[HANASHIR:11485] Should we ask Jeff Klepper to write the music?

[Jeanne and Michael Lipsitt <lipsitt...>]

This is a poem Bob Dylan wrote about Israel, "the Neighborhood Bully"
(typical Dylan sarcasm.) He allowed a teeny Chabad quarterly magazine to
print it, and the next issue included a heart-breaking letter from a 12 year
old girl named Rivka in Israel, who saw the poem. She said they feel so
alone there, and Dylan's poem made her feel much better. Here's a copy if
you're interested.

***********

Neighborhood Bully
By Bob Dylan (as appeared in fall 2001 issue of Farbrengen)

>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.
>
>The neighborhood bully 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.
>
>The neighborhood bully has 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.
>
>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.
>
>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 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.
>
>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.
>
>Now his holiest books have been trampled upon,
>No contract he signed was worth 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.
>
>What's anybody indebted to him for?
>Nothin', they say,
>He just likes to cause war.
>Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed,
>They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed.
>
>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.

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