By Zanna Linskaia
On October 6, 2024 we organized event at Burquest Jewish community, marking one year of the massacre in Israel and continuing war with terroristic organizations. October 7 for Israel and all Jews around the world is a day, that would forever change its narrative and be engraved in the hearts of many.
50 years later after Yom Kippur war in 1973, Israel faces war in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran fighting on seven fronts. Similarity between Yom Kippur war and current battles with Iranian proxies is obvious. Our member Gideon Stuhler, who was on the front lines in 1973, has shared his touching memory of Yom Kippur war and own feelings of history repeated itself. Cantor Steve Levin prayed for hostages, fallen IDF soldiers and civilians, Israel has lost.
Talking about parallels between these wars, our event was based on the book by Matti Friedman “Who By Fire”, about the incredible never-before-told story of Leonard Cohen’s trip to Israel during Yom Kippur War in 1973, where he performed for troops on the front lines. In our presentation we used photos, videos, records, documentary and live performances.
Who is Matti Friedman? He is a Canadian-Israeli journalist and writer who was born to a Canadian Orthodox Jewish family and grew up in Toronto. In 1995 he did aliya to Israel at the age of 17, and served in IDF. Between 2006 to 2011 he was a reporter and editor at the press agency and worked as a reporter in Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Moscow and Washington. His essays about anti-Israel media bias are well known. He is also an author of several books receiving praises and awards for “The Aleppo Codex”, ‘Pumpkin flowers”, “Spies of no country” and the last one “Who by Fire”, using Cohen’s never published manuscript.
After famous and successful periods in his life as a poet, novelist and song- writer, Leonard Cohen was stacked by depression for months on Hydra island in Greece, before Yom Kippur War. He was trying to lose himself with women and drugs. He felt frustrated and trapped, not just by his new family - Suzanne and child, and his age -39, but also by his music. “It’s over, -he said in interview. I don’t want to be in it.”
From his lost notebook: “ I was listening to the war between Arabs and Jews. I wanted to go fight and die.” He decided to fly to the Sinai desert into the chaos and bloodshed of the war. Moving around the front with a team of a local musicians and singers, Cohen was involved in the middle of a global crisis. He met there hundreds of fighting young men and women at the worst moments of their lives. Matti Friedman gives us an account of what happened due these weeks in Israel in October 1973 with Cohen’s resurrecting journey in Yom Kippur War. He played at improvised concerts on the stages of tanks or jeeps and he
knew, that his songs could be the last that the soldiers heard. Here he wrote song “Lover, lover, lover...”, it was song as a shield for IDF soldiers.
Because the army kept no account of Cohen’s tour in the war and singer did not write a detailed noted in his notebook, there are no dates for his concerts. But Matti Caspi, Israeli musician who accompanied Cohen on the guitar, remembered episode of his new song - “Lover, lover, lover..." that Leonard Cohen wrote on the air force base. In the album Cohen released after war, some lines disappeared and were never published. Here they are from his manuscript:” I went down to
the desert to help my brothers fight. I knew that they weren’t wrong, I knew that they weren’t right.”It was time for Leonard Cohen come back to his tribe and accept his role. He asked to call him Eliezer, by his Hebrew name. As Cohen and his comrades went into the combat zone, other musicians were traveling from unit to unit in the desert and along the North front on the Golan heights. The singer Avner Gadasi remembered: “When they drove up to a base, no one was alive. Guard at the gate told us - “Go strait and see if there’s anyone left to play for.” We found a few soldiers alive and we played for them”. Cohen wrote in his
notebook: “These kids had been raised to fight”.
Not many Israeli soldiers knew Leonard Cohen. Those who knew associated his songs with cafes and Paris. He played his famous songs “Suzanne”, “So long, Marianne” and “Bird on the Wire”, then his new song - “Lover, lover...” Before leaving Israel, he wrote in his notebook - “I must go to Jerusalem first. Here people stop me, thank me and tell me never to leave Jerusalem”. But he left and came back to Suzanne and his son. “That is the end of the story” - he wrote. The manuscript wasn’t published or even finished. He never talked about this chapter in his life publicly. The only interview he gave in London in 1974. He said - “It’s one of the few times people can act their best, the sense of community and brotherhood devotion.” Later, in 1985 Cohen gave interview on Israeli TV: “I never thought of myself as a “protest singer”, but singer is manifesting the heart. The real song is a gift and comes from heaven and it is not yours. Love and desire move us. My songs are always Jewish. My heart belongs to Jewish traditions.”
In Sinai music was a matter of life and death, that restored his faith in Israel where he started again as a songwriter. The songs he wrote later - “Halleluiah”, “Everybody know”, “Anthem”, “Dance me to the end of love” and other masterpieces could not be written without his experience in Yom Kippur War. In his song “Night comes on” he wrote about his father Nathan Cohen who fought with Germans and compared father’s battle with Israeli war:
“We were fighting in Egypt when they signed this agreement that nobody else had to die...”
Song “Who by Fire” was written 4,5 months after ceasefire”. Matti Friedman found in his notebook the embryony verses of this song, very closed to recited verses of the Day of Atonement prayer for Yom Kippur.
Cohen’s last visit to Israel was in 2009. After depression, drugs, alcohol and retreat in monastery, his stolen savings by his manager, he came out to tour for the first time in 15 years. His fame and admiration by Israelis were enormous. I remember the day when tickets went on sale in Tel-Aviv - it was just few hours and 50 thousand tickets sold out. Near the stadium in Ramat Gan hundred of people could not get in. His comrades in Sinai came to his concert. Leonard Cohen raised his hands and blessed his audience in ancient Hebrew - the language of the priests who Leonard Cohen belonged.
At the end I want to thank Dov Lank for technical support of this presentation
and interpretation of the song “Who By Fire”, Steve Levin for wonderful performance of L.Cohen’s famous masterpieces, Rudy Rozanski and Arnold Kobiliansky for playing music from the film “Schindler List” and “Jerusalem of Gold.”
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