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For Bob Dylan’s 85th birthday, an 85-minute playlist
Nobel Prize-winning song-poet Bob Dylan turns 85 on Sunday, May 24. In order to celebrate the august occasion, we have put together an 85-minute playlist featuring one minute of music for every year Dylan has been alive. This playlist isn’t meant to summarize or stand in for Dylan’s overall body of work, which numbers well over 600 songs, nor is it intended to suggest that these are his best songs. Rather, this is a journey through Dylan’s vast songbook, purposely avoiding the tried-and-true in favor of highlighting almost two dozen lesser-known but wholly worthy gems.
Happy 85th birthday, Bob Dylan!
Talkin’ Hava Negeilah Blues (1962)
One of the first original songs Bob Dylan wrote and performed in his early coffeehouse days, “Talkin’ Hava Negeilah Blues” gives the lie to the notion that Dylan consciously tried to hide his Jewish background by changing his name (from Zimmerman to Dylan) and making up stories about his past (e.g., that he traveled with the circus). If there was any truth to that, then why did he kick off his career with a riff on that most recognizably Jewish of songs?
Mixed-Up Confusion (1962)
Recorded in the fall of 1962, this rockabilly single recontextualizes (or gives the lie to) the common but false narrative (perpetuated in the film A Complete Unknown) that Bob Dylan “went electric” on his 1965 album, Bringing It All Back Home, and in subsequent concerts the following summer and fall. In fact, Dylan was a rock ‘n’ roller dating back to high school, where the quote appearing beneath his photo in his class yearbook read, “To join Little Richard.” On “Mixed-Up Confusion,” he was already stretching his rock ‘n’ roll muscles several years before the notorious 1965 Newport Folk Festival where he performed with an electric band, much to the horror of the moldy figs of folk music.
4th Time Around (1966)
As early as 1964, the Beatles’ John Lennon began to show signs of having been influenced by Bob Dylan’s songwriting on numbers such as “I’m a Loser” (1964) and “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” (1965), in which Lennon goes so far as to imitate Dylan’s nasal rasp. Bob Dylan was hip to this trend, and after the Beatles released the Dylanesque “Norwegian Wood,” Dylan responded in song with “4th Time Around,” whose melody strongly echoes that of “Norwegian Wood.” Dylan scholar Sean Wilentz wrote in Bob Dylan in America that “4th Time Around” sounds “like Bob Dylan impersonating John Lennon impersonating Bob Dylan.”
Blind Willie McTell (1983)
Unaccountably left off the 1983 album Infidels for which it was originally intended, “Blind Willie McTell” is one of Bob Dylan’s American epics, as it invokes New Orleans, East Texas, bootleg whiskey, plantations, “the ghost of slavery ships,” an unnamed war, and “power and greed and corruptible seed.” Be sure to play it on the 4th of July.
I Want You (1966)
Only Bob Dylan could write such a surrealistic narrative — replete with a guilty undertaker who sighs, a lonesome organ grinder who cries, a drunken politician who weeps, and a child in a Chinese suit — in the form of a bouncy, three-minute pop song that indeed made it into the Top 20 in 1966, when it was released on his greatest (double) album, Blonde on Blonde.
We Better Talk This Over (1978)
“We Better Talk This Over” is one of several numbers on Bob Dylan’s 1978 album Street-Legal that seem to want to bring closure to what Dylan began revealing about his crumbling marriage on 1975’s Blood on the Tracks. Whereas Dylan portrayed himself in pain and bereft on Blood, on this oft-overlooked propulsive number he is ready to put the past behind him and move forward. “The vows that we kept are now broken and swept / ’Neath the bed where we slept,” he sings, somewhat resignedly. Dylan also seemingly reveals an internal spiritual struggle when he sings, “I’m exiled, you can’t convert me,” just a little over a year before he announces to the world his so-called born-again experience on 1979’s Slow Train Coming.
Most of the Time (1989)
An acute, heart-piercing, devastating post-breakup song, featuring an unreliable narrator denying he still hurts but betrayed by his over-the-top insistence that he has gotten over her, in a song featuring a slow emotional and sonic build.
Day of the Locusts (1970)
Poor Bob Dylan. It turns out that the day in 1970 on which he received an honorary degree from Princeton University turned out to be one of the worst days of his life, judging from this song. Nature, a Biblical plague, and David Crosby (in an unnamed cameo, playing the man standing next to Dylan whose “head was exploding”) all conspired against the college dropout to make him fear he might not have gotten “out of there alive.” He could have just transferred to Wesleyan and everything would have been fine.
