OCTOBER 17 • 2019 | 45

New book details 50 years of friendship
with Bob Dylan, starting at a Jewish camp.

J

ewish summer camp is 
such a crucial part of the 
American Jewish experience 
that many Jewish adults, even in 
their older age, likely remember 
the names of many of the kids 
in their cabins from when they 
were 11 years old.
One of those cabins — more 
than 60 years ago — contained 
a couple of interesting young 
Jewish boys.
Louie Kemp would go on to 
head his family’
s seafood com-
pany and played a key role in 
introducing imitation king crab 
to the United States. Robert 
“Bobby” Zimmerman went on 
to become Bob Dylan.
Kemp has written a memoir 
called Dylan & Me: 50 Years of 
Adventures (WestRose Press), 
detailing his friendship with the 
iconic singer.
The author lived with Dylan 
for a time in Los Angeles in the 
early 1980s, during the period 
when Dylan briefly became a 
Christian. Kemp, who then was 
becoming a more observant Jew, 
which he remains to this day, 
claims credit, along with some 
rabbis, for bringing Dylan back 
into the Jewish fold a couple of 
years later.
Kemp’
s book is full of 
delightful, specifically Jewish 
details, such as Dylan’
s years of 
participation in Chabad tele-
thons, the time he opened the 
ark on Yom Kippur while being 
mistaken for a homeless 
man and the story of how 
Kemp arranged for Kaddish 
to be said for Allen Ginsburg 
each year on his yahrtzeit. All 
that, and many, many visits to 
Canter’
s Deli.
He writes specifically about 

how he believes Dylan’
s Jewish 
background informed his later 
success.
“[Jews] have a passion to 
seek out meaning and give it 
new expression, morally and 
artistically,” Kemp wrote. “That 
drive — along with another 
Jewish trait known as chutzpah 
— have always been strong in 
Bobby, and his gifts have made 
his expression worthy of the 
ages,” Kemp told JTA.
Herzl Camp, where it all 
began, has taken notice of 
Kemp’
s book.
“Part of our mission is to 
build lifelong Jewish friend-

ships, so it is wonderful to see 
the story of a group of camp 
friends and how their friend-
ship spanned decades,” Holly 
Guncheon, Herzl Camp’
s devel-
opment director, told JTA in 
an email. She added that Dylan 
sent his children to the camp.
At Herzl, like many camps, 
campers write their names 
on walls for posterity, and 
Guncheon said that “for many 
years, searching for ‘
Robert 
Zimmerman’
 written on a cabin 

wall was a com-
mon activity.”
The journey 
begins when 
they were pre-
teen campers 
at Herzl Camp 
in Webster, Wisc., 
from 1953 through 1957. In 
’
54, Kemp witnessed a cabin 
rooftop concert that he consid-
ers the then-11-year-old Bobby’
s 
first public performance.
Following the stories of 
summer camp concerts and 
hijinks, the book follows Dylan 
and Kemp’
s time together as 
teenagers in Kemp’
s home-

town of Duluth, Minn., where 
Dylan was born, and later in 
Minneapolis, where Kemp 
attended college and Dylan 
briefly moved to pursue music.
Even after Dylan went to 
New York and became one of 
America’
s most famous men, 
they continued their friendship. 
Kemp frequently stepped away 
from his lucrative business, 
which sold fish to the restau-
rant industry, to hang out with 
Dylan for weeks at a time in 

the city, Malibu, Mexico or 
wherever the singer was on the 
road. Dylan was the best man 
at Kemp’
s wedding.
Kemp said he hadn’
t always 
intended to write a book about 
his friendship with Dylan, but 
he had been telling the stories at 
parties and Shabbat dinners for 
years and was told frequently he 
should collect them.
A close friend of Kemp’
s — a 
former television producer who 
was dying of cancer — made 
him promise to write the book, 
so he agreed. 
Kemp produced Dylan’
s 
Rolling Thunder Revue, which 
Martin Scorsese made into an 
embellished documentary film 
.
While the two men, now 
both in their late 70s, have 
known each other for more 
than 60 years, the book’
s subti-
tle is “50 years of adventures,” 
and it’
s notably missing any 
stories from after 2001. Kemp 
admits he and Dylan have lost 
touch of late although he said 
it wasn’
t due to any particular 
falling out, and he did send 
Dylan a copy of the book.
“I would think he’
d enjoy 
it; it’
s all positive, fun adven-
tures that we had together 
over a 50-year time period,” 
Kemp said. “To me, it’
s like a 
modern-day Jewish version of 
Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry 
Finn.” 

h 1957 In

STEPHEN SILVER JTA

COURTESY OF LOUIS KEMP/JTA

Bob Dylan, left, was the 
best man at his friend 
Louie Kemp’
s wedding.

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