Who By Fire: Why Leonard Cohen Ran Toward War

Honestly with Bari Weiss

The Free Press

News, Society & Culture

4.6 • 7.8K Ratings

🗓️ 6 April 2022

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1973, Leonard Cohen announced he was done with music for good. The same year, in October, war broke out in Israel. The Yom Kippur War would become the bloodiest in Israel’s young history—and Cohen was there to witness it. As the war broke out, he left his home on the Greek island of Hydra to fly into the warzone. Leonard Cohen never said much about why he went to the front. What we know is that in the months that followed, he would write “Who By Fire.” Five decades later, on Spotify and in synagogue, you can still hear the echoes of this trip. So what was it that happened in the desert in October of 1973 between this depressed musician and these too young soldiers going off to battle? How did it remake Leonard Cohen? How did it transform those who heard him play? And how did the war transform Israel itself? Those are just some of the questions Matti Friedman explains in his beautiful new book Who By Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is honestly. In the last month I have been extraordinarily moved by stories of people, including some people I know who have gone to Ukraine.
0:10.0	Some of them, I know some veterans, are going to train soldiers. Some are going to cook food for
0:16.6	refugees at the border. Some of them are helping people get resettled in countries surrounding
0:21.6	Ukraine.
0:23.8	And I listen to these stories and I wonder,
0:26.3	what draws people to leave the comfort of their homes
0:30.0	and run toward war?
0:32.4	We hear a lot about the fog of war, right?
0:34.2	The way that war can confuse and obscure.
0:37.4	But also, is there something about war that reveals?
0:41.1	Is there something about being so close to the edge between life and death that is clarifying?
0:47.2	I think we can find an answer in a story from almost 50 years ago that's never been told about an unlikely meeting between a folk star of the
0:55.4	1960s who decided to drop in on the bloodiest war in Israeli history. You are really such a pretty little one.
1:07.0	I see you gone and change your name again.
1:14.8	The musician in question is Leonard Cohen.
1:18.0	His audience in the desert are young Israeli soldiers,
1:21.2	many of whom had just witnessed their friends die, and some of whom would themselves
1:25.2	die in the days ahead.
1:26.6	So long, Marion, it's time that we began to laugh and cry and laugh and cry and laugh about it all again.
1:49.0	When Leonard Cohen set off for Israel in 1973, he was 39 years old and he was a
1:56.1	musician that said he was done with music for good. But after those weeks in the
2:01.0	desert, he would go on to write,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Free Press, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Free Press and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.