This was published last year in the LA Jewish Journal and this year
some other papers are running it.  It is such a weird juxtaposition of
people----Dylan and Brando.  Louis Kemp, of Kemp Seafoods, the author,
is a childhood friend of Bob Dylan.

Brando at the Seder
Louie Kemp

You might remember him as Don Vito Corleone, Stanley Kowalski or the
eerie Col. Walter E. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now , but I remember Marlon
Brando as a mensch and a personal friend of the Jewish people when
they needed it most.

I got to know Marlon about thirty years ago
through a mutual friend. His son, Christian, came to work for me in
fisheries I owned in Alaska and Minnesota. Marlon impressed me as a
dedicated parent. He would often call me to check on his boy with all
the tenacity and loving concern of a Jewish mother: Was he eating
enough? Did he get to work on time? Was he hanging out with the right
people?

Christian was a great kid. He worked hard, had a good attitude and
earned the respect of all his co-workers.

In the mid-1970s, when I would visit Los Angeles from my home in
Minnesota, Marlon and I would get together. I was becoming
increasingly involved in my religion and he would tell me with great
pride and satisfaction about his support for Israel even before it
became a State. Marlon explained that in 1946, two years before Israel
achieved statehood, he desperately believed that the survivors of the
Holocaust deserved to have their own land where they could live free
from oppression and the anti-Semitic tyranny
of the outside world.

True to form, Marlon put his money where his mouth was and donated all
of his proceeds from the play, ‘A Flag Is Born,’ to the Irgun, a
Zionist political group dedicated to rescuing European Jewry and the
establishment of Israel as an independent sovereign nation. He
continued his donations and charitable work over the entire two-year
run of the play as it went from Broadway to touring destinations
around the United States.

‘A people that fought so hard to survive need and deserve their own
land,’ he told me. ‘I did all that I could and actively supported
Israel’s statehood anyway I was able.’

Marlon also told me with great emotion that his success in theater and
movies was largely due to the Jewish people in New York who befriended
and taught him. He warmly mentioned Stella Adler, the legendary acting
coach who both taught Marlon his craft and housed him with her family
while he was getting on his feet as an actor. He was also
especially proud of the fact that he could converse in Yiddish, having
learned it while living with her family.

One of my visits to Los Angeles coincided with Passover. I was not yet
Orthodox and made plans to attend a seder at a local synagogue with my
sister. Marlon called me that very day and invited me out to dinner. I
graciously declined, explaining that it was Passover and I was going
to a seder. Marlon became audibly excited over the phone and said,
‘Passover—I’ve always wanted to attend a seder. Can I come with
you?’ He had made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I told him it could
be arranged and called the synagogue to add one more to our list.

A short time later, Marlon called me back and asked if he could bring
a friend. I said, yes, by all means, never thinking to ask his
friend’s name.

I called the shul again. They were a little less patient this time and
begrudgingly told me that they could squeeze one more person in, but
this
was absolutely the last one as they were now officially sold out.

Still later that day, I received a phone call from a childhood friend
of mine who had become a well-known singer/songwriter. Being Jewish
himself, and hearing I was going to a seder, he asked if he and his
wife could go along. The shul was unhappy to receive my most recent
request, but somehow I softened the heart of the receptionist and she
agreed to let my people go—to the seder.

I will never forget the sight of our table in the synagogue. Marlon
Brando was to my left and sitting next to him was his guest. This was
during the height of Marlon’s involvement with Native American causes
and he had brought with him noted Indian activist Dennis Banks of
Wounded Knee fame.

Banks was dressed in full Indian regalia: buckskin tassles on his
clothes and long braids hanging down from a headband, which sported a
feather.

My childhood friend Bob Dylan sat to my right, joined by his wife,
my sister Sharon, and other friends.

At first the seder progressed normally without anyone in the temple
noticing anything out of the ordinary. After about forty-five minutes,
the rabbi figured out that ours was not your average seder table. ‘Mr.
Brando, would you please do us the honor of reading the next passage
from the Hagaddah,’ he said. Marlon said, ‘It would be my pleasure.’

He smiled broadly, stood up and delivered the passage from the
Hagaddah as if he were reading Shakespeare on Broadway.

Mouths fell open and eyes focused on the speaker with an intensity any
rabbi would covet. When he was done I think people actually paused,
wondering if they should applaud.

Somewhat later the rabbi approached another member of our table.

‘Mr. Dylan, would you do us the honor of singing us a song?’

The rabbi pulled out an acoustic guitar. I thought he would politely
decline

Much to my surprise Bob said yes and performed an
impromptu rendition of ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ to the stunned shul of
about 300 seder guests. The incongruity of a seder, with Marlon Brando
reading the Hagaddah followed by a Bob Dylan serenade, would have made
for a good Fellini movie. Needless to say, everyone was both shocked
and thrilled by this unusual Hollywood-style Passover miracle. The
entire shul came by to shake both Marlon and Bob’s hands and they
actually paused and spent time with everyone.

Just a couple of years ago, Marlon called me up in Minnesota, out of
the blue. We had kept in touch through the trials and tribulations he
was going through with his family. ‘Louie Kemp,’ he said, ‘I’ve been
thinking about you. Twenty years ago you took me to a seder. I want
you to know that I still think about it to this very day. In fact, I
was thinking about it today and that’s why I called you.’

He continued to thank me and tell me of the special spiritual impact
it had on him and how much he
identified with a people freeing themselves from bondage and uniting
to celebrate and remember that freedom.

He told me he was sending his three youngest children to a Jewish day
school in Los Angeles. When I asked him why, he said, ‘Louie, don’t
you know that the Jewish schools are the best?’ I could almost hear
him smiling over the phone.

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Marlon was The Godfather of Love! Unfortunately, the Politically Correct masses swarmed in on his infamous Larry King (b. Lawrence Harvey Zeiger, Bklyn, umpteenth sweet, Jewish NYer) interview, in which he stated the obvious: “Jews run Hollywood!” In response, sweet
Ben Stein penned an entire E! online article: “Do Jews run Hollywood? You bet they do - and what of it?” -D, NYC “The extraordinary European Jews who emigrated to New York were enriching the city’s intellectual life with an intensity that has probably never been equaled anywhere during a comparable period of time. I was raised largely by these Jews...They were my teachers; they were my employers; they were my friends. They introduced me to a world of books and ideas
that I didn’t know existed” - MARLON BRANDO, excerpt from “Songs My Mother Taught Me".."Sons of a peddler in upstate New York, Sam, Lee & Jacob Shubert built their own theatre row from one end of Broadway to the other. They filled their stages with over five hundred plays and helped advance the careers of Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, and Fanny Brice” - THE JEWISH BOOK OF LISTS BY JOEL SAMBERG