54 | JUNE 10 • 2021 

I

t is hard to believe, but Bob Dylan celebrat-
ed his 80th birthday on May 24. It is not 
an overstatement to say that Dylan — aka 
Robert Allen Zimmerman — is an enigmatic 
sort of musical genius.
Dylan is universally lauded as 
one of the best, some say the best, 
songwriter in American histo-
ry. His career has lasted nearly 
60 years, and along the way, 
Dylan has received 10 Grammy 
Awards, an Academy Award, a 
Presidential Medal of Freedom, 
and just to top off these acco-
lades, the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. He 
has also been inducted into the Rock and Roll 
Hall of Fame and has received numerous inter-
national recognitions.

Dylan was born in Duluth, Minn., and 
raised in Hibbing, Minn., a town established 
for miners who worked in the famous Mesabi 
Iron Range in northern Minnesota. His grand-
parents were Jewish immigrants from Europe. 
Dylan was raised within Hibbing’s small but 
vibrant Jewish community. While in high 
school, Dylan began his musical career. He 
moved to New York at the age of 19 and took 
the name, Bob Dylan. He released his first 
album in 1962 at the age of 21; his latest album, 
his 39th, was released last year.
Dylan appears on 369 pages in the William 
Davidson Digital Archive of Jewish Detroit 
History in a wide range of stories, reports and 
feature articles. In sheer number of mentions 
in the JN, Dylan outranks other star performers 
such as Elvis Presley, who only appears on 49 
pages; Frank Sinatra, 78 pages; the Beatles, 77 
pages; and Barbara Streisand, 58 pages. 
Dylan first appears in the Dec. 29, 1967, issue 
of the JN in an advertisement from the Studio I 
Theater in Detroit. It was showing an “exclusive 
first run” of Don’t Look Back, a movie about 

Dylan’s 1965 concert tour in England, 
a film that “tells it like it is….
” The ad 
carried a disclaimer: “No one over 30 
admitted.
” 
One only needs to read the cov-
erage of Dylan in the JN to 
understand that he moves 
to his own drummer. 
Raised Jewish, Dylan 
embraced Christianity in the 
1980s for a short time, and 
then returned to Judaism 
and contributed to Chabad 
and to the Lubavitcher 
movement. He has been con-
sistently pro-Zionist over the 
years. His song, “Neighborhood Bully” has a 
strong Zionist message. Yet, when Dylan visited 

Israel in 1987 for a concert, he canceled a live-
TV interview and didn’t show up for scheduled 
meetings with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres 
and Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek (Sept. 11, 
1987, JN). How many of us would have the 
chutzpah to stiff those guys?
There are also a number of analyses of 
Dylan’s music and life in the JN, including 
several cover stories. Their titles should give 
you a hint of how tough it is to fully explain 
Dylan. For example, see “Tangled Up in 
Zimmerman” by frequent JN contributor 
Don Cohen (Sept. 22, 2005) or “Will the 
Real Bob Dylan Please Stand Up” by David 
Holzel (Jan. 12, 1990) and “Deciphering 
Dylan” by Larry Yudelson (July 2, 1999).
Perhaps “
A Nice Jewish Cultural Icon? 
Sort Of” by reviewer Ken Gordon (Jan. 7, 
2005) reaches the most reasonable assess-
ment of Bob Dylan: “He is always, and 
only, himself.
” 

Want to learn more? Go to the 
DJN Foundation archives, available for 
free at www.djnfoundation.org.

Looking Back

From the William Davidson Digital Archive 
of Jewish Detroit History 

accessible at www.djnfoundation.org

Mike Smith
Alene and 
Graham Landau 
Archivist Chair

A Cultural Icon

