Who by Sniper Fire, Who by Hamas
The story of Leonard Cohen’s visit to Israel by Matti Friedman
The cover of this engrossing book (Spiegel and Grau 2022) shows a scruffy bunch of Israeli soldiers huddling in a circle around two men, one holding a guitar. One is wearing headphones and hunched over a suitcase containing recording equipment. The guitarist looks like he’s playing an E major chord and singing, his eyes closed, his mouth open in the way it’d be if he was in the middle of a word.
It’s Leonard Cohen, age 49, and he’s flown from Greece, where he lives, to Israel, where Egyptian and Syrian forces have coordinated a surprise attack, Egypt by invading the Sinai Peninsula and Syria by attacking the Golan Heights.
They all attacked on October 6, 1973, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement — the holiest day in the Jewish year, when few people read newspapers, listen to radios, or speak on the phone. Soldiers are home with their families, and few are thinking about war. They’re thinking about who will live and who will die in the coming year. They’re seeking forgiveness, asking God to accept their repentance.
The soldiers on the bookcover wear army fatigues — some are standing, some are crouching, some sitting on the sand. All are photographed in black and white, except for the guitar, which is the maple color of wood. Behind the circle of men is a half visible tank.
Although there are only a handful of recordings of Leonard Cohen’s concerts for Israeli soldiers, and no surviving schedule of when and where he performed, there are scattered photos. Matti Friedman spent years searching for those photos and seeking witnesses to one of Cohen’s impromptu desert concerts.
On Yom Kippur in 2023, I lay down during the break between morning and afternoon services (fasting is harder post-cancer) and read diary entries, snippets of songs, and memories of conversations that describe Leonard Cohen being torn about his poetry and singing.
I’ve loved Leonard Cohen since I first heard “Suzanne,” and “That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.” It was about 1971, and I remember listening to the songs until I was able to play them on my guitar. Then in 1974, after the Yom Kippur War, he released an album of more gorgeous songs. One of them, Lover Lover Lover was written while he was in Israel, and there are still people there who remember hearing a different ending to the song than what appears in the recording. Friedman talks about it in his book.
When I used to sing for patients at a nearby hospital, in the years before the pandemic made it impossible for volunteers to sing in patients’ rooms, I always sang the Leonard Cohen songs that moved me to tears: “Hallelujah,” “Dance me to the End of Love,” and “May it Be Your Will”.
I couldn’t ever sing “Who by Fire” at the hospital, but it’s a powerful song, based on a prayer that we say during the Jewish High Holy Days. We imagine God opening a “book of life” on Rosh Hashanah, and the following ten days are filled with prayers imploring God, hoping that as it is written, “repentance and prayer soften judgement’s decree.”
In addition to prayer, we use those ten days to ask forgiveness (that is, if we take this seriously, as I do) from those whom we’ve hurt. On the 10th day, Yom Kippur (the day of repentence), we fast and pray until the Book of Life is (metaphorically) closed and sealed. Until then we wonder, who will live and who will die in the coming year, and how will it happen. As Leonard Cohen wrote:
“Who by fire, who by water
Who in the sunshine, who in the nighttime
Who by high ordeal, who by common trial
Who in your merry month of May?
Who by very slow decay
And who shall I say is calling?”
This is a book for anyone who loves Leonard Cohen, anyone who’s cried listening to “You Want it Darker”, or “Ballad of the Runaway Horse,” and anyone who remembers the anguish of the Yom Kippur War, when Israel was attacked north and south by huge Arab nations, both supported with Russian weapons and equipment. It’s for all of us who are oppressed by rising antisemitism following the barbarous Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023, and horrified by the amount of destruction and death that Hamas invites by continuing to hold 134 hostages after six months, and by aiming daily rockets into Israeli cities and towns.
It’s for those of us who are stunned by the rise of hatred, the blaming Israel for retaliating exactly the way Hamas knew it would, for calling Israel’s retaliation a “genocide,” when Hamas has vowed in writing and publicly that their goal is the destruction of Israel and death to Jews.
It’s for those who distort our 3000+ year history in the land of Israel, dehumanizing all Jews and convincing the uneducated masses that Israel and its army are to blame for the world’s ills. Not a word though, about the thousands of rockets raining down on Israeli homes and schools, or Hizballah shooting rockets from Lebanon, or Houthis from the Red Sea. Nothing about 75 years of suicide bombings and Israeli offers of land for peace because they do not want a two-state solution. Hamas and its supporters want to destroy Israel. They want to destroy me, my people, and the land of my ancestors. They’re not the first ones to try.
Leonard Cohen was torn about his heritage, torn about Israel, torn about himself. He had troubles in his life, difficult times, and a surprise return to the stage in his later years. But as a young man he was already asking the questions all humanity wants to know:
“And who by brave assent, who by accident,
Who in solitude, who in this mirror,
Who by his lady’s command, who by his own hand,
Who in mortal chains, who in power,
And who shall I say is calling?”
