New Biography Explores Bob Dylan’s Spiritual Journey

Image by Getty Images

By Jenny Singer June 8, 2017

“Bob Dylan was born a Jew. Then he wasn’t, but now he’s back,” sang Adam Sandler in The Chanukah Song, voicing all of our dads’ anxieties over Dylan’s religious identity. A new biography “Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life” by Scott Marshall, aims to explore Dylan’s spiritual odyssey.

Out on June 20th, Marshall’s book promises to analyze Dylan’s famously mercurial relationship to religion, which he said involves, “plenty of intriguing stories, competing voices, humor [and] conflict.”

So is the artist formerly known as Shabtai Zisl ben Avraham one of our own, or not?

“For Dylan [Christianity] seems it’s more about the figure of Jesus than the following of an organized religion,” Marshall told The Hollywood Reporter. “Dylan’s own Jewish roots cannot be denied, whether it’s the revolutionary figure of Jesus in the first century or Dylan’s childhood in Minnesota in the 1940s and 1950s, or his naturally slipping into synagogues as an adult. Dylan appears to be a child of God, not tethered to any religion for religion’s sake, but trying to pursue the Truth, clay feet and all.”

Ricocheting from Zionist summer camp to gospel albums to becoming a Jews-for-Jesus icon to playing at a seder attended by Marlon Brando, Dylan has made the moniker “a stiff-necked people” literal for many of his fans.

“Over the years he’s gone against the culture that was rebelling against the traditional Judeo-Christian framework,” says Marshall. “He hasn’t been bashful about saying he believes in the Old and New Testament.”

Marshall’s book includes interviews with President Jimmy Carter and Dylan’s ex-wife Carolyn Dennis, who has never spoken publicly about her ex-husband.

“May he be singing his songs into his 90s,” says Marshall.

And may the songs be clearly Jewish, add Jewish Dads everywhere.

Amen.

Jenny Singer is a writer for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny.

Jenny Singer is a freelance writer with pieces in Vox, the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, and more. She was previously a staff writer at Glamour and the Forward, and she’s currently getting an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’re near the end of our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we have a very ambitious goal of $127,000 by April 21.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO