In 1978, a young graduate student traveling in India named Daniel Matt wrote to Gershom Scholem, the 80-year-old Professor of Jewish Mysticism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The letter discussed his experiences, his ambitious plans to translate the central text of Jewish mysticism, the Zohar, and, most of all, about Bob Dylan, who he hoped Scholem might appreciate.

      I’m also sending you Bob Dylan Approximately, whose author believes that Dylan draws
      on Kabbalistic sources consciously or unconsciously (whatever that means). The thesis
      does not hold water ... Be that as it may, the book is still interesting as a collage, and
      will give you a hippie’s perspective on Robert Zimmerman (Dylan’s real name).

Scholem replied:

      Your detailed account of your travels in the East and your experiences there with several
      friends and gurus I read with great interest ... Who was or is Robert Zimmerman, called
      Bob Dylan? ... Please let me know if he is a Jew. The Zimmermans divide 50% into Jews
      and goyim ... My receptivity to music is, alas, nothing, therefore I forego the pleasure of
      listening to “Blonde on Blonde” or even the more seducing “Desire.” The title “Highway 61”
      arouses no desire in me. Maybe I am too old for it.

“Who was or is Robert Zimmerman, called Bob Dylan?” Is he a Jew? Good questions! Almost from the beginning of his career Bob Dylan né Zimmerman has had an odd, intense, divisive, often mysterious, relationship with Jews and Judaism. For some Jews (and Christians too) he has become a virtually messianic figure. In his new book, Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet, Seth Rogovoy portrays him as a kind of biblical prophet on the order of Isaiah or Jeremiah.

I’m not exaggerating the cult-like devotion of those whom I’ve come to call “the Bobolators” (after Shakespeare’s “Bardolators”). Although there are many brilliant commentators who are able to separate the wheat from the chaff, there are others for whom there is no chaff, those for whom his every word and line in every lyric, no matter how casual or trivial, seems to be a burning bush of signification that speaks with numinous authority in a blaze of encrypted poetry.

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