Everything Is Broken (1989)
In the aggressive, blues-rocking “Everything Is Broken” Bob Dylan recounts the Kabbalistic creation story about the klippot, the broken vessels of divine energy that were left behind everywhere and which point to our ultimate task as humans — to repair the brokenness permeating creation through acts of inherent goodness, otherwise known as mitzvot, in an oft-misunderstood process called tikkun olam. All this in a three-minute song blending New Orleans swamp-rock and classic Chicago blues.
You’re a Big Girl Now (1975)
Another of Bob Dylan’s post-breakup songs of desperation, this from Blood on the Tracks, a recording often referred to as Dylan’s “divorce album.” In “You’re a Big Girl Now,” Dylan drops all anger and defenses in favor of raw emotion: “I’m going out of my mind / With a pain that stops and starts / Like a corkscrew to my heart / Ever since we’ve been apart.”
Positively 4th Street (1965)
Featuring one of the greatest opening lines of all time: “You’ve got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend.” It’s all downhill from there, my friend.
The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar (1981)
“The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar” is a blistering, urgent missive, with reports of phones out of order and the killing of nuns and soldiers (evocative of American military involvement in Latin America at the time the song was written). Nevertheless, each verse ends with the title refrain, “The groom’s still waiting at the altar,” which I hear as a statement retracting his declaration of conversion.
Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window? (1965)
In September 1965, Dylan nearly hit the top of the pop charts when “Like a Rolling Stone” went to #2; it was kept from the top spot by the Beatles’ “Help!” But Dylan didn’t give up in his quest for the chart-topping hit that had so far evaded him. Songs he recorded and released in coming months that bore musical similarities to “Like a Rolling Stone” included “Positively Fourth Street,” “One of Must Know (Sooner or Later),” and “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window,” the only studio track recorded with the Hawks — later to become the Band. The single presents the backup group at its fiercest. And Dylan quotes himself when he sings “You’ve got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend,” a line from “Positively 4th Street.”
Going, Going, Gone (1974)
From 1974’s Planet Waves, the only studio album Bob Dylan recorded with the Band, “Going, Going, Gone” stands out on the album for its moody, unsettled nature (surrounded as it is by songs of domestic bliss and naked nostalgia). Robbie Robertson’s evocative electric guitar leads pepper the ballad, saying as much with their clipped notes and anguished tone as Dylan does with lyrics like “I’m closin’ the book / On the pages and the text / And I don’t really care / What happens next.”
Series of Dreams (1989)
An outtake from 1989’s Oh Mercy, this is one of Dylan’s big statement songs that unaccountably got left on the cutting room floor, until demand grew so strong from those who had heard it via bootleg recordings that Dylan’s record company assented to the inclusion of the track on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991. Dylan could be alluding to the Shoah when he describes his dreams:
In one, numbers were burning
In another, I witnessed a crime
In one, I was running, and in another
All I seemed to be doing was climb.
One More Cup of Coffee (1976)
This hypnotic if unassuming number off the early-1976 album Desire, featuring Dylan’s only authentic cantorial singing and aided and abetted by Scarlet Rivera’s klezmer-via-Gypsy violin, a relentless minor key, and Emmylou Harris’ harmonies is an overlooked gem. As the song says, its “heart is like an ocean, mysterious and dark.”
Dignity (1989)
Like “Series of Dreams,” the song “Dignity” was an outtake from the Oh Mercy sessions that was first released on Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Volume 3 in 1994. And like “Series of Dreams,” this song also seems to refer to the Shoah, when the narrator — bereft at the astounding loss of dignity — refers to “a crowded room full of covered-up mirrors,” as in a Jewish house of mourning, and “steps goin’ down into tattoo land.”
Dark Eyes (1985)
To many, the 1985 album Empire Burlesque introduced one of the low points in Bob Dylan’s recording career, including the two follow-up albums Knocked Out Loaded (1986) and Down in the Groove (1988). Empire Burlesque was a desperate attempt by producer Arthur Baker to update Dylan’s sound to blend in more with the mid-1980s dance music aesthetic. But Baker knew that the album needed a dynamite closer, and he suggested that Dylan write an old-style, solo acoustic ballad. In a fit of inspiration, Dylan stayed up all night and came up with this stunner: sharp, intimate, personal, where the singer looks around himself at a chaotic world from which he is totally alienated — “I feel nothing for their game where beauty goes unrecognized / All I feel is heat and flame and all I see are dark eyes.”
