Well, that was exhausting.

Round One of our Jewish Celebrity March Madness had some predictable results (did anyone really think Jake Tapper could take the Notorious RBG?), but also some upsets, and some really close races.  Here’s a recap of just a few showdowns:

• Neither member of Broad City is making it past the first round! Abbi and Ilana won’t have to go head to head.
• Winona Ryder held a lead on Rachel Weisz until the last few hours of the competition, and then BOOM! Ditto a last-minute reversal taking the round from Paul Rudd and giving it to ScarJo.
• Bette vs. Babs? Dylan vs. Joel? Bette, and Joel, it turns out.
• In a stunning turn of events, Drake is out in the first round! Let’s hear it for Daveed Diggs!
• Bernie loses, yet again, though this was much closer than the 2016 primaries.

And so, we present to you, the Round 2 bracket:

Go ahead and vote below; you have until Friday morning the 24th, 9 a.m. Eastern Time. Also, keep tweeting us angrily (new hashtag— #JewishCelebs); you had the moral high-ground for Round 1, but now, these are your picks.

And is the anticipation killing you? Well, if you sign up for emails below, you’ll have the results of Round 2 emailed to you, before Round 3 is live:

THE ACTORS:

THE MUSICIANS:

MOVERS AND SHAKERS:

OTHER:

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Bob Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman in 1941, has won the Nobel Prize in Literature, 2016.  He now joins the ranks of American authors Toni Morrison, John Steinbeck, and Ernest Hemingway, also recipients of this honor. He is welcome into the fellowship of the Jewish Saul Bellow, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Patrick Modiano (on his father’s side).

On Aish.com, Ilan Preskovsky offered Dylan an unqualified “Mazal tov,” and reminded readers that Bob was “born to a fairly observant Jewish family,” and “had a decidedly Jewish upbringing.” (Preskovsky seems to forgive Dylan for the unfortunate detour into evangelical Christianity.) This encomium, like all those in the Jewish press, mentions the simple and haunting “Forever Young” as having its origin in the Biblical priestly blessing. However, perhaps it is time to begin honoring Bob Dylan with the very Jewish virtue of age.

Dylan is now a member of a different and venerable club, of old Jewish men who have become iconic figures of cultural and personal longevity. (He should live to be a hundred and twenty!)

In a recent David Remnick profile in The New Yorker of Dylan’s almost landsman Leonard Cohen, another prophetic songwriter from just slightly farther north, Dylan analyzes the brilliance of his Canadian friend.  Cohen, Dylan explains, is not principally a chronicler of depressing experiences, but an author of lyrical dialogues in the mode of Irving Berlin.  Berlin, born Israel Beilin in 1888, by the time of his death at the age of 101, had written several of the greatest anthems of popular music by holding the listener’s attention, “as if he’s holding a conversation and telling you something, but him doing all the talking, but the listener keeps listening.”  Dylan describes Cohen as engaged in the ongoing dialogue in which he himself has participated with listeners for more than fifty years, the same one featuring Berlin’s melancholy question, “What’ll I do with just a photograph/to tell my troubles to/When I’m alone/with only dreams of you/that won’t come true/What’ll I do?”

Then there is Ira Gershwin, (Israel Gershowitz, 1896-1983) whose brief partnership with his brother George ended with his sad poem to a musician who indeed, dying at the age of thirty-nine, was “forever young.” (“The Rockies may tumble/Gibraltar may crumble/they’re only made of clay/but, our love is here to stay”).

How about Yip Harburg (Isadore Hochberg, 1896-1981)?  His meditation on the elusive nature of dreams, accompanied by the minor key notes of Harold Arlen, (Hyman Arluck), reflects the sadness of the Jewish immigrant experience as well as the human inability to ever reach the symbol that rewarded Noah after the flood, “Somewhere over the rainbow/skies are blue/and the dreams that you dare to dream/Really do come true.”

There are many Dylan lyrics which allude to Jewish experiences, from Abraham’s defiant challenge to God in “Highway 61 Revisited” to the perennial quest for freedom in “Blowin’ in the Wind,” a song which captured in some part the struggles of the Civil Rights movement in which he participated.

Yet somehow, “Forever Young,” a reassuring patriarchal prayer, encloses in its brief verses the true experience of a Jewish parent, or any parent, trying to extend wisdom to a child. Because we don’t want that child, or grandchild, to stay “forever young.” We want him or her to eventually be old, stable, and secure.

We know that our child will pass through the bitterness of “Positively Fourth Street,” the chaos of “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” and the romanticism of “Boots of Spanish Leather.” Like Jacob climbing the ladder and attaining a new adult identity, we want him or her to know the truth, the light, and courage listed as essential in Dylan’s song.  

Image: Xavier Badosa via Flickr

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Last month, Bob Dylan was in the news for a new interactive music video for “Like a Rolling Stone” (brought to you by Israeli director Vania Heymann). This month, he’s in the news for alleged racism. The Council of Croats in France has sued Dylan over a comment he made analogizing Croats to Nazis in a 2012 Rolling Stone interview with Mikal Gilmore.

