Home

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land,
He's wandered the earth an exiled man.
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn,
He's always on trial for just being born.
He's the neighborhood bully....

Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he'll live by the rules that the world makes for him,
'Cause there's a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac.
He's the neighborhood bully.

In 1983, Bob Dylan released "Neighborhood Bully," from which the above is excerpted, on the appropriately titled album "Infidels." The song is a rousing defense of Israel and the Zionist cause.

It's also one of the reasons, as two new books on Dylan explore, that Dylan is one of the few rockers Zionists and non-pacifists can claim as their poet laureate. In "Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet" Seth Rogovoy looks to connect Dylan's music and lyrics with his Jewish heritage and influences. In "RightWing Bob: What the Liberal Media Doesn't Want You To Know About Bob Dylan" A.J. Weberman, creator of "Dylanology" and whom Rolling Stone in 2007 called "the king of all Dylan nuts," interprets Dylan's body of work as coded right-wing messaging.

But to someone who grew up on his parents' record collection, became an ardent Zionist, and supports the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bob Dylan is an easy musical hero.

In high school, I was a fairly obsessive John Lennon fan. But recently, as I walked by the Dakota building on Manhattan's East Side on my way to meet someone in Strawberry Fields, it wasn't difficult to imagine that if Lennon were still alive, he would view me (if he knew me) as a neocolonialist warmonger and I would think him an ungrateful fanatic.

Most musicians, in fact, aren't big fans of Israel or American foreign policy. Which makes it difficult for music fans who have to endure an album-length hectoring or a concert-turned-political rally from their favorite bands.

Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman, is different. His Jewish heritage, as Rogovoy finds, is something to which Dylan has returned time and again, unapologetically. And "Neighborhood Bully" is a perfect example of how he can stop himself from getting caught in the riptide of the latest fad before it sweeps him too far from his principled shore. And unsurprisingly, to people like Weberman, Dylan's moral compass makes him an imposter.

This has always made me more comfortable with Dylan's role as my lyrical Sherpa. As a writer, I'm prone to looking at life through the prism of prose, often wanting to see something in writing before I can trust it. And when I'm lost, Dylan often appears to point me the way, as I suspect is the case with a lot people.

My father and I both have migrated politically to a more realist outlook on the world, and I think Dylan would appreciate that. When Iran's behavior suggests a commitment to Israel's annihilation, or North Korea gets caught building a nuclear reactor in Syria, I think of the Dylan line my father loves to quote: "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."

When I was in high school, I wrote a paper on the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, and quoted Dylan in my introduction: "A hard rain's a-gonna fall."

One of my freelancers sent me a headshot for her 2010 state press credentials, cracking that I should keep in mind she's much younger than the photo indicates. I shot back the Dylan line from "My Back Pages": "I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now."

At the start of a recent relationship, the girl -- sensing the protective nature of my friends -- joked that her "intentions were honorable" with me. I told her I trusted that was the case, and that she reminded me of a Dylan line: "She doesn't have to say she's faithful, yet she's true like ice, like fire."

And as we survey the altered landscape of our culture each time something surprises us, who among us doesn't offer a slow head shake and a knowing smile and say: "The times, they are a-changin'"?

I started listening to Dylan so young that my first Dylan concert was with my father and several of my friends' parents. I sat next to my girlfriend's mother, and she and I competed to see who could be the first to recognize each song Dylan's gravelly vocal cords were churning out from his wandering raconteur mind.

She, being my parents' age, had seen Dylan enough to have an advantage, but I held my own. Years later, she died tragically, far too young. When I heard the news, I sat down on my bedroom floor, listened to Dylan's "Girl From the North Country," and cried.

There are very few musicians, knowing their positions on Israel and religion, I would feel comfortable quoting in the meaningful moments of my life. I'm not sure I can think of another one, in fact. Somehow, Dylan never forgot his roots -- not completely. I don't think those of us who grew up straddling both worlds -- those of Judaism and pop culture/music -- realize just how rare that is.

And if you asked me whether we could count on Dylan to continue to refuse, in the face of peer pressure and popular anti-Zionist outrage, to sell his people out -- I suppose I'd just have to quote you some Bob Dylan.

"Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim/ that he'll live by the rules that the world makes for him...."

Seth Mandel is the managing editor of The Jewish State.