Heart of Mine (1981)
“Heart of Mine” stands out on the 1981 Shot of Love album as a raucous, joyful bit of R&B music (which flavors most of the album). But it’s a Bob Dylan song, so it has that subversive touch. The narrator addresses the song to his own heart — “Don’t let her see / Don’t let her see that you need her / Don’t put yourself over the line / Heart of mine” — and warns it that only trouble lies ahead if this is the path he (his heart) decides to pursue. The recording’s impressive instrumental lineup — all of whom are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — includes Ringo Starr on drums, Ronnie Wood on guitar, and Donald “Duck” Dunn on bass, meaning Dylan was backed on this track by a Beatle, a Rolling Stone, and a member of the Stax house band, also known as the M.G.’s, as in Booker T. and the M.G.’s. Not too shabby.
Congratulations (1988)
This is a bit of a cheat stuck into this list to demonstrate that as much as he has always been a solo artist and an iconoclast, Bob Dylan has also always longed for the companionship — musical and otherwise — of a steady band. He came close to achieving this with the Hawks (later the Band) from the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s, and allegedly asked Jerry Garcia in the late-1980s if he could join the Grateful Dead (which was essentially a Dylan tribute band). But it wasn’t until George Harrison persuaded his friend and sometime songwriting partner to join him — along with Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne — in an “anonymous supergroup” called the Traveling Wilburys in 1988, that Dylan took the plunge and subsumed himself into a collective. In most cases, as with “Congratulations,” you could easily tell one lead singer from the other, and in general that person wrote the song. We’re turning this one — an over-the-top expression of post-breakup bitterness (the first line is “Congratulations for breaking my heart”) — back on Dylan on the occasion of his birthday.
My Back Pages (1964)
Along with “It’s All Over Now (Baby Blue),” the song “My Back Pages” is often heard as a transitional statement: out with the old Dylan, in with the new, if you will. Included on the 1964 album, Another Side of Bob Dylan, which eschewed topical protest for more personal and poetic concerns, “My Back Pages” found the 23-year-old singer-songwriter looking back just a few years at his more serious self and judging him thusly: “Ah, but I was so much older then / I’m younger than that now.” A 1967 version of the song by the Byrds made it into the Top 30 and inspired the all-star version of the song rendered at the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration in 1992, which featured George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Neil Young, and Roger McGuinn trading verses alongside Dylan.
The post For Bob Dylan’s 85th birthday, an 85-minute playlist appeared first on The Forward.
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Helen Mirren criticizes Israel at film festival after being called ‘evil Zionist’ in viral video
(JTA) — British actor Helen Mirren criticized Israel at a film festival in Italy, in her first public comments since security footage of a November incident where she was accused by a stranger of being an “evil Zionist b—h” went viral late last month.
“Evil forces are rising everywhere, even in a country like Israel,” Mirren said in an interview with journalists at the Taormina Film Fest in Sicily, according to reports in entertainment media. “How could you possibly repeat the actions of what was done to you as people to other people? Crimes against humanity, it’s called.”
The Academy Award-winning actor, who is 80, is being honored with a lifetime achievement award from the festival on Friday. Her many roles have included playing former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in the 2023 biopic “Golda,” which she premiered in Jerusalem.
Mirren is not Jewish but has a long history of connection to Israel, dating back to 1967, when she traveled with a Jewish boyfriend to work for a month on a kibbutz in the country’s north.
She referenced that period in her comments at Taormina.
“I saw it from the inside and I saw some things that disturbed me from the inside in Israel at that time,” she said, according to Deadline. “I’m talking about six months after the Six Day War.”
Mirren has previously criticized the Israeli government. While promoting “Golda” in early 2023, she said she believed that Meir would be “utterly horrified” by Israel’s current leadership, which she referred to as a “dictatorship.”
But she also spoke favorably about Israel during the promotional events, which shortly preceded the Hamas attack that began the war in Gaza.
“I believe in Israel, in the existence of Israel, and I believe Israel has to go forward into the future, for the rest of eternity,” she told the country’s Channel 12 in August 2023. “I believe in Israel because of the Holocaust.”
