Bob Dylan, Jewishness, and Christianity
I was raised in a Reform Jewish home and I became a believer in Jesus as the Son of God back in 1985. So I can imagine the conflict and the flack Bob would have received from Jewish family and friends as well as from his fans when he put his faith in Christ back in 1978.
Many people who put their faith in Jesus also are rediscovering the beauty of their Jewishness for the first time, and then there is the inevitable crisis of faith. Can I be a believer in Jesus and still be Jewish?
I would suspect that Bob read the little volume by David Berger and Michael Wsychogrod, "Jews and Jewish Christianity" (KTAV, 1978), a heartfelt plea for the Jewish person to come back to the Judaism of his parents. He may have read some more vitriolic anti-missionary materials, such as "You take Jesus, I'll take God."
These missives, plus the pressures of being Bob Dylan in a world where everyone wants a piece of him, may have been all the ammunition the devil needed to trash him.
There were times early on where I considered going back to Judaism. I missed the culture, the heritage, the synagogue liturgy, the minor key melodies, the Oseh Shalom Bimroomav.
But I could never turn my back on Jesus. I could not forget the One who died for me and changed my life and touched me in such a real way.
Even though it appears that Dylan has returned to Judaism (notice that he takes Christ's name in vain in Chronicles, not God's) the songs themselves show that Dylan cannot quite put Jesus aside for good. "To Make You Feel My Love" reads like a message straight from God. Try reading that song with God/Jesus as narrator.
And "Bye and Bye", especially the last line, has overt gospel references.
All this coupled with the occasional gospel tune done in concert, leads me to suspect that even if Bob has rejected Jesus as Messiah, he still can't quite get him out of his system for good. The presence of Christ haunts his music after all these years.
PM
posted by Marc Axelrod at 2:53 PM
3 Comments:
Marc,
Your posting about Bob Zimmerman is very heartfelt and expresses well your view of Christianity, but misses, I think, the nature of our Judaism. First of all, from our perspective Zimmerman never became Christian; a Jew remains a Jew, even if he or she thinks to have become apostate. Moreover, from such a perspective I believe you are a Jew and not a Christian. There is, also, the ethnicity of Judaism which distinguishes it from most form of Christianity, ethnic Catholicism excepted. I could no more stop being a Jew ethnically than I could become an angel or an ape.
Second, one cannot be a Jew and a Christian after about 70 C.E.; Jewish Christianity died out when it had no message to offer, because the lion did not eat straw like the ox, nor did all nations throw down their weapons. On the contrary. Gentile Christianity is a whole different faith from the Judaism of Jesus's early followers. They trusted Jesus because he was a Pharisee like them who taught pretty much standard Pharasaic Judaism with very little originality, to be honest. He was a great teacher, I believe. I wish I could preach Judaism as well as he did. Some Jews think of him as a prophet; I demur with respect.
Third, I, like about 98% of the Jews, do not believe there is a devil. I'm sure you know from your familiarity with our Hebrew scriptures and from your Jewish education that God is "creator of light and creator of darkness, creator of good and fashioner of evil." It gets cleaned up a little in the Jewish prayer book, but it's right out of the scriptures that you and I share with our brothers in Islam. If there were a devil, I should think it would not need Jewish grandparents to do its work. I can just see my Grandma now, may her memory be for a blessing, assisting a goat-footed jackass with trident and horns. The image, to a believing or non-believing Jew, is pitifully laughable, I'm sorry to say. I'm not even sure where you got the idea of a devil? Was it from the Hebrew scriptures or from Dante? Satan is a Hebrew word; it means adversary. In this posting, I am your satan, but I am not the devil nor do I do its imaginary work. When I play chess--rarely these days--when I'm black, white is satan.
Finally, most Christians believe I am not damned to hell, nor do they believe that Bob Zimmerman is so damned. Most would likely say that he just found his way home. That his current repertoire contains songs that sound like Jesus speaking, means very little, I am convinced. I have in Jewish sermons quoted Jesus, and Muhammed, and Dharma and the Vedas. I have even publicly whinnied like a horse and barked like a dog, but my behavior, thank God, makes me none of these, not Christian, not Muslim, not Buddhist, not Hindu, not even a horse, thank God, nor a cur.
I know your faith is strong and I respect it for its consistency and its integrity. But from your Rebbe's point of view you are not a Christian; you are a Jew. You can come home like Bob until the day you die. I'll be waiting for you.
B'shalom,
Rabbi David E. Powers, Ph.D.
November 16, 2005 at 10:19 AM
Hi Rabbi Powers:
How did you find my obscure little blog? I think it's neat that people all over the world can read stuff that we write. I'll never get over that, it is so cool.
The post I wrote about Dylan was probably at least a year ago, so I will have to go back and see what I wrote. :)
My mom is president of the synagogue where you are serving as rabbi. We sometimes have conversations about religion, but rarely about Dylan, who my mom would say is no big deal.
