The unexpected Jewish side of Woody Guthrie

The folk singer best known for “This Land Is Your Land” also wrote lyrics celebrating Chanukah.

That lesser-known side of Woody Guthrie is the focus of “Dust Bowls and Jewish Souls: Another Side of Woody Guthrie,” a documentary that premiered June 4 at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival.

Steven Pressman, a former journalist and filmmaker from San Francisco, said the project began four years ago when he visited an exhibit at New York’s Morgan Library and Museum. Among Guthrie artifacts, he discovered lyrics for a Chanukah song.

“Like most of us, I knew ‘This Land Is Your Land’ and the Dust Bowl stuff and not much more,” Pressman told JNS. Seeing the lyrics prompted a question: “What on earth does Woody Guthrie have to do with Chanukah?”

The answer lies largely in Guthrie’s family and professional relationships.

His second wife, Marjorie Guthrie, was Jewish, and her mother, Aliza Greenblatt, was a celebrated Yiddish poet. Guthrie became interested in Jewish traditions and holidays, while his longtime record label, Folkways, was founded by Jewish American producer Moe Asch, son of noted Yiddish author Sholem Asch.

The Guthrie household incorporated elements of Jewish life. Family members displayed a menorah during Chanukah and attended Passover seders. Home movies show daughter Nora Guthrie holding the afikoman. Son Arlo Guthrie, who later became a prominent folk singer, even had what Pressman described as a bar mitzvah of sorts.

One of Guthrie’s Jewish-themed compositions, “The Many and the Few,” contains 20 stanzas, most devoted to the Chanukah story. The song begins with Cyrus the Great, the Persian ruler who allowed Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple.

As Pressman dug deeper, he came to see Guthrie in a different light.

“Suddenly, I came to realize that this iconic American cultural figure … was immersed in this Jewish world,” he said.

The Guthrie family played a key role in making the documentary, providing photographs, home movies and other archival material. Two of Guthrie’s three surviving children, Arlo and Nora, were interviewed on camera.

Associate producer Lisa Stark, a former television reporter, said the family’s willingness to share personal footage helped bring the story to life.

The videos showed ordinary family moments, including Friday-night meals and gatherings with Greenblatt, whom the children knew as their Bubby.

Pressman said he never expected Guthrie to become the subject of one of his films, all of which previously focused on Jewish themes.

“I never imagined making a Jewish film about Woody Guthrie,” he said. “When we started finding out all these threads, it just opened my eyes completely.”

Neither Pressman nor Stark describes the Guthries as observant Jews. Still, the children born to Marjorie Guthrie were Jewish according to Jewish law, and the family maintained strong ties to Greenblatt and aspects of Jewish culture.

The film also shines a spotlight on Greenblatt herself. Pressman credited Aaron Lansky, founder of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, with helping connect the story of the famed Yiddish poet to that of her son-in-law.

Lansky had developed a relationship with Marjorie Guthrie after the founding of the center in 1980. According to Pressman, Lansky helped uncover links between two worlds that had rarely been considered together: Guthrie’s place in American folk music and Greenblatt’s role in Yiddish literary culture.

Marjorie Guthrie later served on the Yiddish Book Center’s board and helped raise funds for the organization.

Pressman emphasized that the documentary does not claim to have discovered Guthrie’s Jewish connections. Rather, he said, it is the first project to assemble the various strands of the story into a single narrative.

“We can’t take credit for discovering the story,” he said. “What we can take credit for is telling it in a broader way that puts it all together.”

The filmmakers believe many viewers will encounter this aspect of Guthrie’s life for the first time.

The documentary also touches on contemporary concerns about antisemitism. Pressman noted that Guthrie wrote about prejudice and injustice decades ago, addressing both racism and antisemitism.

Quoting Guthrie’s hope that humanity might one day “get rid of the fascists,” Pressman said the singer would likely be disappointed that such hatred remains.

Whether the film changes minds, he said, is uncertain. But it offers a reminder that one of America’s most celebrated folk singers had a meaningful connection to Jewish life — a story that has largely remained outside the spotlight.