During the November incident, the person who accosted Mirren and her husband Taylor Hackford appeared to reference those comments, saying, “She said Israel should last forever because of the Holocaust, and she was very happy that Palestinians’ houses were gone.”
Hackford responded, “F–ck off,” and Mirren did not say anything in the video.
At Taormina, the actor offered a more nuanced characterization of her beliefs while also praising Israel’s creative and intellectual communities.
“I grew up in Europe post-Second World War and the realization in my parents’ generation of what had happened in the Holocaust was so profound, so important,” Mirren said. “Therefore, the creation of Israel was a very important moment, although maybe it was done in completely the wrong way, in the wrong place, I don’t know. But something had to happen after the horror.”
According to Variety, she also said, “The evil is always lurking, waiting to take over, even in a place like Israel. I played Golda Meir and worked in a country that was the idealistic Israel, and I always thought it was a country that would never do wrong, but of course they were doing wrong, even then.”
About the viral video showing her being accosted, Mirren told journalists at the festival she believes she was “attacked by mistake by a man who was maybe a little over passionate or maybe mentally not quite stable.”
She added, “I don’t know whether he read things on the Internet or thought he read something which he hadn’t read, I don’t know.”
Though London’s Metropolitan Police initially said it was possible for an incident to be investigated as an antisemitic hate crime even if the victim is not Jewish, it will not be investigating further, as Mirren and Hackford have decided not to press charges.
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After dozens of Jewish girls get lost in NY creek tunnel, antisemitic comments follow online
(JTA) — When dozens of Jewish girls emerged from a storm drain in Nyack, New York, Wednesday after becoming lost on a school trip, local officials described the episode as a fortunate ending to a potentially dangerous situation.
On social media, however, the incident quickly drew a slew of antisemitic comments.
“They can’t help it. Roaches and rats love the sewers,” wrote one Facebook user on a post by the Rockland Daily.
“Those tunnels were promised to them 3,000 years ago,” another user wrote, referencing the common online antisemitic phrase ridiculing the Jewish connection to Israel.
Many of the comments also referenced the 2024 incident at the Chabad-Lubavitch movement’s world headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in which a group from the movement attempted to dig an unauthorized tunnel beneath the building.
“From the tunnels in Brooklyn to the tunnels in nyack! The black coats never disappoint 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣,” one user wrote. “There drawn to tunnels. Natural instinct😂,” another wrote.
The girls, students from the Toras Emachu school in Monsey, New York, had been visiting Nyack Memorial Park on a school trip when they entered a large drainage culvert located in the park, according to the Orangetown Police Department.
While walking through the tunnel system, the students got lost but were heard by individuals in the town who alerted police, according to Nyack Mayor Joseph Rand.
“First responders immediately came to the scene and located all the girls at various points in Nyack,” Rand wrote in a post on Facebook. “Technically, none of the girls were ‘rescued,’ because they all came out in their own power, but everyone’s lucky that the authorities responded and figured out where all the girls were as quickly as they did.”
Rand said that roughly 70 students were on the trip, and there were no serious injuries beyond some “cuts and scrapes.”
Nyack Village Administrator Andy Stewart told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the school group had not been given a permit to host a field trip in the park Wednesday, and while there was “definitely concern over the violation of that law,” he wasn’t sure how the local government would follow up with the school.
“This is a group that did not have a permit, and so we didn’t know they were there, and they made no plans with the village,” Stewart said.
The Toras Emachu school did not respond to numerous requests for comment from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
But while local town officials handle the response to the incident, for some Jewish groups, the online response underscored how an innocuous incident can become a vehicle for antisemitic rhetoric.
“Unfortunately, internet comment sections have become havens for antisemitic memes and conspiracies, and commenters emboldened by relative anonymity will jump at any opportunity to demonize Jews,” Nate Wolfson, the communications director for the Nexus Project, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the incident. “In this case, a story of dozens of children getting lost on a field trip is appallingly used to spread stereotypes about Jews, including comparing them to rats.”
Wolfson added that the references to the Chabad tunnel incident had been “especially troubling,” adding that the story had been “routinely used by antisemites to spread truly vicious and dangerous conspiracies about child sex trafficking.”
Some Nyack residents also called out the spate of antisemitic comments about the incident online.
“This was not hard to find. It was not buried. It was not one bad comment from one bad actor. It was thread after thread of people in this county saying the same old bullshit about Jewish people like it was nothing,” wrote one resident in a post on Facebook alongside a series of screenshots of antisemitic comments. “If all it takes is one local news story for your contempt to come spilling out, the contempt was already there.”