“This country is just too fucked up about color. It’s a distraction. People at each other’s throats just because they are of a different color. It’s the height of insanity, and it will hold any nation back – or any neighborhood back. Or any anything back. Blacks know that some whites didn’t want to give up slavery – that if they had their way, they would still be under the yoke, and they can’t pretend they don’t know that. If you got a slave master or Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that. That stuff lingers to this day. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood.”

The Guardian reports that after the comments were made, many Croatian radio stations decided to stop playing Dylan’s songs.

According to CRICCF secretary general Vlatko Maric, Parisian courts have accepted to hear their case and asked Dylan to appear as part of the hearing. “[Dylan’s comments were] an incitement to hatred,” Marić said in a statement. Although France has strict hate speech laws, CRICCF stated that all they are seeking is an apology.

And, just a few weeks ago, Dylan was awarded France’s Legion of Honour. We’ll see what happens next.

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Just last month, Rolling Stone featured Jahar Tsarnaev on its cover, making its editorial decision the most debated controversy for about 15 minutes. But on Friday, a calmer cover hits the stands, depicting a young Bob Dylan, along with a story delving deep into the mystery behind the musician’s mocked 1970 album Self Portrait.

Focusing on the largely untold story of Self Portrait‘s creation, the cover story features new interviews with Dylan collaborators Al Kooper, David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, David Bromberg and Happy Traum. “I thought it was strange, strange, strange,” says Kooper of Self Portrait, which consists mainly of cover songs. “Why is the Shakespeare of songwriting doing other people’s songs? And why is he doing all these old folk songs? What’s going on?”

When the album first came out, Rolling Stone critic Greil Marcus asked “What is this shit?” Perhaps the article, written by Mikal Gilmore, will answer that question. We have, in fact, been wondering.

(Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty)

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• Jewish Deadheads: because of course. [JTA]

• Bob Dylan’s perplexing artwork. [NY Observer]

• David Mamet’s new play, The Anarchist, is closing after 17 performances. [Arts Beat]

• Sheldon Adelson says he doesn’t cry when he loses. [Daily Intel]

• Maccabi Tel Aviv captain Guy Pnini was suspended after calling a teammate a Nazi. [Reuters]

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• Fresh off his Barclays Center concert (which a dad confirmed to us was great), Bob Dylan is headed uptown to unveil 30 piece of his “Revisionist Art.” Talk about a renaissance man. [NY Post]

• Culture Kvetch Jacob Silverman reintroduces the poetry of Samuel Greenberg, the cult writer who died of tuburculous in 1917, at the age of 23. [Poetry Foundation]

• Talking about Gary Shteyngart’s nipples (at his roast, so it’s okay). [NY Observer]

• Why Judy Blume is always right. [LA Review of Books]

• Jewcy’s own Miriam Krule shares the only kale recipe you’ll ever need. [Slate]

• Scarlett Johansson does the weather, obviously. [NBC]

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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• Kiryat Shmona, Israel’s top soccer team, lost to Belarus’ BATE in the qualifying rounds of the Champions League.

• Woody Allen says he was a good basketball player in high school.

• Another Etgar Keret gem, this one about an especially harrowing post 9/11 plane ride.

• Bob Dylan does not like street dancing scenes.

• The rabbi of a long-deteriorating Lower East Side Synagogue is hoping a developer will convert the building into residential units—with a small sanctuary.

• Happy Endings’ Adam Pally (the anti-Joey) goes out of character to discuss co-star Elisha Cuthbert’s scent with The Indoor Kids.

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• Concert technical issues be damned, Liza Minnelli’s still got it.

• Matthew Shaer breaks down (get it!) the history of book recycling—a fate that Jonah Lehrer’s quote-fabricating book, Imagine, will likely soon meet.

• It looks like that new H&H bagels will not actually be opening in downtown Manhattan. Quit playing games with our heart, bagel lords.

• Anthony Wiener and Huma Abedin moved into fancy new Park Avenue digs.

• Richard Roeper gives his approval of Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg’s performances in their new movie, Celeste and Jesse Forever.

• NBC’s Olympic commentators mistook Jesse Eisenberg, sitting in the stands, for Mark Zuckerberg. Now that’s what we call committing to the character.

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• Bob Dylan is celebrating the 50th anniversary of his first album with a new album, out in September.

• Billionaires, they’re just like us (with lower interest rates): Mark Zuckerberg refinanced his California home’s $6 million mortgage.

• Introducing Dossim, a website for young Haredim by young Haredim.

• Donald Sobel, the brilliant Encyclopedia Brown creator, has died at 87.

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• At last, a simple flow chart that tells you if/why you’re anti-Semitic, from Tablet Magazine’s Marc Tracy.

• That time Jason Schwartzman accidentally wore a g-string.

• Spotted: Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan dining at a kosher restaurant while honeymooning in Rome.

• Jediists and Matrixists are (religious) people too.

• Bob Dylan was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Booyah.

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