I am twelve years old, and it is my birthday.

My birthday gift: my first guitar, and with it, a Bob Dylan songbook. 

The rest is history — my own musical history, cultural history, and personal history. Bob Dylan has been part of my life for almost six decades — a constant presence.

Today, I salute Bob Dylan — not as a singer-songwriter, or as an author, or as a cultural icon. 

Rather, today I turn to Bob Dylan, as a Jewish prophet of antisemitism.

The song is “Neighborhood Bully,”‘ which appeared on his “Infidels” album, which is celebrating the fortieth anniversary of its release.

In this song, probably written during the war in Lebanon in 1982, Dylan produced one of the most affirmatively-Jewish songs in rock music.

There is no better rock song for this moment in our history.

The text:

Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man
His enemies say he’s on their land
They got him outnumbered about a million to one
He got no place to escape to, no place to run
He’s the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully he just lives to survive
He’s criticized and condemned for being alive
He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin
He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in
He’s the neighborhood bully.

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, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad
The bombs were meant for him. He was supposed to feel bad
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.

Well, he got no allies to really speak of
What he gets he must pay for, he don’t get it out of love
He buys obsolete weapons and he won’t be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side
He’s the neighborhood bully.

Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease
Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep
He’s the neighborhood bully.

Every empire that’s enslaved him is gone
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon
He’s made a garden of paradise in the desert sand
In bed with nobody, under no one’s command
He’s the neighborhood bully.

Now his holiest books have been trampled upon
No contract that he signed was worth that what it was written on
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health
He’s the neighborhood bully.

What’s anybody indebted to him for?
Nothing, they say. He just likes to cause war
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed
They wait for this bully like a dog waits for feed
He’s the neighborhood bully.

What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers? Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill
Running out the clock, time standing still
Neighborhood bully.

In this song, Dylan presents the history of the Jewish people in galut: “The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land; he’s wandered the earth an exiled man…” 

He sings of the terrors of Kristallnacht: “Now his holiest books have been trampled upon…”

Here is what Dylan would have sensed.

The Holocaust was not simply a war against the Jews.

The Holocaust was a war against Judaism itself — and beyond that, a war against God.

The “purpose” of Kristallnacht wasn’t the broken glass; it was the violation of Jewish texts. As Alon Confino wrote in “A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide”:

The Nazis burned the Hebrew Bible on November 9 and 10, 1938. Not one copy but thousands, not in one place but in hundreds of communities across the Reich…In Pestalozzistrasse, they shredded Torah scrolls and prayer books as well as religious objects from the altar littered the area near the synagogue. Children were mockingly marching on the shredded Torah with top hats on.

Notice, please: “Children were mockingly marching on the shredded Torah with top hats on” — as a demonic parody of Simchat Torah — which was when the pogrom in Israel began several weeks.

But, there is a larger message — in this song, and in this larger narrative. 

The Jews are alone — existentially alone.

I feel that radical, existential loneliness, as I watch the crowds of protestors — in the streets of major cities all over the world, and in America. They are calling for death to the Jews. In Brooklyn this past weekend, the police warned Jews to stay off the streets.

Even and especially on college campuses. Students marching in Los Angeles, chanting “Jews to genocide.” Jewish students cowering in fear at Cooper Union in New York. Jewish students threatened at Cornell University.

This is raw, organized Jew-hatred, the likes of which this world has not seen since Auschwitz.

The physical safety of the Jewish people is at risk — everywhere.

“The neighborhood bully he just lives to survive; he’s criticized and condemned for being alive…”

I am not apologizing.

Not in the face of the world’s stunning hypocrisy. “Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace. They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease..”

Dylan refers to Israel’s 1981 bombing of Osirak, the Iraqi bomb factory which was set up to produce weapons-grade plutonium. “Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized. Old women condemned him, said he should apologize. Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad..”

Israel is in a classic double bind.

This is what the Israeli public intellectual, Micah Goodman, has to say about this, in an interview in the Times of Israel:

When we speak about our international relationships, there are two emotions we have to be thinking about: love and fear.

We want Western civilization to love us. We want Bono to sing songs about us…

In the Middle East, we don’t want to be loved. We want to be feared. We want Hezbollah to have a panic attack when they think about the Israeli Defense Forces. We want Iran to shiver when it thinks about the possibility of a military interaction with Israel. We want the Middle East to be in fear of us.

But here’s the problem. There is a zero-sum game between these emotions. Everything that we do to restore the fear is going to erode the love. It will make people in the West not love us.

if we try to keep the West loving us and writing songs about us, we will not restore the fear of the Middle East for us. Now, many of these people who like us after we are hit will not like us when we hit back. So it’s a zero-sum game. .

This is a key insight into the meaning of this present moment in Jewish history.

The Jewish State can choose love. We can be loved by the nations of the world, which would be lovely. Certainly, we would want respect, from others and from ourselves, which would impose a regiment of ethical struggle upon the Jews and a Jewish army, which is explicit in the code of ethics of the Israel Defense Forces, to which Israel tries to adhere.

But, in the Middle East, in a hostile neighborhood, there is only one way to survive. And that is to be feared.

It is a devastating truth.

You might say about “Neighborhood Bully,” echoing the Stones” “It’s only rock and roll…”

But, I would hasten to add: “…but I like it.”

This is the song that Jews, and others, need to hear today.