There is a tremendous amount of diversity in Judaism and in Christianity. I'm sure we could marshal scholars and clergy from either religion to support a point we are making. As many Christians as you know who say one thing,I could find you an equal number who say the opposite. I think we need to read scripture together and pray for God's guidance as we sift through His revelation (and I mean both the Tanakh and the NT and anything else you want to add to the list).
As far as the idea of a devil, I suppose if the only bit of revelation we had about the satan was the book of Job, we would have to conclude that the satan was an angelic being who sat on the heavenly council and played an adversarial role in people's lives, testing them within the parameters of God's will.
The Christian view is not far from this at all, but we would also recognize that there has been progressive revelation over the course of time which has revealed more information about this adversary than the initial data found in Job. I don't think anyone would suggest that God dropped the whole ball of wax on Mt Sinai and that there was nothing more to learn from as time went on. Our theology would be very narrow indeed if all we had to go on was the book of Job. (Having said that, I like the book of Job!)
As far as who is damned and who is not damned, only God could know that. I don't try to figure those things out, I just try to encourage people to trust in God and in His anointed one.
As far as the lion lying down with the lamb, which I take it that you mean a belief in a future period of universal bliss, we all look forward to that day. Christians believe that we can get a taste of the world to come by believing in the Christ who has come.
We also believe that Christ is our passover lamb, in that He has passed over our sins. He is our Yom Kippur sacrifice, which clears the way for our teshuvah to be accepted, He is our sukkot, because he tabernacled with us in this world, He is also our shamash, the one who gives light to all the other lights in the world.
And He is our shalom, the One who has worked a peace agreement between humanity and God by his atoning death on the cross, which eliminated the need for the Levitical sacrificial system.
I agree that the teachings of Christ were in most instances not original (one could argue that his teaching on adultery and marriage and divorce was stricter than anyone else's, and his eschatological teaching in Mark 13 was new), what was original was Jesus himself and the way he spoke and the claims he made for himself. Even in the sermon on the mount, the formula 'it has been said, but I say to you' implies a level of authority that goes beyond what is given of anyone in the Tanakh.
Thank you again for your post and for your welcoming words. I'll have to tell my mom that we chatted!
God bless,
Marc
http://www.sermoncentral.com/contributor_profile.asp?ContributorID=9610
November 16, 2005 at 12:53 PM
Hi Rabbi Powers:
How did you find my obscure little blog? I think it's neat that people all over the world can read stuff that we write. I'll never get over that, it is so cool.
The post I wrote about Dylan was probably at least a year ago, so I will have to go back and see what I wrote. :)
My mom is president of the synagogue where you are serving as rabbi. We sometimes have conversations about religion, but rarely about Dylan, who my mom would say is no big deal.
There is a tremendous amount of diversity in Judaism and in Christianity. I'm sure we could marshal scholars and clergy from either religion to support a point we are making. As many Christians as you know who say one thing,I could find you an equal number who say the opposite. I think we need to read scripture together and pray for God's guidance as we sift through His revelation (and I mean both the Tanakh and the NT and anything else you want to add to the list).
As far as the idea of a devil, I suppose if the only bit of revelation we had about the satan was the book of Job, we would have to conclude that the satan was an angelic being who sat on the heavenly council and played an adversarial role in people's lives, testing them within the parameters of God's will.
The Christian view is not far from this at all, but we would also recognize that there has been progressive revelation over the course of time which has revealed more information about this adversary than the initial data found in Job. I don't think anyone would suggest that God dropped the whole ball of wax on Mt Sinai and that there was nothing more to learn from as time went on. Our theology would be very narrow indeed if all we had to go on was the book of Job. (Having said that, I like the book of Job!)
As far as who is damned and who is not damned, only God could know that. I don't try to figure those things out, I just try to encourage people to trust in God and in His anointed one.
As far as the lion lying down with the lamb, which I take it that you mean a belief in a future period of universal bliss, we all look forward to that day. Christians believe that we can get a taste of the world to come by believing in the Christ who has come.
We also believe that Christ is our passover lamb, in that He has passed over our sins. He is our Yom Kippur sacrifice, which clears the way for our teshuvah to be accepted, He is our sukkot, because he tabernacled with us in this world, He is also our shamash, the one who gives light to all the other lights in the world.
And He is our shalom, the One who has worked a peace agreement between humanity and God by his atoning death on the cross, which eliminated the need for the Levitical sacrificial system.
I agree that the teachings of Christ were in most instances not original (one could argue that his teaching on adultery and marriage and divorce was stricter than anyone else's, and his eschatological teaching in Mark 13 was new), what was original was Jesus himself and the way he spoke and the claims he made for himself. Even in the sermon on the mount, the formula 'it has been said, but I say to you' implies a level of authority that goes beyond what is given of anyone in the Tanakh.
Thank you again for your post and for your welcoming words. I'll have to tell my mom that we chatted!
God bless,
Marc
http://www.sermoncentral.com/contributor_profile.asp?ContributorID=9610
November 16, 2005 at 12:54 PM
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