proudly at the intersection of Jewish tradition and British public life.

I love my life as a proud British Jew. I love Dance floors. Saunas. Spontaneous chats with strangers. At Glastonbury, I could just exist. I was “the guy with the football shirt” — not “the Jew.” I raved in Shangri-La, danced in the rain at Temple, sobbed in the front row during Lewis Capaldi, and shared Skittles with teens from Bristol waiting for the Ezra Collective as the crowd........

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