(RNS) — Some pilgrimages you plan. Others plan you.<\/p>\n
This summer, mine took me first to Israel, the birthplace of my faith; then to Athens, the birthplace of rationalism and democracy; and finally — an hour and 10 minutes by ferry — to the Greek island of Hydra.<\/p>\n
Why Hydra? Because that was where Leonard Cohen had lived with his partner, Marianne Ihlen, and their young child, Adam. I wanted to see his house and the steps leading to and from it because I love his music, and because those steps had led Cohen to one of the most consequential journeys of his life.<\/p>\n
If I might quote the cultural moment of “The Odyssey,”<\/a> Hydra was Cohen’s Ithaca — the place that was supposed to be home. But his journey ran “The Odyssey” in reverse. Odysseus wandered for 10 years to get home. Cohen had to leave his home to find out where home actually was — a people.<\/p>\n In the autumn of 1973, Cohen was in the midst of a deep crisis, as described in Matti Friedman’s book “Who By Fire? Leonard Cohen in the Sinai<\/a>.” His most recent albums had been both critical and commercial failures. He struggled with depression — or, at the very least, a profound sadness.<\/p>\n That October 1973, on Yom Kippur, the combined armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan launched a surprise attack on the Jewish state.<\/p>\n Cohen walked down the steps in Hydra to the port, went to Athens and took a plane to Israel.<\/p>\n He landed and went to a café in Tel Aviv, where a few Israeli pop stars spotted him — most notably, perhaps, the late Matti Caspi. They persuaded him to travel with them to the Sinai and to sing for the soldiers, as Friedman chronicled in his book. <\/p>\n The rest is rock ‘n’ roll history — or, rather, the place where rock history and Jewish history intersect. Cohen went to Hatzor, an airfield in the south. There, he sang, as depicted in an amazing photo in which the late general and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is on Cohen’s left, and Caspi, on his right, accompanies him on guitar.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This story carried with me on my trip to Hydra, and I have been carrying it with me in the days since my return — through Tisha B’Av. And, it carried me as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani unleashed his performative fury against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the entire state of Israel, in a video that reached millions of people. And, it carried with me when two people, one of them in a kippah, were attacked on a New York street by a man screaming “Allahu Akbar.”<\/p>\n I have been wondering to myself: What would Cohen sing?<\/p>\n It would not have been a song of his own composing.<\/p>\n Rather, it would have been a brief song<\/a> with which he would often close his concerts. It was written by Earl Chalmers Guisinger, under the pseudonym Guy Singer, in 1954, and recorded by such artists as Perry Como, Les Paul and Mary Ford.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/webRNS-Leonard-Cohen-Sinai-1973.jpg\")
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