The post After dozens of Jewish girls get lost in NY creek tunnel, antisemitic comments follow online appeared first on The Forward.
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The battle between tradition and revolution in Soviet-Yiddish culture
די סאָװעטיש־ייִדישע קולטור איז געװען עסטעטיש אָדער אידעאָלאָגיש פֿילזײַטיק, לכל־הפּחות אין משך פֿון די ערשטע פּאָר צענדליק יאָר. דאָס איז דער עיקר־טעזיס פֿון דער װאָגיקער שטודיע „רױטע ייִדן: דער ייִדיש־סאָװעטישער קולטור־פּראָיעקט“ פֿון דער ליטעראַטור־פֿאָרשערין דאַריע װאַכרושאָװאַס (אוניװערסיטעט פֿון מינכען).
דער ציל פֿון דער פֿאָרשונג איז צו לאָזן דעם הײַנטיקן לײענער הערן די פֿאַרשײדענע שטימען אינעם אַלגעמײנעם כאָר פֿון סאָװעטישע ייִדישע ליטעראַטן, קינסטלער און כּלל־טוער.
ווי האָבן אָט די פֿיגורן פֿאַרשטאַנען די צוקונפֿטיקע ייִדישע קולטור? װי אַזױ האָבן זײ בדעה געהאַט צונױפֿצוברענגען ייִדישקײט און סאָװעטישקײט? װוּ שטײט די סאָװעטישע ייִדישע קולטור אױף דער ייִדישער װעלטמאַפּע? דאָס זײַנען די פֿראַגן, װאָס װאַכרושאָװאַ באַהאַנדלט.
זי גיט זיך ספּעציעל אָפּ מיט לינגװיסטישע פּרטים — טערמינען, מעטאַפֿאָרן, אימאַזשן — װאָס מען האָט גענוצט אין די קריטישע װיכּוחים פֿון יענער תּקופֿה. דערבײַ באַטראַכט זי ניט נאָר די מער באַקאַנטע ליטעראַרישע טעקסטן, נאָר אַ ברײטערן פֿאַרנעם פֿון מקורים פֿון צײַטונגען.
װאַכרושאָװאַ פּרוּװט צו אַנטפּלעקן די פֿילשטימיקײט פֿונעם סאָװעטיש־ייִדישן קולטורעלן פּראָיעקט. זי איז ספּעציעל פֿאַראינטערעסירט אין פֿאַרשײדענע װיזיעס פֿון דער צוקונפֿט פֿון ייִדיש אין סאָװעטן־פֿאַרבאַנד, װאָס מען האָט אַרומגערעדט אין די 1920ער יאָרן.
דאָס בוך באַשטײט פֿון דרײַ טײלן. אינעם ערשטן באַטראַכט װאַכרושאָװאַ כּלערלײ עסטעטישע מאַניפֿעסטן און קינסטלערישע פּראָגראַמען פֿון ייִדישער קולטור, װאָס מען האָט אַרױסגעגעבן נאָך דער ערשטער װעלט־מלחמה אין קיִעװ, מאָסקװע, לאָדזש, װאַרשע און בערלין.
דער צװײטער טײל איז געװידמעט דעם נסתּרס זאַמלונג רײַזע־פֿאַרצײכענונגען „דרײַ הױפּטשטעט“(1934). דער לעצטער חלק אַנאַליזירט די סטיליסטישע און לינגװיסטישע אַספּעקטן פֿון סאָװעטישע ליטעראַרישע איבערזעצונגען אױף ייִדיש פֿון רוסיש און אײראָפּעיִשע שפּראַכן.
די יאָרן נאָך דער ערשטער װעלט־מלחמה זײַנען געװען אַ בלי־תּקופֿה פֿון ייִדישן אַװאַנגאַרד אין ליטעראַטור און קונסט. אין װאַרשע זײַנען דערשינען די זשורנאַלן „רינגען“, „אַלבאַטראָס“, „כאַליאַסטרע“, „די װאָג“; אין בערלין — „מילגרױם“; אין קיִעװ — דיאַלמאַנאַכן „אײגנס“ און „אױפֿגאַנג“. לרובֿ האָבן די דאָזיקע פּובליקאַציעס ניט לאַנג געדױערט, אָבער זײ האָבן געמאַכט דרײסטע פּראָקלאַמאַציעס װעגן דער רעװאָלוציע אין דער ייִדישער קולטור.
