Leonard’s High Holy Days

Leonard Cohen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, forty-one years after Songs of Leonard Cohen first appeared to the world.   Since his first book of poetry was published in 1956, Cohen has constantly teetered between poet, author, song-writer and performer.    While these regular transitions of expression make it difficult to place him in one artistic category, Cohen’s ongoing reflections on the Jewish tradition have been constant.    Born in 1934 to a middle class Jewish family in Montreal, Leonard Cohen has always been interested in finding meaning in Jewish thought and tradition.    In 1984, he even wrote a book of poetry entitled Book of Mercy that is framed on the book of Psalms and mirrors many of its linguistic formulas.

At least two of Cohen’s songs offer a unique perspective on the High Holy Days.   

In his 1967 song The Story of Isaac, Cohen parallels the biblical account of the binding of Isaac to the Vietnam War.   During Rosh Ha-Shanah morning, the story of Isaac’s near fatal journey up Mount Moriah is chanted from the Torah.    According to the biblical text, Abraham is commanded by God to bring his son to be offered as a sacrifice.   Abraham binds his son, but is stopped by an angel who commands that a ram be offered in Isaac’s place.   The narrative has many parallels to the themes of the day.   To begin, the ram that is sacrificed in place of Isaac is physically represented by the shofar – the instrument that is used on Rosh Ha-Shanah to, in Maimonides’s words, “wake the slumberers”.   Secondly, the narrative’s prime focus on sacrifice and faith is central to Rosh Ha-shanah’s image of God as king and judge.

Cohen’s song challenges the basic premise of both the story and the God to whom the story reflects.    He begins by telling the narrative from Isaac’s perspective, and portrays the boy as young, innocent and animated about his father’s endeavors.   He sings,

“So he started up the mountain, I was running, he was walking, and his axe was made of gold.”

Isaac soon questions his father’s actions, although he still is not able to understand them;

“Thought I saw an eagle but it might have been a vulture, I never could decide.”

By the end of the song, Cohen clearly articulates a challenge to the actions of the United States government.  Cohen sees the government’s involvement in Vietnam as an extension of Abraham’s passivity and negligence and diffuses any divine purpose to either the war or Abraham’s actions by singing that a “scheme is not a vision.”   

The importance of the song to Rosh Ha-Shanah could not be more profound.   Cohen’s midrashic interpretation of the biblical narrative portrays a world in which Abraham, and the God for whom he acts, is autocratic.    The father figure that Isaac begins to speak about is quickly usurped by an authoritarian nightmare.   

Jews can easily relate to such a paradox as they listen to the words of Avinu Malkeinu – that ancient liturgical piece that calls God “our father, our King”.     In these difficult moments of the holiday of judgment, we struggle to make sense of God.   Is God judging us as children or as subordinates?   Is the purpose and meaning of life a vision proscribed by God or a scheme that is void of purpose?

In his 1974 song Who By Fire, Cohen is even more deliberate in his attention to the High Holy Day themes.   The song itself is an echo of the Unetaneh Tokef, a piyyut or liturgical poem that was added to the liturgy during medieval times.   Congregants often cringe as the Cantor chants the words, which asks rhetorically who will live and who will die, and then sets a list of the manners in which death will ensue.   The text goes so far as to include statements about humans being nothing more than a flock of sheep passing before their shepherd.    Through his song’s language, Cohen updates the trials by adding such phrases as “who by barbiturate” and “who by powder”.    He asks, “who in the merry merry month of May” as a way of playing with the words and making them almost silly.

The most compelling and revealing part of Who By Fire comes at the end of each stanza, as Cohen asks—as if this is some mundane telephone conversation–“And who shall I say is calling?”  

Ultimately, Cohen is requesting not a judgment but the appearance of the judge himself.    This request recalls the biblical moments when Moses, that prophet of prophets, asks to know God’s name and later, to see God’s face.    For Cohen, it makes little sense that we are judged without actually knowing the power that judges us.   This is a central challenge on the High Holy Days.    We spend these days sitting in judgment by an entity that never appears.    We bear our souls out to God, we repent for all of our sins, we spend hour after hour listening to stories about God’s ability to decide our fate.   Yet God is so seemingly absent.    It is important to note that Cohen is not filled with fury.   Instead of angrily demanding to know who is making such pronouncements, Cohen creates a conversation.   He leaves us with the opportunity to hear back, to find out who is calling..

This same conversation is the journey and challenge of the Jewish High Holy Days.   We come together and stand in judgment before a force that we see as both father and king, a force that we are not allowed to see, or know.   The irony is that the entire purpose of Teshuvah or return is to become closer to God, to re-connect with God.   Yet God is elusive, somewhat frightening and always keeping us on our toes.   Thus, the best we can do is continue the search, request to know more, and thus find ways to bring God closer.   Much like Cohen, we are not meant to be furious but rather, to keep asking.

These two songs are but snippets of Leonard Cohen’s ability to transform the Jewish tradition in new and powerful ways.    His songs are challenges to God and he seeks an answer that he ultimately knows he will not receive.    The power of Cohen’s lyrics are found in the tension between this deep desire to understand and the ultimate futility of such a search.   Yet, as Who By Fire demonstrates, the power of the search is ultimately meaningful.

In Cohen’s The Window, also from 1974, he sings about a lonely individual sitting by a window and staring out with a deep sense of sorrow.    The song concludes with a simple message, perhaps a wish from Leonard to his audience.   He sings softly, “Gentle this soul.”  

 It is ultimately through an engagement with our struggles, our questions and our yearnings, that we will find our gentle soul.   We need not be afraid of the unknown – we simply need to face it.    That is what the new year expects of us.