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With a new (old) album, a tour with (old) new songs, and a giant new book, Bob Dylan remains a neverending juggernaut
I first began listening to Bob Dylan in earnest in early 1974, with the purchase of the contemporaneous album Planet Waves, a somewhat quiet, unassuming collection of deep, intimate songs – including the color-by-number anthem, “Forever Young” — recorded with The Band before they would go out on tour for the first time since Dylan’s premature retirement from the road in 1966 (the same year, incidentally, that the Beatles quit touring). Dylan’s return to touring after his eight-year layoff would pretty much continue for the rest of his career up to and including today.
I did not get to see Dylan in concert until fall 1978, missing two of his all-time greatest tours – his 1974 “comeback” tour with The Band, captured on the live album Before the Flood, and the following year’s “Rolling Thunder Revue,” the subject of several live concert albums, including 1976’s Hard Rain and the more recent The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings, a sprawling, 14-CD box set, released in 2019. (There was also an official two-CD set in 2002, and many widely available bootleg recordings of the legendary tour, as well as a Dylan concert film, Renaldo and Clara, released in 1978, and Martin Scorsese’s 2019 “pseudo-documentary” about the tour.)
Alas, my introduction to live Dylan was during one of his most bizarre tours, launched in Japan in early 1978 and initially captured on the April 1979 American release of Bob Dylan at Budokan (originally intended as a Japan-only release in August 1978). The 1978 tour was controversial, which Dylan acknowledged right from the stage of the old Boston Garden where I first saw him, when, halfway through the show, he paused and said to the audience, “I hope you don’t think this is Las Vegas music, or disco music, because you know it’s not.”
Bob Dylan, circa 1963 Photo by Ralph Baxter
It was a direct answer to critics’ complaints about the song arrangements and the sound of the band, as well as the overall stage aesthetic, which to some mimicked the tackiness of concerts by Neil Diamond and the recently deceased Elvis Presley. (Some blame manager and concert promoter Jerry Weintraub — who worked with both Presley and Diamond, as well as with Frank Sinatra – for Dylan’s cheesy, lounge-lizard presentation.)
Dylan didn’t help his cause by introducing from the stage such well-known songs as “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” or asking the audience, “Hey, what’s the name of this?” over the opening chords of “All Along Watchtower.” Doubters questioned the need for an eight-piece band (large for the time) and a trio of female backup singers. Some crueler critics even took to calling it the “Alimony Tour,” a nasty way of accusing Dylan of selling out in the wake of his divorce from his first wife, Sara.
Even though Dylan catered to the desires of audiences around the world to hear primarily his “greatest hits” — and this was one of the last tours on which he did so — he couched them in such weird arrangements that maybe he was justified in introducing them by name; otherwise, they may have remained unrecognizable to some. From where I sat in the cavernous, echoe-y Garden, it proved to be an inauspicious introduction to Bob Dylan, concert artist.
And now, 45 years later, Dylan’s label, Columbia Records, has seen fit to give the 1978 tour — as captured in those first two weeks in Japan — the full “Bootleg Series” treatment, with The Complete Budokan 1978, including two complete concerts at Tokyo’s Budokan, newly remixed and spread out over four CDs, featuring 36 previously unreleased performances. (The official release date is Friday, Nov. 17.)
Film still from 1966 European tour, by D. A. Pennebaker Courtesy of Bob Dylan Center
It is an album package for which Dylan fans — other than rabid completists (possibly including myself) — were not clamoring. This, rather than a more complete version of Before the Flood? This, rather than a live album from one of his two tours with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers? This, rather than a live album — or many live albums — capturing the many ups (and downs) of Dylan’s so-called Never Ending Tour, which began in June 1988 and, depending on how you define it, could include concerts as recent as the one I saw a few weeks ago in Schenectady, N.Y.? (Dylan’s current tour is officially billed as the “Rough and Rowdy Ways” world tour, which began in 2021 and is expected to continue into 2024, and marks a rare step forward in truth in advertising, as about half the concert is devoted to songs from the album of the same name.)