למשל, אינעם ערשטן נומער פֿון דער סאָװעטישער קאָמוניסטישער צײַטונג „דער עמעס“ דעם 7טן נאָװעמבער 1920 האָט פּרץ מאַרקיש פֿאַרעפֿנטלעכט אַן אַרטיקל „אױף די װעגן פֿון ייִדישער דיכטונג“. עס איז מערקװירדיק, באַמערקט װאַכרושאָװאַ, װאָס דער דאָזיקער מאַניפֿעסט פֿון דער נײַער סאָװעטישער ייִדישער פּאָעזיע פֿאַרמאָגט ניט קײן מאַרקסיסטישע קאָמוניסטישע מליצה.
אַנשטאָט דעם רעדט מאַרקיש װעגן טיפֿע איבערלעבונגען, װאָס פֿאַרכליניען דעם מענטשן אין דער צײַט פֿון דער רעװאָלוציע. די רעװאָלוציע האָט גורם געװען אַן איבערבראָך אין דער טראַדיציע, „און טאַקע דערפֿאַר קאָנען די דיכטער פֿון אונדזער נײַער שטורעמדיקער תּקופֿה ניט שאַפֿן קײן מאָנומענטאַלע װערק, זײ זײַנען קױלן־גראָבערס […] פֿאַר נײַע תּקופֿות, פֿאַר קומעדיקע דורות,“ שרײַבט מאַרקיש.
אָבער מיט פֿיר יאָר שפּעטער האָט מאַרקיש זיך באַרעכנט װעגן דער המשכדיקײט פֿון דער ייִדישער קולטור. אין אַ רעפֿעראַט אין װילנע אין 1924 האָט ער געזאָגט, לױטן באַריכט אין דער װילנער צײַטונג „טאָג“: „ניטאָ קײן צװײ ליטעראַטורן, ס’זײַנען בלױז פֿאַראַן צװײ ליטעראַרישע עפּאָכעס, מיט פֿאַרשײדענע פֿאָרמעס, אָבער מיט אײן גרונד־ליניע, אײן ענדציל.“
דאָ האָט מאַרקיש פּראָקלאַמיט די המשכדיקײט צװישן די קלאַסיקער װי מענדעלע, שלום־עליכם און פּרץ און דער נײַער ליטעראַטור, װי מאַרקיש אַלײן, װאָס איז אַנטשטאַנען נאָך דער ערשטער װעלט־מלחמה.
אָט די צװײ קעגנזײַטיקע דעות װעגן דער ליטעראַרישער אַנטװיקלונג — אַן איבערבראָך אָדער המשכדיקײט — האָבן באַשטימט צװײ שטרעמונגען אין דער אַלװעלטלעכער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור נאָך דער ערשטער װעלט־מלחמה, סײַ אין סאָװעטן־פֿאַרבאַנד, סײַ אין פּױלן און סײַ אין אַמעריקע.
אין אונטערשייד צו דער הײַנטיקער אַמעריקאַנער שיטה אין ייִדיש־פֿאָרשונגען, װאָס פּרוּװן כּסדר צופּאַסן ייִדישע טעקסטן צו דער הײַנטיקער מאָדע אין ליטעראַרישער טעאָריע, איז װאַכרושאָװאַס מעטאָד דער עיקר אַ פֿילאָלאָגישער.
זי באַזירט אירע אױספֿירן אױף אַ גרונטיקן אַנאַליז פֿונעם שפּראַכלעכן סטיל פֿון ייִדישע מקורים. אַזאַ צוגאַנג מאַכט אירע אַרגומענטן גלײַכצײַטיטק מער װאָגיק און מער ניואַנסירט. זי דערװײַזט פּינקטלעך, װי אידעיִשע און עסטעטישע חילוקי־דעות צװישן ייִדישע ליטעראַטן האָבן זיך אַנטפּלעקט דורך שאַטירונגען אין זײער זאַצבױ, װאָקאַבולאַר, אינעם אױסקלײַב פֿון גערמאַנישע, סלאַװישע און לשון־קודשדיקע קאָמפּאָנענטן.
