Akedah Darkness

By way of reflecting on Leonard Cohen’s song You Want It Darker and Genesis 22 (see also previous post), this is an imaginative exercise (not an exegesis), reading the song as Abraham. Genesis 22 is cited in italics in the translation offered by Robert Alter.

If you are the dealer
I’m out of the game

And it happened after these things that God tested Abraham. And He said to him, “Abraham!” and he said, “Here I am.” God asked Abraham to offer up his son Isaac as a burnt offering. And Abraham could have said, "if that’s the deal, I’m not playing."

If you are the healer
I’m broken and lame

He could have said, "if this is what healing looks like, I'm stuffed." Or maybe this could be the counterpoint to the first two lines, "if you promise to heal, I allow myself to be broken."

If thine is the glory
Then mine must be the shame

The glory belongs to God. Always. Protesting God's command would cover Abraham in shame; having for years trusted this God, can he now give up without losing face? Praising God's command would amount to praising death, surely a shameful thing!

So Abraham says nothing. He keeps schtumm

You want it darker
We kill the flame

If God wants to extinguish Isaac's light of life, Abraham gets ready to kill the flame. No need for words. Except for the words of the Mourner's Kaddish.

Magnified and sanctified
Be Thy Holy Name

Why does he do it? Later Jesus would claim, "Abraham your father was overjoyed that he would see my day, and he saw it and was delighted." (John 8:56). God's Holy Name, "I AM who I AM," I will be who I am, the ever present one. I AM, the light of the world

Vilified and crucified
In the human frame

It is not truly God who desires darkness but it is us, we who cannot stand the light. And yet need it. We light candles for those whose life has been extinguished, not least in the Shoa.

A million candles burning
For the help that never came

Abraham's sons and daughters died and God did not turn up. He did not command the darkness, but neither did he prevent it. And in this sense

You want it darker

God must accept responsibility. But so must we.

Hineni Hineni
I’m ready, my Lord

Ready to kill or ready to suffer? Abraham's first Hineni is spoken to God, the second to Isaac.Ready to execute God's command, ready to be attetive to the sufferer. Ready to go on a walk for God (verse 3), ready to walk with the sufferer (verse 9). What faith can reconcile this? Not a faith that necessarily knows how things will work out but that trusts, "God will see to the sheep for the offering, my son."

There’s a lover in the story
But the story is still the same

Love - the word is used for the first time in the Bible here in Genesis 22, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out, your son, your only one, whom you love. Should love not make a difference? It does not change the story. The text does not say that Abraham loved God but the test is arguably one that relates to the ordering of loves. Our loves for others are rightly ordered when they are directed towards the love of God rather than takes its place. But then

There’s a lullaby for suffering
And a paradox to blame

How can love for God lead to such an hateful act? It seems unbelievable that our love for God should ever lead us to seek to kill someone.

But it’s written in the scriptures
And it’s not some idle claim

It must be true then that darkness has two causes

You want it darker
We kill the flame

Abraham sees beyond his own time and place. He sees the Messiah. He also sees the Shoa and murder before and after

They’re lining up the prisoners
And the guards are taking aim

Executions on such a grand scale put our own trials and temptations into perspective

I struggled with some demons
They were middle-class and tame

But not any more if a text gives me permission to join in

I didn’t know I had permission
To murder and to maim

If so, truly,

You want it darker

And what can I confess but

Hineni Hineni
I’m ready, my Lord

Magnified and sanctified
Be Thy Holy Name
Vilified and crucified
In the human frame
A million candles burning
For the love that never came
You want it darker
We kill the flame

 And yet. The songs ends

If you are the dealer
Let me out of the game
If you are the healer
I’m broken and lame
If thine is the glory
Mine must be the shame
You want it darker

Hineni Hineni
I’m ready, my Lord

But in Genesis 22 the third Hineni is in response to the urgent "Abraham, Abraham!" which heralds the end of the trial. The one who truly fears God sees the substitute ram and knows that there is a place in which God sees to it that justice is done, where he sees and can be seen, YHWH-yireh, "On the mount of the LORD there is sight." Light at last.

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.