Yet this time around, the concerts at Budokan (if not the 1978 tour, which evolved over the course of a year and 114 concerts in Asia, the South Pacific, Europe, and North America) are what we’ve got. And the new package is not without its merits. The remixed and remastered sound is brilliant (which may or may not be a positive, depending upon how you feel about that sound). The recording captures an unusually chatty frontman, by Dylan’s standards (he has been known to utter nary a word in concert for decades), one seemingly in a terrific mood and also one who is downright funny.
“This is an unrecorded song – see if you can guess which one it is,” he says to the audience before launching into “Is Your Love in Vain,” which would not be released until Street Legal came out four months later. The humor – some of it mocking and self-deprecating – that Dylan evinces even suggests that he was fully aware that he was presenting himself as something akin to a Las Vegas showman.
From Left: Rick Danko, Robbie Robertson, Bob Dylan, Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson and Levon Helm, 1974 Photo by Barry Feinstein
If so, it would not be the first time nor anywhere near the last time that Dylan was playing a character — no less a fictive version of Dylan than Renaldo in Renaldo and Clara nor Jack Fate in his 2003 film, the aptly-titled Masked and Anonymous. (There is a whole school of thought that “Bob Dylan” himself is a put-on, a fictional character invented by a savvy youngster from Hibbing, Minnesota, named Robert Allen Zimmerman.)
But the context of where he had been and, with the benefit of hindsight, where he was headed musically might be the strongest reason to spend time with these glitzy tracks and their unusual arrangements. The use of backup singers, especially ones whose vocals were stylized in gospel-like call-and-response, offered a hint that Dylan was beginning a journey that would see him explore different aspects of Black music in subsequent albums.
Steve Douglas’ dominant saxophone lends many of the numbers a jazzy, R&B feel. A few songs are recontextualized as reggae numbers. In the years immediately following the 1978 tour, Dylan would dive deep into gospel music on several albums, into Motown and R&B on 1981’s “Shot of Love,” and reggae on 1983’s Infidels, which even saw Dylan hire Robbie Shakespeare and Sly Dunbar, famed Jamaican reggae producers, to play bass and drums.
The new Budokan collection is not the only new Dylan product seeing release this season. Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine is a fabulous new doorstop of a book whose 610 pages serve as a kind of portable version of the Bob Dylan Center and Archive in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which opened in May 2022. The volume spans Dylan’s entire life and career, featuring over 1,100 images from the archives — everything from concert ticket stubs to handwritten lyric sheets to rarely seen backstage photographs — all duly captioned by editors Mark Davidson and Parker Fishel, both curators at the Dylan Center.
The book also does a terrific job of contextualizing the many objects, images, and ephemera in 30 new essays by writers including Sean Wilentz, Greil Marcus, Lucy Sante, Tom Piazza, Richard Hell, Greg Tate, and Larry Sloman. Sonic Youth cofounder Lee Ranaldo uncovers the mystery of the very first recording featuring the voice of a teenaged Robert Allen Zimmerman and a couple of his hometown friends, “a casual lark for three Jewish boys on Christmas Eve.”
The 610-page ‘Mixing Up the Medicine’ serves as a kind of portable version of the Bob Dylan Center and Archive in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Courtesy of Callaway Arts & Entertainment
Marvin Karlins, who gave free folksinging and guitar lessons to students at the University of Minnesota’s Hillel, recounts meeting and tutoring an unassuming first-year student named Zimmerman, pointing him towards the thriving folk club scene in the Dinkytown section of Minneapolis. Griffin Ondaatje does yeoman’s work tracing the influence of Joseph Conrad in Dylan’s songs, and the New Yorker’s Amanda Petrusich reevaluates Dylan’s first book, Tarantula, in a short essay that should rightly renew interest in Dylan’s imaginative work of prose-poetry, “as deep a piece of literature as anything else he wrote.”
