Highway 61 Revisited: Bob Dylan’s Road from Minnesota to the World

2. Jewish Homes on the Range, 1890–1960

Robert Allen Zimmerman was born at St. Mary’s Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota, on May 24, 1941, to Beatrice and Abraham Zimmerman, children of Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish immigrants who had fled persecution in eastern Europe. Their families were among the nearly two and half million Jews who arrived in the United States between 1881 and 1924, when immigration closed. The vast majority of Jewish immigrants who arrived between 1881 and 1911 settled in ghettoes that were developing in cities along the eastern seaboard; only a relative few ventured farther west, including thirteen thousand who were living in Minnesota in 1910, primarily in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Among the families who arrived at this time were the Solomovich and Zimmerman families, joining relatives already living in Superior, Wisconsin, and Duluth, Minnesota. These families were headed by Robert Zimmerman ’s great-grandparents, Orthodox Jews who because of their faith, were forced to flee their homes and find refuge in an alien land—a land, however, that offered them for the first time not only the freedom to worship but also the freedom to live and work where they chose. As important as these new freedoms were to these immigrants , it was equally important that they continue to practice their Orthodox form of Judaism. They established synagogues in Superior and Duluth and on the Iron Range along with all the other appurtenances required to maintain their religious traditions and transmit them to the next generation. This is the milieu in which Robert Zimmerman’s parents were born and nurtured, and this is the tradition they sought to transmit to their two sons, Robert Allen and David. The early years of Robert Zimmerman’s life have been largely ignored by scholars and biographers or, thanks to Dylan’s own mythmaking, been misunderstood or misrepresented. Even members of his own family are at a loss to explain his unwillingness to portray his past in a more factual manner. I hope that this essay based on research conducted on the Iron Range, including interviews with members of Dylan’s family, will provide a more thorough understanding of the religious and cultural milieu from which Dylan emerged.1 15 2. Jewish Homes on the Range, 1890–1960 Marilyn J. Chiat Dylan has worn many different masks during his career, each symbolizing a different period in his development as an artist. Each was intended to conceal his true identity, but his roots on Minnesota’s Iron Range and, in particular, his Jewish heritage remain visible behind his carefully crafted facade. For those familiar with Jewish culture, Dylan is the continuation of a long line of “Fiddlers on the Roof,” itinerant Jewish musicians who have been a part of Jewish life wherever the Jewish people have found a home.2 A visitor to Hibbing at about the time that Ben Solomovich, Dylan’s maternal grandfather, moved to the Range in 1907 described it as looking “like some doomed Biblical city. . . situated on the edge of a pit. . . . Scorched stumps . . . and enormous boulders [were everywhere]. . . . The town was perpetually shaken by the blastings of the mine, and before the mine companies were restrained showers of rock descended often on the streets.”3 Minnesota’s Iron Range was obviously no Utopia, 16 / Marilyn J. Chiat Beatty Stone grew up in Hibbing and moved to Duluth in 1934 when she married Abe Zimmerman. Here she and son Bobby visit friends in Hibbing in 1944: Bobby Zimmerman, age three, with his mother, Beatty Zimmerman (right), and friends Marie Munter with daughter (left) and Jean Pryor with son Dennis (middle). Photographer unknown. Courtesy of Marie Munter and Bob and Linda Hocking/Zimmy’s Restaurant, Hibbing. Jewish Homes on the Range / 17 but for thousands of immigrants it held out the promise for a better life—a life that looked increasingly grim in their homelands. Iron ore was discovered in northeastern Minnesota in the 1840s, but it wasn’t until the 1890s that prospecting began in earnest. By the first decade of the twentieth century, one company, U.S. Steel, controlled the vast majority of the industry. Mine owners and operators came from the eastern states, and supervisors were often experienced Scandinavian or Welsh miners from Michigan or Wisconsin, but vast numbers of laborers were needed, and quickly. Recruiters began scouring destitute regions of eastern and southern Europe, seeking cheap labor, no experience needed; they found thousands of willing men. By 1910...