Leonard Cohen performs for Israeli troops in the Sinai during the 1973 Yom Kippur War (Ron Ilan/ IDF archives)įortunately for those many people for whom Cohen’s uniquely wise, anguished and spiritual oeuvre continues to resonate deeply, Friedman’s book fills the vacuum. Hence, said Friedman, the amending and ultimate deletion of that Zionist verse in “Lover Lover Lover.” And hence, perhaps too, the refusal to discuss his 1973 musical desert heroics.
He didn’t want his art to be considered journalism.” “But Leonard Cohen the artist understood that he had to be bigger than one side and bigger than the Yom Kippur War. “Leonard Cohen the man was very much here, with the Israelis,” Friedman, a friend of mine and a former colleague here at The Times of Israel, told me in an interview. In the decades after his extraordinary war tour, Cohen didn’t talk about it. He didn’t want his art to be considered journalismīut as Friedman came to realize as he researched the book - frustrated by the absence of basic core information, but ultimately empowered when he was granted unprecedented access to the musician’s notebooks from the period - Cohen might not actually have helped him much at all. But Leonard Cohen the artist understood that he had to be bigger than one side and bigger than the Yom Kippur War. Leonard Cohen the man was very much here, with the Israelis. He might at least have helped Friedman track the itinerary of exactly where and when he played no such definitive record exists, unsurprisingly given both the chaos that reigned here and the fact that Cohen was not a megastar at the time. He might have explained why he discarded the verse Friedman rediscovered, from the song “Lover Lover Lover” released soon after the war, in which Cohen wrote of going “down to the desert to help my brothers fight.” He might have clarified what possessed him not merely to come here and perform in a war but to put his life at genuine risk Cohen crossed the Suez Canal just after the first Israeli troops had done so in the turning point of the conflict. There’s no knowing what Cohen in person would have added to Friedman’s fascinating and important book, “Who By Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai,” published in English on March 29 (having appeared in Hebrew, fittingly, last Yom Kippur). Friedman was at home in Jerusalem, looking after his 18-month-old twins.Īnd when, in November 2016, Friedman started working on the pitch for what became his new book on Cohen, and emailed his editor at the Canadian publisher he and Cohen shared to see if an interview could be arranged, it turned out that Cohen had passed away, at 82, the previous day. He didn’t make it to Cohen’s final, very different concert in Israel in 2009, when Cohen - now in his mid-70s and enjoying the greatest adulation of his career - played for tens of thousands of Israelis, defied the vast concrete arena to elevate a stadium audience as never before, and concluded by offering his people a Priestly Blessing.
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