So much territory is covered in the book, including Dylan and Johnny Cash, Dylan and the Band, Dylan and the Beatles (especially George Harrison), Dylan and the Grateful Dead, Dylan on the silver screen, even Dylan’s ill-fated collaboration with Archibald MacLeish. You would have to arrange a multiple-month residency at the Dylan archive to soak in all that is presented in this volume, as attractive as it is informative. It isn’t pitched toward the general or casual reader, but if you have a Dylan fan in your life, your holiday gift-giving dilemma is solved.
Three weeks ago, the big news in popular music was the first album of new music by the Rolling Stones in 18 years, with plans for a 2024 tour. Last week, the Beatles — who broke up in 1970 — released their much-touted “final” single, “Now and Then,” reconstructed from a demo cassette John Lennon made in the late-1970s, featuring overdubbed parts by the three other Beatles (with a little help from “machine-assisted learning,” which sounds an awful lot like AI to me).
Given the fact that the 82-year-old Nobel Prize-winning rock poet Bob Dylan continues to tour incessantly, swinging through the Northeast most recently (and playing three shows in New York City next week), you can be forgiven if you wake up some mornings wondering what year it is, and perhaps more to the point, what world it is. That one’s easy: it’s Bob Dylan’s world, and we just happen to live in it. Lucky us.
The post With a new (old) album, a tour with (old) new songs, and a giant new book, Bob Dylan remains a neverending juggernaut appeared first on The Forward.
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What’s Next for Canadian Jews After the Recent Election
New Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney meets with Donald Trump in the White House on May 6, 2025. Photo: Wiki Commons.
The final votes were still being tallied when the questions started coming from friends and family in Israel and the United States: when are you leaving?
For many Jewish Canadians, last week’s federal election presented an opportunity to end the mealy-mouthed equivocation of the governing Liberals on antisemitism at home and Israel’s right to re-establish its security in the wake of the October 7 terrorist attacks.
Instead, they got another Liberal minority government, with Mark Carney as prime minister, but the same cast of characters around him.
Justin Trudeau’s government managed to commit numerous gaffes where the Jewish community was concerned, including feting a Waffen SS veteran in parliament. When a firestorm of antisemitic vandalism, arson and intimidation erupted after October 7, Trudeau usually made sure his outrage came with a side of caution against Islamophobia and all forms of hate.
On Israel, the Liberals displayed a moral equivalence that was a mix of outright credulity and cynical opportunism, most notoriously when multiple members of Trudeau’s cabinet, including the minister of innovation, science and industry, Francois-Phillipe Champagne and foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly parroted a Hamas Ministry of Health claim that the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital was bombed by the Israelis.
When the allegation turned out to be false, the government offered a late night Page Z15 style press release that was notable for how perfunctory it was. Trudeau’s government was also perceived as hostile to Jewish charities, or at least those with ties to Israel. It stripped both the Jewish National Fund and the Ne’eman Foundation of their charitable status.
Carney is not Trudeau. But he sent mixed signals to the Jewish community during the campaign.
On the one hand, he appointed Marco Mendicino, a former member of parliament and strong ally of both Israel and the Toronto Jewish community, as his chief of staff. However, he also retained many of Trudeau’s key lieutenants, including foreign minister Joly.
When Thomas Mulcair, the former leader of the socialist New Democratic Party, accused Joly of taking an anti-Israel position for electoral gain, Joly remarked: “Thomas, have you seen the demographics of my riding?”
On a state visit last year, Joly and fellow Liberal MP Ya’ara Sacks, who is a dual Israeli Canadian citizen, posed for a cringe-worthy photo op in which they held hands with Palestinian dictator Mahmoud Abbas.
Sacks fought a bruising campaign against Roman Baber in a riding in which close to 15% of the population is Jewish. At one point, she distributed a leaflet with a swastika on it, implying that Baber, who is a descendant of Jewish Holocaust victims, had some connection to Nazism due to his opposition to COVID restrictions and support for the Freedom Convoy protests in 2022.
Baber defeated Sacks in the election.
