You Want It Darker

The title song of Leonard Cohen’s final album You Want It Darker (booklet here) features the voice of Cantor Gideon Zelermyer of Congregation Shaar Hashomayim*, singing Hineni – the words “Here I am” used three times by Abraham in response to God in the haunting story of the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22). The song addresses God. It is he who wants it darker but it us who kill the flame.

Andre Salles observes, 

For his entire career, Cohen has grappled with God, with his religious upbringing and his doubts and questions and longings as an adult. This album is a frank testament from an old man about to come face to face with whatever awaits him, and here he wrestles with faith like never before.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks suggests that Leonard Cohen has given us a precise commentary on this passage. As he has done before in Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen conflates two figures in the song. Here it is “Abraham and Isaac, father and son, the sacrificer and the sacrifice. It’s Abraham who says ‘Hineni’ and it is Isaac who in effect says ‘I am ready, Lord’ The second thing he does is he tracks the shape of the narrative.” The three choruses reflect the three occurrences of Hineni in the narrative (verses 1, 7, 11). 

Rabbi Sacks suggests further that the song echoes a Rabbinic tradition

Said Rabbi Abba: Abraham said to Him,“ I will explain my complaint before You. Yesterday, You said to me (above 21:12): ‘for in Isaac will be called your seed,’ and You retracted and said (above verse 2): ‘ Take now your son.’ Now You say to me, ‘ Do not stretch forth your hand to the lad.’

Like Abraham, Leonard Cohen rises up in protest against the “cruelty and wilfulness of the entire story.”

“There’s a lover in the story,” sings Leonard Cohen. It is Abraham. Indeed, Genesis 22 is the first time that the word “love” appears in the Bible (verse 2). “But the story is still the same” and the paradox is this, Rabbi Sacks observes, that “out of love for God we sometimes kill in his name.”  

“This is [Leonard Cohen’s] final message to us. He’s saying ‘God, I love you but I don’t love the world you created...I love the love that you have for us but I don’t like the hate that so often that love gives rise to. And if the binding of Isaac is a symbol of that faith, then ‘If you are the dealer / I’m out of the game / If you are the healer / I’m broken and lame’. And yet for all that Leonard Cohen continued to affirm life...in a very Jewish way.”

“In an extraordinary gesture he takes the biggest paradox of all, Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead...it’s a prayer for the dead but there is not one mention of death in it, it’s all about life, it’s all about God...Despite everything, in the face of death, Jews still praise God.”

“Even in the midst of darkness there is light. Even in the midst of death there is life. Even in the midst of hate there is love. And even with our dying breath we can still say Hallelujah. That is the power of love to redeem the brokenness of the world.”

“In this final song Leonard Cohen becomes Job, arguing with God, finding no answers to his questions but finding nonetheless the strength to sing and to affirm.”

It is worth listening to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in full. Leonard Cohen has clearly gone back to his Jewish roots for his final album. But this does not appear to be all that is happening. The next song (Treaty) opens with “I seen you change the water into wine” – a reference to what the Gospel of John records as Jesus’ first sign? Later the song It Seemed the Better Way confesses that “to turn the other cheek”

Sounded like the truth
Seemed the better way
Sounded like the truth
But it’s not the truth today

So when in the title song Leonard Cohen cites the Kaddish (“Magnified and sanctified / Be Thy Holy Name”) and then adds “Vilified and crucified / In the human frame” he seems to have the Christian conception of God in view as well. There is arguably still more to explore here.

PS: Rabbi Sacks often speaks of Cohen's final words. They are arguably not those of the title song which is also the opening song of the album but from the song Treaty reprised at the end of the album, "I wish there was a treaty / between your love and mine" - addressed to the one who changed water into wine.

*Shaar Hashomayim is the oldest and largest traditional Ashkenazi congregation in Canada, established in 1846. Leonard Cohen’s grandfather and great-grandfather served as presidents of the congregation and Cohen himself had his bar mitzvah ceremony there. It is there that Cohen recited Kaddish for his father whom he lost when he was nine.

The Bible, Law and Ethics Today

Notes from the Inaugural Lecture by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks as Professor of Law, Ethics and the Bible at King’s College, London, on The Relevance of the Bible for Law and Ethics in Society Today

The historian Niall Ferguson quotes the verdict of a member of the Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences, tasked with finding an explanation for why the West overtook China in the sixteenth century and went on to industrial and scientific greatness. At first, he said, we thought it was because you had better guns than we had. Then we thought it was your political system. Next we thought it was your economic system. But for the past twenty years we have had no doubt: it was your religion.

What was it about the Judeo-Christian ethic that led the West to develop market economics, democratic politics, human rights and the free society? The lecture will look at seven aspects of biblical ethics, each of which played a part in this development: human dignity, freedom and responsibility; an ethic of guilt rather than shame; the family as the matrix of virtue, love as the basis of ethics and covenant as the basis of society. It will argue that all seven are currently under threat, and that the Bible remains an important voice in the public conversation about ethics and law.

Seven key distinctive of the Judeo-Christian tradition

1. the dignity of all human persons (not just royalty being in the image of God)
2. the emphasis on human freedom and choice (and responsibility)
3. the sanctity of human life
4. (observed by American anthropologist Ruth Benedict) a culture of righteousness and guilt (linked with hearing) more than a culture of honour and shame (related to seeing): distinction between sinner and sin -- what is wrong is the act, not the person; hence the possibility of repentance and forgiveness
5. the significance of marriage as the matrix for society: fundamental connection between monotheism and monogamy, fidelity to spouse and religious fidelity
6. the covenantal basis of society: first, we are collectively responsible; secondly, a free society is a moral not just political achievement, thirdly, fate of society is dependent on how it treats its most vulnerable members
7. all human power, all political authority, is subject to the transcending authority of the Divine: there are moral limits to power, right is sovereign over might

"Those are the seven features that I think make Biblical ethics different from any other ethical system. It is the only ethical system in which love and forgiveness are at the heart of the moral life. It seems to me that all seven of those beliefs are currently at risk."

‘Those are the seven features that I think make Biblical ethics different from any other ethical system. It is the only ethical system in which love and forgiveness are at the heart of the moral life. It seems to me that all seven of those beliefs are currently at risk.’ - See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/how_the_bible_has_shaped_the_west#sthash.vEvrMDpF.dpuf

now at risk in our society

1. evolutionary biologists argue that there is nothing distinctive about humanity
2. scientific accounts cannot make space for freedom
3. already lost in abortion, and will see it again lost in assisted dying
4. we have already moved to shame culture: trial by public shaming (“thou shalt not be found out”). "It is very difficult to create space for confession, repentance, forgiveness, rehabilitation. Once you have been shamed, that is the end of you."
5. half of children born outside marriage, half of all marriages end in divorce; effects already evident, e.g. child poverty
6. hard to sustain, now: society as a hotel where each can do what they like in their own room as long as they pay (taxes) and don’t disturb the neighbours
7. all too easy today to move from saying "I have a right to do x" to "I am right to do x": whatever is not forbidden by law is morally permissible and therefore morally reasonable