Bruce Feiler talks with JBW

Posted by Naomi Firestone

Haven’t received your winter issue of Jewish Book World yet? Not to worry–it’s in the mail! In the meantime, here’s an excerpt from an interview Maron Waxman conducted with Bruce Feiler, author of the recently published America’s Prophet: Moses and the American Story:

Best-selling writer Bruce Feiler talks about why he sees the biblical Moses story as “the most American of templates,” embodying the dreams, risks, and hopes of Americans from the Pilgrims to President Obama.

Bruce Feiler

Maron Waxman: Your books cover a great variety of subjects—Japan, English academia, the circus, country music, the Bible. Is there a common thread that runs through them?
Bruce Feiler: If you look at all my books, what they have in common is that they’re all about being Jewish in the South. There are two Southern traditions—the South is a place of families sticking together, and it’s a story-telling place. Jews are outsiders in the South, but they’re also storytellers. In my books I enter a different world. I’m part of it, but I’m observing it. There’s the tension of belonging to a place and being apart from it.

MW: What world did you enter in writing America’s Prophet?
BF: Writing and researching this book led to a whole new way to see the United States. When I first went back to the Bible as part of the research for Walking the Bible, I had only my childhood construction of it—simple black and white stories with no gray. Reading it many years later, I saw lots of gray, and it was exciting because that invited me in as an adult. Something similar happened with my experience of America. Looking at American history through the prism of the Bible opened a whole new way to look at it. It was like going through a new door into an old house. The Bible is not a book on a shelf; it’s living and breathing. It’s the same with American history. It’s not just Plimoth Plantation or Civil War reenactments or descriptions of slavery; American history is still alive and churning.

MW: How does the Moses story influence American history?
BF: The Moses story has been used by almost every great American leader in almost every defining time, from the Colonies through today. It’s a universal story that transcends time. Republicans use it, Democrats use it, Communists and capitalists use it, Jews and Christians use it. It’s often said that America is a Christian country, but that misses the point. It was Christians who made Moses a founding father. Jews were welcomed here because the Exodus story was so intertwined with the American dream. The Pilgrims knew the Bible; they had a copy of the Geneva Bible, whose title page shows a picture of Moses and the Israelites camped at the Red Sea.

We have to remember that the Protestants were the first people in eighteen centuries to read the Moses story, to read the Bible, for themselves. Roman Catholics could be put to death for reading the Bible. Only the priests could read it, in Latin, and also, before the printing press, there were very few books. So it took a certain set of circumstances—from technology to geography—to make the Exodus story the story of America.

First was the Protestant Reformation and with it the translation of the Bible into secular languages so that everyone could read it. Then came the printing press, making the Bible widely available. The Pilgrims recognized themselves in the Exodus story; in England they were an oppressed minority, and so they undertook their own Exodus. Their physical journey has incredible parallels with Exodus—they took a perilous sea journey to a wilderness to build a new land. The Pilgrims read the prophecy of the Old Testament as truth, and they believed it. They were fulfilling the future [the prophets predicted/foresaw].

And we see this in the thinking of the founding fathers, too, and of the slaves. The Exodus story is their story.

We as Jews are not taught the Moses story this way. Moses is not the dominant figure of the Torah and is mentioned only once in the haggadah. The Torah and Talmud steer us away from the worship of Moses to keep us focused on God. And so the Moses story means more to American history than to Jewish history. White Protestants made Moses central to the American story, and who benefited? Blacks and Jews.

MW: When Jewish immigration to the United States began in earnest, in the late nineteenth century, you mention that Protestants were ambivalent about them. Do you think they felt a little usurped by real Israelites, that the Jews’ presence in some way undermined the message of the New Testament as a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy?
BF: The Protestants didn’t especially like Jews, but they liked the Exodus story, and that helped the integration of the Jews. The Exodus story wasn’t a call to open their arms, but because the Protestants had used the story so powerfully, they couldn’t stop the Jews from using it. They were uncomfortable with Jews, but Jews knew the importance of the Exodus story to the American story, so it became our story, too. In 1889, the hundredth anniversary of George Washington’s inauguration, you got a free picture of George Washington with every ten pounds of matzoh. Moses was already living in America, so that made it easier for us to live here.

The complete interview can be found in the winter issue of Jewish Book World. To order the issue for $12.50, please e-mail jbc@jewishbooks.org or call 212-201-2920. More about Bruce Feiler can be found on his website.

Bob Dylan’s Christmas Album: What Good Is It? (Part 4)

Seth Rogovoy, author of Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet, wrote about Bob Dylan’s Judaism, Jews who write Christmas music, and the album itself. He is guest-blogging all week for MyJewishLearning and the Jewish Book Council.

When I first heard the songs on Bob Dylan’s Christmas in the Heart, I thought, not only is this the worst recording Bob Dylan has ever made, but it is literally unlistenable.