Liberal incumbent Adam van Koeverden was videotaped stumping for votes with the men of a local mosque, while a female Liberal colleague was speaking to the “sisters” downstairs. Van Koeverden pledged his support in ending the “genocide” in Gaza and for “Palestinian sovereignty.”
Somehow the Israeli hostages languishing under horrifying conditions and the recent arson and vandalism attacks on synagogues, Jewish day schools, and Jewish-owned business in Toronto and Montreal must have slipped his mind.
Van Koeverden retained his seat by a handy margin.
Last year, longtime Liberal MP Rob Oliphant was recorded by a constituent complaining about his government’s decision to pause funding to UNRWA over the UN agency’s ties to terrorism. Oliphant was so upset that he considered quitting over the decision. In the end, the Trudeau Liberals reinstated the UNRWA funding and never did miss a payment.
Oliphant retained his seat with more than 60% of the vote.
Although the overwhelming majority of Canada’s arms sales go to the United States and Saudi Arabia, under Trudeau’s leadership, the Liberals imposed an arms embargo on Israel and took the unusual step of cancelling a contract with an American defense contractor because Quebec-made ammunition was going to find its way to Israel.
At a campaign event, a heckler asked Carney about the “genocide” in Gaza, to which he responded: “I’m aware. That’s why we have an arms embargo.”
When called out on the statement, Carney implausibly claimed that he somehow didn’t hear the word “genocide” in the question.
Of the 28 Liberal candidates who signed the “Palestine Pledge” — which called for an arms embargo on Israel and unilateral recognition of a state of Palestine — 18 won re-election. They will now make their case for a more aggressive anti-Israel foreign policy to the other 151 Liberal caucus members.
There was, however, some cause for optimism.
Former Green Party MP Jenica Atwin, who the Liberals welcomed to their party in 2021 after her attacks on her former party’s leader Annamie Paul, a Black Jewish woman who refused to demonize Israel, didn’t run for re-election.
And Majid Jowhari, who was alleged to be an agent of the Iranian regime (claims he denied), lost his seat.
Party discipline is strictly imposed in Canada’s parliamentary system. But even assuming Carney does intend to be more supportive of Canadian Jews and respectful of the security needs of a democratic Israeli ally than his predecessor ever was, like Trudeau, he has a parliamentary minority.
The Conservatives are his only serious competition, and their leader, Pierre Poilievre, has been an unapologetic supporter of Israel and Canada’s Jewish community. Poilievre lost his seat and will be out of parliament in the near term, but he will run in a by-election in a friendlier riding.
It’s possible Carney will make common cause with the Conservatives on Israel and the Jews, but given the views of many members of his caucus and the need to distinguish himself from his main rival, it’s more likely that he’ll continue to rely on the support of the NDP, with whom Trudeau held power for two years via a supply and confidence agreement. The other alternative is to look to the separatist Bloc Quebecois.
Neither of the two is a reliable friend of Canadian Jews, but the NDP, who were reduced to seven seats (out of a total of 343 in parliament), is particularly awful. Their relationship with the Jewish community has deteriorated to the point that, when B’nai Brith sent out questions to each party in advance of the election, the NDP didn’t bother to respond.
The October 7 attacks made emigration a frequent topic of conversation among Canadian Jews. It remains to be seen whether last week’s election result will stop that conversation or accelerate it.
The post What’s Next for Canadian Jews After the Recent Election first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Nearly 60% of Palestinians Under the Palestinian Authority: October 7 Was ‘Correct Decision’
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas visiting the West Bank city of Jenin. Photo: Reuters/Mohamad Torokman
More than a year and a half after the Hamas-led atrocities of October 7, 2023, 59% of Palestinians polled in the “West Bank” still think that Hamas’ made the “correct decision” to torture, rape, burn alive, murder, and kidnap hundreds of hostages — even including children — according to the most respected Palestinian polling agency.
The new poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research asks: “In your view, was Hamas’ decision to launch its offensive against Israel on 7 October a correct or incorrect one?”
