An Open Letter to Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky of the Chabad-Lubavitch

Chassidim Movement Concerning Messianic Dylanology: ‘you married

young just like your ma’

In August 2010, The New York Times magazine published an interview with Rabbi
Yehuda Krinsky, a leader of the Lubavitch Chassidim or Chabad-Lubavitch movement of
Judaism, based in Brooklyn NY, which is googlable. Here is a link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/magazine/08fob-q4-t.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Questions for Yehuda Krinsky

The Rabbi
Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON
Published: August 6, 2010

What else besides baseball do you admire in American pop culture?

Bob Dylan comes to the Lubavitch outpost from time to time. Did you know that? He was at my
house for dinner a couple of times.

Do you like his music?

I’m blowing in the wind.

Make that a hurricane blooowin'. You’re blowin’ down the shakin’ street, you’re hearing
Dylan-Christ’s heart beat. Babe.

Dear Rabbi

Next time you have Bob Dylan over for a meal, ask him who was Born in Time and for
what. But do not make the mistake of asking Michael Gray’s question, ‘born in time for
what?’ Dylan-Jehovah-Christ is your husband. From BORN IN TIME (1990):

Not one more night, not one more kiss,

Not this time baby, no more of this,
Takes too much skill, takes too much will,
It's revealing.
You came, you saw, just like the law
You married young, just like your ma,
You tried and tried, you made me slide
You left me reelin' with this feelin'.

Luke 22 (New International Version):

While he was still speaking a crowd came up, and the man who was called Judas, one of the
Twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him, 48. but Jesus asked him, "Judas,
are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?" 49. When Jesus' followers saw what was
going to happen, they said, "Lord, should we strike with our swords?" 50. And one of them struck
the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear. 51. But Jesus answered, "No more of
this!" And he touched the man's ear and healed him.
Suffer ye thus far with Michael Gray’s (unauthorized) Authorised (King James) version.
Isaiah 54 (New International Version) on The Future Glory of Zion:
1 "Sing, O barren woman,
you who never bore a child;
burst into song, shout for joy,
you who were never in labor;
because more are the children of the desolate woman
than of her who has a husband,"
says the LORD.
2 "Enlarge the place of your tent,
stretch your tent curtains wide,
do not hold back;
lengthen your cords,
strengthen your stakes.
3 For you will spread out to the right and to the left;
your descendants will dispossess nations
and settle in their desolate cities.
4 "Do not be afraid; you will not suffer shame.
Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated.
You will forget the shame of your youth
and remember no more the reproach of your widowhood.
5 For your Maker is your husband—
the LORD Almighty is his name—
the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer;
he is called the God of all the earth.
6 The LORD will call you back
as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit—
a wife who married young,
only to be rejected," says your God.
7 "For a brief moment I abandoned you,
but with deep compassion I will bring you back.
8 In a surge of anger
I hid my face from you for a moment,
but with everlasting kindness
I will have compassion on you,"
says the LORD your Redeemer.
9 "To me this is like the days of Noah,
when I swore that the waters of Noah would never again cover the earth.
So now I have sworn not to be angry with you,
never to rebuke you again.
‘Not this time, babe’. Next time. ‘Fire next time’. Part of the under the red sky ‘code in the
lyrics’, a term Dylan used of Blood on the Tracks with interviewer Jonathan Cott in the
Rolling Stone interview published November 16, 1978. Fearful symmetry. Why not this
time? Because ‘you came, you saw, just like the law’. IN THE GARDEN revisited. ‘When
they came for Him in the garden, did they know?’ Google Ronnie Keohane on Arnold
Fruchtenbaum’s elucidation of the first-century Sanhedrin’s two-part interrogation
procedure for Messianic pretenders.
M F Unger in Demons in the World Today, p 167:

By rejecting Jesus Christ, God incarnate, Judaism temporarily forfeited its high calling and place
in God’s purpose in history, until the Jews turn to Christ at his second advent (Zechariah 12:10—
13:1; Romans 11:25-36). Then their spiritual blindness shall be lifted and they shall be delivered
from the demonic delusion that has rested upon them (Matthew 12:43-45) since they recklessly
cried, “His blood be on us, and on our children” (Matthew 27:25).

Heavy stuff. But Dylan is so subtle. (So subtle he leaves Michael Gray ‘reeling with this
feeling’ of exasperation at its ‘opaqueness’ and ‘pretension’.) From the above interview:

You’re referring to Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the former leader of the
Lubavitcher movement, which is based in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. Weren’t
you his chauffeur in your youth? Where did you take him?
I will tell you. He never left the city. The only traveling he did was to visit the gravesite of his
father-in-law, which was about a 25- or 30-minute drive to Queens from Brooklyn.

He died in 1994 and named you as the executor of his will, but the Chabad movement has
since split over the issue of whether he was the Messiah.
I was always opposed to that. I felt it was wrong. But there was a group of people that felt that the
rebbe implied during his lifetime that he was a Messiah. They became very vocal about it and
sometimes more than vocal. They made a lot of noise, like a penny in a can; shake it, and it
makes a lot of noise.

Tinpot (US tin-can) Messiah? Moshiach now? No, ‘Moshiach’ ‘next time’, ‘not this time,
babe’. Babe? Dylan-Christ has a ‘babe’, but she is no ordinary babe. Unger, p 167:

But Judaism, in failing to see Christ as God incarnate and immanent, missed the prophetic
meaning of its own Scriptures, thereby forfeiting the Savior and his salvation. This blinding
operation of Satan and demons (2 Corinthians 4:4, Romans 11:1-25) produced the tragic
spectacle of present-day Jewish confusion and unbelief.

Early Church Father St Leo the Great wrote, ‘The Creator of time is born in time’. The
Incarnation. Crypto-Messianic Dylanology.

John 1 (New International Version)

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was
with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made
that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines
in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome[a] it.

6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify
concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he
came only as a witness to the light.

9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world,
and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that
which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those
who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of
natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory
of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

‘You don’t get anything you don’t deserve’. Intertextuality for Michael Gray, author of
Song & Dance Man III (2000). I would like to thank him for his insights into the song
without which this letter would never have been possible.

Takes too much skill, takes too much will,

It's revealing.

Best wishes for ‘next time’, Rabbi – be this at your house or elsewhere. I just hope Dylan
doesn’t address you as ‘babe’. For further elucidation, google: Bob Dylan, Kol Nidre.

I do recommend John Gibbens on DESOLATION ROW’s ‘yes, I received your letter

yesterday about the time the doorknob broke’ in The Nightingale’s Code: a Poetic Study
of Bob Dylan.

Born in time for what? The Messianic era. You’re blowing in the wind and down the
shakin’ street …

Paul Kirkman, Dylanologist of Messianic motifs

Copyright 2011