Seth Rogovoy, a contributing editor at the Forward, is the author of Bob Dylan: Prophet Mystic Poet (Scribner) and Within You Without You: Listening to George Harrison (Oxford University Press).
Seth Rogovoy
By Seth Rogovoy
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Culture The Secret Jewish History of David Bowie
David Bowie died of cancer on Sunday after a glittering five-decade career in pop music. The rocker won millions of fans across several generations by constantly reinventing himself, but who knew he had such a strong link to the Tribe? Madonna had nothing on David Bowie when she came out as a devotee of Kabbalah…
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Culture Lights, Camera, Allen Ginsberg!
All photos: © 2012 The Allen Ginsberg LLC. All rights reserved. Somewhere, there is a snapshot of Allen Ginsberg and me sitting next to each other on a sofa — capturing us both in a rare moment of clean-shavenness — taken in 1981, when the poet visited Williams College for a reading. I don’t recall…
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Culture Of Hobbits and The Golem
Sometimes, a bearded, money-grubbing dwarf is just a bearded, money-grubbing dwarf and not an evil, anti-Semitic stand-in for Jews. Undoubtedly some will view “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” — the first in a trilogy of films based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s book “The Hobbit,” directed by Peter Jackson — and find in Tolkien’s mythical creatures not-so-subtly…
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Culture Jakob Dylan Has Been Born Again
Jakob Dylan may have had his fate set in (rolling) stone when his father immortalized him in song when he was still a child. When Dylan, who turns 43 this December, was 5 years old, old man Bob rewrote the Friday night Sabbath blessing over the children, turning it into a folk hymn that became…
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Culture Dial H For Hebrew
Alfred Hitchcock’s reputation as one of the greatest film directors of all time is safely in the can, so all that’s left to deal with is the man himself. Two new films — “Hitchcock,” a biopic starring Anthony Hopkins, and the HBO film “The Girl,” about Hitch’s troubled relationship with actress Tippi Hedren — have…
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Culture On Her Majesty’s Semitic Service
It’s hard to imagine anyone less Jewish — or more goyish — than James Bond: He of the shaken-not-stirred-martinis; he who serially beds the blond, buxom “Bond girls”; he who drives the latest, fastest, gadget-equipped sports car. He may be the hero, but he’s no mensch. The United Kingdom newspaper the Daily Mirror recently called…
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Culture Bob Dylan’s 10 Most Jewish Songs
While Bob Dylan has, throughout his life and career, engaged in all sorts of mythologizing and playful biographical falsification, it has never been in the service of denying his heritage. This son of a middle-class appliance salesman from the Upper Midwest, who grew up with a Yiddish-speaking grandmother down the hallway in an extended Jewish…
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Culture A Reluctant Prophet
Bob Dylan turned 70 on May 24. So what? Well, for one, let’s see you continue to perform two-hour concerts, 100 nights a year, as you’ve been doing practically nonstop for the past quarter century or so, all over the world, keeping things new and fresh while the music industry around you falls apart. Your…
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