The polling shows a continuation of the pattern of decreasing support since December 2023, when the first poll was taken after the October 7 atrocities. It found that 82% of “West Bank” Palestinians thought October 7 was a “correct decision.” In March and June 2024, just over 70% of Palestinians there supported it. In September 2024, support dropped to 64%. And now, 59% still say it was a “correct decision.”
The slow but continuous decline in support directly correlates with the worsening military defeat in Gaza. Although the overwhelming majority of Palestinians supported and still support the atrocities, as the cost goes up, fewer think it was the correct decision.
This is the current Palestinian Authority (PA) message to its people as well. While the PA’s initial response to the Nazi-like pogrom was immediate, spontaneous celebration, it has now changed its message, arguing that while the October 7 atrocities were “legitimate resistance,” the suffering it caused Palestinians in Gaza has made them unjustified. Abbas’ advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash expressed this explicitly when he stressed five times that October 7 was “legitimate resistance” before saying that “what Hamas carried out in terms of its consequences is illegitimate because it led to catastrophic consequences.”
As the poll shows, support is even lower among Gazans, who are the ones suffering directly from the war. Those there who see the decision as “correct” is now at 37%, having dropped from a high of 71%.
Interestingly, a total of 78% of Gazans blame Israel or the US for “the current suffering of Gazans” while only 12% blame Hamas. Coupled with that is the finding that 77% of Palestinians overall (and 85% of Palestinians in the PA-controlled “West Bank”) “oppose the disarmament of Hamas in the Gaza Strip in order to stop the war on Gaza.”
The element that has certainly remained steady is that any Palestinian opposition to October 7 is not rooted in moral rejection of the atrocities, but in dissatisfaction with its fallout. It is not the massacre that many Palestinians regret but the cost.
Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). Itamar Marcus is the Founder and Director of PMW, where a version of this article first appeared.
The post Nearly 60% of Palestinians Under the Palestinian Authority: October 7 Was ‘Correct Decision’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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A Powerful Bipartisan Display of Support for Israel in Washington
The US Capitol Building. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
It’s not every day that the Speaker of the House talks about stuffing his pockets with pebbles. But that’s precisely what happened at a dinner in Washington, D.C., just a few nights ago. Speaker Mike Johnson was addressing a room packed with over 300 rabbis and pastors from across the country — Jewish and Christian leaders who had come to the nation’s capital with a shared mission: to advocate for Israel and to send a clear, unified message — when it comes to Israel, we speak with one voice.
With quiet intensity, Speaker Johnson described an unplanned, deeply moving nighttime visit to the Valley of Elah in Israel — the very place where David confronted Goliath. Beneath the stars, he bent down and picked up a few smooth stones, just like the one the young shepherd placed in his sling.
At first, he took only one or two. But then, sensing this was a once-in-a-lifetime moment, he filled his pockets with them. He told us that he still carries a few and occasionally hands them out to people who inspire him. “We all need courage in our pocket,” he said.
Moments earlier, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) had taken the podium. His voice cracking with emotion, he described his own nighttime visit to a high vantage point just outside Jerusalem, from which he could see Mount Nebo in the distance. That moment, he said, changed his life. It brought to mind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final speech, delivered the night before his assassination:
I don’t know what will happen now — we’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!
The following evening, Dr. King was slain by an assassin’s bullet. Senator Booker told us about his visit to the Lorraine Motel — now the National Civil Rights Museum — and the powerful words inscribed on the memorial at the assassination site: “Behold, the dreamer cometh.” The very words Joseph’s brothers sneered as they plotted to kill him. But Joseph’s dreams came true. Those dreams, once mocked, became the blueprint for a nation that would eventually inherit the Promised Land.
Two powerful Biblical images. Two American leaders. One shared commitment. That the Land of Israel is not just geography — it is the foundation of spiritual passion and a divine mission.
