The New Face of Judaism: David E. Kaufman’s new book argues that Bob Dylan was one of four artists in the 1960s who helped usher in a new era for Jews.
Jewhooing the Sixties
by David E. Kaufman
Brandeis University Press, 360 pages, $36
Review by Seth Rogovoy
The final week of September 1961 proved to be an auspicious one in American Jewish history — or, at least, in the history of Jewish-American celebrities. Within a matter of just a few days, Sandy Koufax set his first National League strikeout record; comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested on obscenity charges; a then-unknown folksinger named Bob Dylan would play an opening set for the Greenbriar Boys at Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village that would capture the attention of a reviewer for The New York Times; and a 19-year-old cabaret singer named Barbra Streisand made her off-Broadway debut.
The rest, as they say, is history, as well as the launching pad for David E. Kaufman’s “Jewhooing the Sixties: American Celebrity and Jewish Identity.”