{"id":28907,"date":"2025-07-01T04:17:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T04:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/28907\/"},"modified":"2025-07-01T04:17:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T04:17:09","slug":"bob-dylan-jewish-roots-american-soil-by-harry-freedman-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/28907\/","title":{"rendered":"Bob Dylan: Jewish Roots, American Soil by Harry Freedman review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>No cliche is left unturned in Bob Dylan: Jewish Roots, American Soil, a workmanlike and rather pointless retelling of Robert Zimmerman\u2019s journey from Hibbing, Minnesota to global superstardom in the mid-1960s. Author and Jewish cultural historian Harry Freedman attempts to reframe this extremely well-worn tale through the prism of Dylan\u2019s Jewishness, and the important role it played in his life and work.<\/p>\n<p> An interesting angle in theory, but as Freedman concedes practically from page one, it doesn\u2019t bear much scrutiny. So why write a book about it?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bigissue.com\/tag\/bob-dylan\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bob Dylan<\/a> isn\u2019t ashamed of his Jewish identity, it just isn\u2019t something he\u2019s ever really thought about. It neither interests nor defines him. That may or may not be true. I\u2019m none the wiser after reading the book, but it\u2019s effectively what Freedman tells us whenever he remembers to return to his ostensible theme. What we end up with is a passable piece of sociopolitical postwar history.<\/p>\n<p>Freedman is quite good on contextualising detail, peppered with some cursory hand-me-down analysis of Dylan\u2019s work.<\/p>\n<p>        <a href=\"https:\/\/win.newmode.net\/bigissue\/askkeirstarmerforapovertyzerolaw?utm_source=website&amp;utm_medium=article_blocks&amp;utm_campaign=poverty-zero&amp;utm_term=petition\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/p>\n<p>                                                    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"polaris__image image-cta__image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Poverty-Zero-banners_article-800x250-1.png\"  alt=\"\" height=\"250\" width=\"800\"\/><\/p>\n<p>        <\/a><\/p>\n<p>Freedman\u2019s prose is often clunky, repetitious and rife with vague supposition. He dutifully hits every familiar narrative beat: voice of a generation, going electric, Newport \u201865, \u201cJudas!\u201d etc, while adding no fresh insight.<\/p>\n<p>For Dylan completists, this is just another book to add to the pile. For anyone who\u2019s recently discovered him via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bigissue.com\/culture\/film\/a-complete-unknown-james-mangold-interview-bob-dylan\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">James Mangold\u2019s film A Complete Unknown<\/a> \u2013 and that would appear to be the target audience \u2013 it will at least fill in some gaps. But other, better Dylan books are available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No cliche is left unturned in Bob Dylan: Jewish Roots, American Soil, a workmanlike and rather pointless retelling&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":28908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[24795,24796,1022,171,2815,975,2290,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-28907","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-biography","9":"tag-bob-dylan","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-from-the-magazine","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-review","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114776050554467763","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}