Bob Dylan’s worst, after all, is typically a lot better than many people’s best, and as good as even more people’s mediocre efforts. But in its lack of inspiration and imagination, and in the poor quality of the performances, especially in Dylan’s horrible vocals, this seemed nothing more than a tossed-off, misguided effort, ranking even below such Dylan misfires as Self Portrait, Knocked Out Loaded, and Down In The Groove. (What’s that, you say? You never heard of those? Well, there’s a reason.)

Which still leaves the unanswerable question, why? Or, more precisely, what does it mean?

I think, short of getting inside of Bob Dylan’s head — which, having studied him long and hard for more decades than I care to admit, is a place I’ve concluded you don’t want to go — we’ve established as well as we can why Dylan would want to make a Christmas album. It makes perfect sense in the greater context of Dylan’s career as an American musician, and even as a Jewish-American musician (see parts 1-3 of this series).

As for what it might mean, with the implication being what it might mean regarding Dylan’s self-identification as a Jew or a Christian, that’s a much more difficult question to answer. Indeed, it’s impossible to say.

It’s not my place to comment on the meaning of Christmas in contemporary America, although I’ve had plenty of chances to observe it up close and personal being celebrated by a wide cross-section of people from all walks of life. And I’ve often had it explained to me by those who do honor the holiday in one way or another that it has little to no religious significance (this is often by way of their inviting me to join in the festivities).

As with all of Bob Dylan’s songs, ultimately whatever “meaning” there is in a song is something personal that exists between the singer and the listener. It’s not for any writer or critic to decide a song’s ultimate meaning (I say this as one whose book about the profound Jewish meanings of much of Dylan’s work is on the eve of publication). I don’t even think it’s up to Bob Dylan to decide his songs’ ultimate meanings; if he offered up any interpretations, they’d be suspect, in any case.

As for me, I’ve warmed to Christmas in the Heart. Some of the performances are insinuating (I’m having a hard time getting his “Do You Hear What I Hear?” out of my head, for better or worse, and much to the annoyance of close friends and Twitter followers). There’s a certain amount of kitsch value to the recordings (although not nearly as much personality and humor as was found on last spring’s Together Through Life). There’s nothing really here to offend anyone of any persuasion, other than some of Dylan’s less attractive barks and growls, and some of the choir’s more offensive dollops of sugar.

Great Dylan it’s not; a great Christmas album it’s not. Another small chapter in the inscrutable career of Bob Dylan it is. And for that alone, it’s worth a listen.

Seth Rogovoy is the author of Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet, due from Scribner on Nov. 24, 2009. Please visit Rogovoy’s official website.

The Meaning of Bob Dylan’s Christmas Album: The Music (Part 3)

Seth Rogovoy, author of Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet, wrote yesterday about Jewish-American musicians recording Christmas music and on Monday about Bob Dylan’s Judaism. He is guest-blogging all week for MyJewishLearning and the Jewish Book Council.

Almost lost in all the commotion surrounding Bob Dylan’s new Christmas album, Christmas In the Heart — his first charity album, as the proceeds from all sales are being donated to hunger charities, according to his website — is a fair consideration of the music itself: where it sits in the context of Dylan’s overall output, and how it relates to the decades-old genre of Christmas recordings by popular music artists.

For the last twenty years or so, and especially over the last decade, Bob Dylan has been honing a particular sound, especially in his live appearances — about 100 concerts per year on what’s been termed his “Never Ending Tour.” Dylan’s aesthetic, which bears almost no relationship to that of any other artist in contemporary music, is a unique fusion of his own style of rock music (which in itself is a blend of many genres, including blues, folk, country, rockabilly, gospel, pop, and R&B) with pre-rock influences, such as western swing, bluegrass, jump blues, jazz, and Tin Pan Alley. More ethnic sounds have been creeping into Dylan’s work as of late, too, including the polka rhythms of his northern Minnesota youth, as well as Tex-Mex and French chansons, all of which gained prominence on his entertaining album released earlier this year, Together Through Life.

Seth Rogovoy--Photo by Scott Barrow

Given the revival of Dylan’s interest in pre-rock musical traditions, it makes sense that he would now, from a musical point of view, tackle the timeless genre of holiday music, which in and of itself spans multiple styles and sounds. (Indeed, it’s not for nothing that the back cover of the CD booklet sports a photo-illustration of the 1950s pin-up queen, Betty Page, dressed in a scanty Santa Claus outfit). On Christmas In the Heart, Dylan revels in the genre’s eclecticism, turning in a bluesy version of “The Christmas Blues,” a polka-infused “Must Be Santa,” and a tropical take on “Christmas Island” (as my son said disbelievingly upon first hearing this, “There’s such a thing as Hawaiian Christmas music?”). Dylan even has a go at the 13th-century hymn, “O’ Come All Ye Faithful (Adeste Fideles),” tackling the first verse in the original Latin, Bing Crosby-style.

