Highway to Heaven

By -


Bob Dylan’s classic album Highway 61 Revisited has been the soundtrack to the Jewish High Holidays at The Contemporary Jewish Museum this year.

This past Sunday, smack in the middle between Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish new year) and Yom Kippur (a holiday of reflection and atonement), UnderCover Presents offered extraordinary live cover versions of each song on Bob Dylan’s epic album Highway 61 Revisited, for the closing program for the exhibition Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg.

Ginsberg and Dylan had a father-son style relationship, and were creative allies and confidants. Many see them both as secular Jewish prophets, with Ginsberg’s iconic poem “Howl” and Dylan’s song “Like a Rolling Stone” from Highway 61 Revisited evoking the strident and lyrical moral criticism of the prophets. The social critiques inherent in these works of art evoke the spiritual and sensual disorientation of the Jewish High Holidays, when the life and death of both individuals and the community is said to hang in the balance.

For example, the titular song “Highway 61 Revisited” invokes the story of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son Isaac, which we read in synagogue on Rosh Hashanah. Who can forget his opening line?

Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”/Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin' me on.”
Quinn DeVeaux & The Blue Beat Revue covering Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited"

Or in “Desolation Row,” Einstein and other celebrities make cameo appearances out in the wasteland, wondering about the moral limits of their actions, and who gets to decide (on the limits of moral actions?). This dynamic echoes the symbolic action of the ancient Jewish high priest on Yom Kippur, who sent out a sacrificial goat into the wilderness, representing the delicate hope for divine forgiveness.

The Hebrew word for law, halakhah, is often translated as “the path” or “the way”—a highway of righteous possibility. And during the Jewish High Holidays, the word used for repentance is teshuvah, which means “a return.” There is no final revelation, only a continual process of return and adjustment; perhaps this is why Dylan named his album Highway 61 Revisited, as opposed to just Highway 61.

This album can be interpreted as a spiritual journey for a society searching for a language of intense self-reflection—a central goal of the Jewish High Holidays. Or put another way, Dylan took ancient stories, and made them new again.

> See the full track listing
> Recording for sale in the Museum Store

About the Author
Daniel Schifrin is Writer-in-Residence at the CJM and host of its podcast series “The Space Between.” He is a columnist for both the J: Jewish News Weekly of Northern California and the New York Jewish Week, and his articles and essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and McSweeney’s. In 2007 he was a visiting scholar at Stanford University, and he has just finished his first novel, a comedy about chess, opera and orthodontia.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

“A Gentile’s House”: Lolita and the Holocaust

By -
Image
Along with stories of illicit sex and human derangement, Stanley Kubrick and Vladimir Nabokov both dreamed of making art about the Holocaust. Nabokov, a three-time refugee from totalitarian governments, famously rejected literature bearing social messages. Yet at the end of his seventh decade, he vowed to his first biographer that he would one day tackle Nazi terror. “I will go to those German camps and look at those places and write a terrible indictment.” 1 Decades later Kubrick made real progress toward his goal: he drafted a script, cast lead actors, and scouted a location in the Czech Republic for a film with the working title Aryan Papers . Yet neither man would complete his project. Lolita , their only collaboration, somehow survived the censors, despite a plot centered on a professor’s cross-country travel and multi-year sexual abuse of his stepdaughter. While the subject of the movie stands at some distance from genocide, Nabokov’s 1955 novel and Kubrick’s 1962 film e...
Read more

Brought to You by the Letter "Peh"

By -
Image
Thoughts from scribe-in-residence Julie Seltzer on what she's writing, her process, and the experience of writing a Torah on public view. One of the questions I am often asked is, “Do you have a favorite letter?” The 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet (or 27, if you count the five letters that take a different form when they appear at the end of a word) feel in some ways like children. How can one have a favorite? But even with children the Torah reports to us certain leanings at certain times (“Now Isaac loved Esau, because he had a taste for game; and Rebekah loved Jacob.” Genesis 25:28). Similarly, different letters bring unique joy, new connection, and insight at different times. Past “favorites” have included the Bet , the Gimmel , and the Chet . My current leanings are toward the letter Peh , and I’ll explain why. [These Hebrew letters spelled out, by the way, are all valid Scrabble words, FYI.]
Read more

Cats: The Beat Generation’s Secret Love Affair

By -
Image
Burberry as Jack Kerouac Created in conjunction with the San Francisco SPCA  All photography by Rod Kilpatrick A lot of the cats at the San Francisco SPCA have had beat lives. Living in backyards, alleys, and abandoned buildings, they have been deserted by their families. Some of the female felines are impregnated and left to care for their litter. And yet these creatures still persevere. They lead dignified lives full of spirit and love. They are open and ready for new relationships at a moment’s notice, much like the Beats. For example, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and Allen Ginsberg all fall in love with multiple people in the beloved Beat bible,  On the Road. These cats, more importantly, are survivors. They have lived outside of society, looking in, observing, and wanting to be part of it.
Read more