'Jews Who Rock' Only Scratches Surface of Fame and Faith

Exhibit Fails To Go Beyond Celebrity 'Jewspotting'

By Laura Hodes for The Jewish Daily Forward

In the gallery of Jewish Museum Milwaukee, sunlight streams in through windows that display colorful floor-to-ceiling banners from a concert shot taken at Milwaukee Summerfest in 1995. Nearby is a display of a redwood and abalone inlay bass guitar loaned to the museum by members of Howie Epstein’s family. Howie, bassist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, also played on recordings by Bob Dylan, Stevie Nicks, the Village People, Warren Zevon and others, and was born in Milwaukee and attended local Nicolet High School.

Throughout the exhibit “Jews Who Rock: A Musical History Tour,” currently on view at the museum, are artifacts and photos from a variety of Jewish artists — some surprising (Geddy Lee of Rush, Warren Zevon), some not so surprising (Barry Manilow, Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, Paul Simon).

Visitors learn much about the Jewish backgrounds of various rockers. What we don’t learn, however, is how Judaism influenced their music, either as something to inspire or react against. For instance, a plaque informs us that Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman, but we don’t learn about how writers have argued that Dylan rejected his Judaism and became an uber-assimilationist, as David E. Kaufman wrote in “Jewhooing the Sixties.” Others have argued the very opposite — Seth Rogovoy posits that Dylan’s lyrics were actually inspired by his Jewish heritage in “Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet.”

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