Dylan has taken his licks for some of his less-inspired forays into the holiday-music tradition. The album employs a corps of backup singers who trade verses with Dylan on several numbers, and instead of sounding like the soulful gospel choirs on his albums of the late 1970s and 1980s, these arrangements sound more like the sugary-sweet Ray Conniff singers, making for, to say the least, an odd juxtaposition with Dylan’s craggy vocals.

A word about those vocals are in order: Dylan’s voice, even at its best, is a topic worthy of a blogpost series of its own, maybe even a book. Suffice it to say that even for those (like me) who sincerely believe that Dylan is a masterful singer who phrases with the best of them, Dylan’s voice has never sounded worse than it does here: raspy, phlegmy, downright scary. It’s hard to imagine anyone playing this music at a real holiday party; if Christmas music is supposed to evoke warm, holiday feelings, this sounds more like the soundtrack to Christmas courtesy of Ebenezer Scrooge (even if this is a very un-Scrooge-like charity effort).

And with only a few exceptions (“Must Be Santa,” “Here Comes Santa Claus”), the instrumental arrangements are uninspired, eschewing as they do the fine tradition of rocking holiday numbers such as Tom Petty’s “Christmas All Over Again,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” or any one of many fun versions of “Jingle Bell Rock,” any of which Dylan could have easily imprinted with his own idiosyncratic stamp.

Seth Rogovoy is the author of Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet, due from Scribner on Nov. 24, 2009. Please visit Rogovoy’s official website.

AJLSC Jewish Book Month Bibliographies

Posted by Naomi Firestone

The Association of Jewish Libraries of Southern California has created two wonderful 2009 Jewish Book Month annotated bibliography brochures. Thank you to Lisa Silverman, children’s book editor of Jewish Book World, for passing them along to us! The bibliography brochures were compiled by Blumenthal Library Staff, Sinai Temple, and Ellen G. Cole, Levine Library, Temple Isaiah, Los Angeles:

A Selected List of Recent Books and DVDs For Adults

A Selected List of Recent Books and DVDs For Children and Teens

To read more about AJLSC, please visit here.

Bob Dylan’s Christmas Album: The Jewish Contribution to the ‘Holiday’ Genre (Part 2)

Seth Rogovoy, author of Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet, wrote yesterday about Bob Dylan’s Judaism. He is guest-blogging all week for MyJewishLearning and the Jewish Book Council.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Bob Dylan’s Christmas album is that it took nearly fifty years for him to make one. There is a long-established tradition of pop artists recording Christmas music, after all. Artists in all genres, from classic pop crooners such as Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Mel Tormé to white-bread entertainers such as Connie Francis, Dinah Shore, Bobby Darin, Dean Martin, Perry Como, and Andy Williams, to early rock n’ rollers such as Elvis Presley and the Beatles, to country singers such as Gene Autry, Merle Haggard, and Eddy Arnold, to soul/R&B artists such as Charles Brown and Luther Vandross, to hard-rockers such as Foghat, Slade, and the White Stripes, to classical vocalists such as Andrea Bocelli and Luciano Pavarottti, to punk-rock artists such as the Kinks and the Ramones, to hip-hop artists Run-DMC, Raekwon, and Kurtis Blow — all have recorded Christmas songs or Christmas albums.

And not just a few of these songs happen to have been written or recorded by Jewish artists. In fact, the bestselling song of all time is a Christmas song written by a Jew. I speak, of course, of “White Christmas,” written by the son and grandson of cantors, Irving Berlin, born Israel Baline in eastern Belarus, the man also responsible for that springtime favorite, “Easter Parade.”

While Irving Berlin holds the title as author of the bestselling song (and Christmas song) of all time, another Jewish musician, saxophonist Kenny G — born Kenneth Bruce Gorelick — is the all-time Christmas-album champion, with not one but two albums in the all-time Top 10, including the number-one bestselling Christmas album of all time, Miracles. (Kenny G has recorded five “holiday” albums in sum, and to his credit, a few of these have included token Hanukkah songs.)

Other Jewish stars of the “holiday” music genre include Barry Manilow, Herb Alpert, Barbra Streisand, Carly Simon, Neil Diamond, and Mel Tormé. Tormé is both writer and originator of one of the most popular Christmas songs of all time, titled, aptly enough, “The Christmas Song,” but perhaps best known for its opening phrase, “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…” (Dylan includes a rendition of this song on his album.)

Other Jewish songwriters who hit paydirt catering to the seasonal music market included Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, whose efforts include “Let It Snow,” and Johnny Marks, who made something of a specialty of writing Christmas songs, including “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” “A Holly Jolly Christmas,” and that novelty classic, “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

There is perhaps nothing more American, nothing more traditional, and, perhaps, nothing more traditional for a Jewish-American musician, than recording Christmas music.

Seth Rogovoy is the author of Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet, due from Scribner on Nov. 24, 2009. Please visit Rogovoy’s official website.