װאַכרושאָװאַ באַמערקט, אַז כּסדר שאַצט מען אָפּ די פּאָזיציעס פֿון סאָװעטישע שרײַבער, אַזעלכע װי מאַרקיש און דוד בערגעלסאָן, פֿונעם שפּעטערן שטאַנדפּונקט, װען מען איז שױן געװױר פֿון זײער טראַגישן אומקום. זי פּרוּװט, להיפּוך, לײענען זײערע טעקסטן דורך דעם מיטצײַטלערישן שפּאַקטיװ. זי ברענגט דעם לײענער אַרײַן אינעם סאַמע ברען פֿון קריטישע װיכּוחים פֿון די 1920ער יאָרן.
אַן אינטערעסאַנטער בײַשפּיל פֿון דעם, װי אַזױ מען האָט זיך געפּרוּװט צופּאַסן צו די נײַע סאָװעטישע באַדינגונגען, זײַנען דעם נסתּרס פֿאַרצײכענונגען װעגן די שטעט כאַרקעװ, לענינגראַד און מאָסקװע אינעם זאַמלבוך „הױפּטשטעט“. דאָס איז געװען זײַן פּרוּװ אַריבערצוגײן פֿונעם סימבאָליסטישן סטיל פֿון זײַנע פֿריִערדיקע דערציילונגען צו דעם רעאַליסטישן סטיל פֿונעם זשאַנער פֿון רײַזע־פֿאַרצײכענונג.
װאַכרושאָװאַ האַלט, אַז דער נסתּר האָט בכּװוּן אָפּגעהיט עלעמענטן פֿון זײַן סימבאָליסטישן סטיל – אַזעלכע װי ריטמישע איבערחזרונגען פֿון די אײגענע װערטער אין אײן זאַץ, דער שװערלעכער דײַטשמערישער זאַצבױ, דער ניט־פֿאַרלאָזלעכער נאַראַטאָר – כּדי אונטערצורײַסן די פּאָזיטיװע שטימונג, װאָס עס האָט געפֿאָדערט די אָפֿיציעלע סאָװעטישע ליטעראַטור. „הױפּטשטעט“ איז אַ דאָקומענט פֿון דעם נסתּרס אַנטױשונג אינעם פּראָיעקט פֿון אױפֿבױען די ייִדישע קולטור אינעם סאָװעטן־פֿאַרבאַנד, פֿאַרסך־הכּלט װאַכרושאָװאַ.
װי אַ צאָל אַנדערע ייִדישע און ניט־ייִדישע מחברים, װאָס זײַנען געשטאַנען אױף די ראַנדן פֿון דער אָפֿיציעלער סאָװעטישער ליטעראַטור, האָט דער נסתּר געפֿונען אַ מקום־מקלט אין איבערזעצערישער אַרבעט. ער האָט איבערגעזעצט אויף ייִדיש די װערק פֿון די רוסישע קלאַסיקער לעװ טאָלסטאָי, פֿיאָדאָר דאָסטאָיעװסקי, איװאַן טורגענעװ, און פֿון אַ היפּשער צאָל דײַטשישע, פֿראַנצײזישע און אַנדערע שרײַבער.
איבערזעצונגען פֿון דער רוסישער און אײראָפּעיִשער בעלעטריסטיק און דיכטונג, פֿון פּאָליטישער און װיסנשאַפֿטלעכער ליטעראַטור אױף די סאָװעטישע מינאָריטעט־שפּראַכן זײַנען געװען אַ װיכטיקער עלעמענט פֿון דער סאָװעטישער קולטור־פּאָליטיק, און ייִדיש איז ניט געװען קײן אױסנאַם. דערצו איז דאָס געװען אַ מער־װײניקער סטאַבילע פּרנסה, װײַל די האָנאָראַרן האָבן באַצאָלט מלוכישע פֿאַרלאַגן.
דװקא די איבערזעצונגען האָבן אַ סך בײַגעטראָגן צו דער אַנטװיקלונג פֿונעם אײגנאַרטיקן סאָװעטישן נוסח פֿון ייִדיש. איבערזעצונגען זײַנען אויך געװאָרן אַ װיכטיק ליטעראַריש פֿעלד פֿאַר שפּראַכלעכע עקספּערימענטן, בפֿרט װען די פּאָליטישע באַדינגונגען זײַנען אין די 1930ער יאָרן געװאָרן אַלץ שװערער, פֿאַרסך־הכּלט װאַכרושאָװאַ. אַזױ האָט זיך די ייִדישע שפּראַך װײַטער אַנטװיקלט, ניט געקוקט אױף דעם פּאָליטישן דרוק.
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