With that sacred footing, I joined my fellow clergy — rabbis from Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform communities, alongside Christian pastors from Baptist, Evangelical, Pentecostal, and mainline denominations — on Capitol Hill to speak with one voice, and to lobby for Israel. This incredible gathering of faith leaders was organized by the Zionist Rabbinic Coalition, American Christian Leaders for Israel, Israel Allies Foundation, and Eagles Wings.
It was historic. Never before has such a large, diverse, and spiritually charged delegation of faith leaders descended on Washington with a single, united message: that the Jewish state has the right — no, the obligation — to defend itself against those who deny its very existence and seek its destruction; and that there is a moral imperative to bring home the remaining hostages still trapped in the dark, fetid tunnels of Gaza, after more than eighteen agonizing months in captivity.
We didn’t agree on everything. Let’s be honest — you wouldn’t expect 300 faith leaders to agree on everything. Or maybe even on anything. But for 48 hours, we proved that we all agree on one thing: Israel.
What mattered wasn’t what divided us, but what united us. A shared belief that evil must be confronted. That truth must be spoken. That Israel is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy — and that no force on earth can stop the forward march of history.
Walking through the marble-floored, wood-paneled corridors of the Congressional office buildings, it was impossible not to feel the stark contrast between this moment and a far darker chapter in American Jewish history.
In October 1943, more than 400 Orthodox rabbis came to Washington to plead for action as millions of Jews were being slaughtered in Nazi Europe. They were ignored. President Franklin D. Roosevelt refused to meet with them. No Christian leaders stood by their side. And the press barely noticed.
But just over 80 years later, history is not repeating itself. This time, the White House sent an official representative to the opening event. More than 100 Members of Congress and Senators welcomed us into their offices. And our Christian brothers and sisters were not just present — they were passionate, eloquent, and deeply committed in their support.
To be clear, this wasn’t a partisan gathering. Democrats and Republicans embraced us, heard us out, and stood with us. Something fundamental has shifted.
This week, in every synagogue around the world, we will read the portion of Kedoshim. God commands us: “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Lev. 19:2). It’s a big ask. Holiness in this world doesn’t come naturally.
But the Hasidic masters — those spiritual giants who reached into the mystical realms — offered a beautiful interpretation. Holiness, they taught, doesn’t mean retreating from the world and becoming a hermit. It means inviting the Divine into the world, so that the world itself becomes holy. To be holy is to elevate the mundane — to ensure that what is sacred finds expression in our lives, in our institutions, and in every corner of our shared reality.
Kedoshim lays out some of the most practical and moral commandments in the Torah: don’t cheat, don’t gossip, don’t take revenge, love your neighbor. Because being holy isn’t about hiding away like a saint in a cave.
It’s about showing up in the world.
It’s about walking into the halls of power with pebbles in your pocket and conviction in your heart.
It’s about standing shoulder to shoulder with people who may not share your theology but who share your values.
And it’s about remembering that holiness isn’t some distant, glowing aura — it’s what happens when you choose to do what’s right, even when it’s hard.
And that’s what we were doing on the Hill. I left Washington with two powerful images in my mind. One was Speaker Johnson’s smooth pebbles — symbols of faith, preparation, and courage in the face of towering threats. The other was Senator Booker’s tearful voice, evoking Joseph — the dreamer thrown into a pit by his brothers, only to rise and save a nation.
Both Biblical stories end with redemption. But both begin with someone daring to stand up and be a believer against the odds. To share the prophecy. To walk into the battlefield. To create a future shaped by faith and salvation.
In the Valley of Elah, David was challenged by his brother Eliav, who saw his presence on the battlefield as an intrusion. David responded incredulously: “Why shouldn’t I be here? Who says my presence doesn’t matter?” He was right.
And in Kedoshim, God tells us: “Be holy.” He’s telling us that everyone has the power to bring holiness into the world — right here, right now.
This week in Washington, those two ideas converged. We belonged there — on the battlefield. And we brought holiness with us: into the halls of power, and through the corridors of influence. For Israel. For truth. For the world. And maybe — for redemption too.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
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