Leonard Cohen’s Torah
Leonard Cohen’s just released You Want It Darker should be the Torah we read this Rosh HaShanah. Here are some preliminary thoughts on the song’s lyrics. (To listen to the song: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/hear-leonard-cohens-hypnotic-new-song-you-want-it-darker-w441274).
If you are the dealer/ I’m out of the game. Gods die when believers outgrow them: the Mad God who saturates the earth in the blood of the Other must be rejected.
If you are the healer/ it means I’m broken and lame. The reference is to Jacob becoming Yisrael, the Godwrestler (Genesis 32:25–30). There is a truer God that teaches us to reconcile with our enemies (Genesis 33:4) and care for the powerless (Genesis 33:13), but the cost of following this God is the shattering of self and selfishness, a price few are willing to pay.
If thine is the glory/then mine must be the shame. We created the Mad God whose glory is found in the suffering and death of our enemies, so the shame of His evil falls on us alone.
You want it darker/We kill the flame. The tribalist God fears the light: the light of reason, the light of love, the light of compassion, the light of justice, and we are always ready to serve Him and plunge our world into ever greater darkness by extinguishing what little light still flickers in our souls.
Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name/Villified, crucified, in the human frame. This is Cohen’s Mourner’s Kaddish calling us to mourn the death of human holiness.
A million candles burning for the love that never came. Cohen is referring to the children’s memorial at Yad vaShem remembering the million Jewish children murdered by the High Priests of the Mad God, and bemoaning the fact that we would rather weep over children after they die than to intervene to stop their slaughter in the first place.
Hineni, hineni I’m ready, my lord. Hineni—”here I am”—is Abraham’s response when called by God to murder his son (Genesis 22:1). Hineni is humanity’s response to the same God calling for the sacrifice of our children as well. Hineni: here I am, Lord, what new atrocity can I carry out for you today?
There’s a lover in the story/but the story’s still the same. Though some resist, the story doesn’t change: the Mad God too alluring; the slaughter too addictive; the drum beat of death too seductive.
There’s a lullaby for suffering/and a paradox to blame. We sing comfortingly to our children even as we raise them to kill and die; we love our children but not enough to spare them.
But it’s written in the scriptures/and its not some idle claim. You want it darker/We kill the flame. We wrote our scriptures in blood: the blood of children, the blood of enemies, the blood of animals, the blood of the other, the blood of the damned, the blood of the infidel. And then we read what we wrote insisting it is God’s Word not our own.
They’re lining up the prisoners/and the guards are taking aim/I struggled with some demons/ They were middle class and tame. In the midst of holy terror we numb ourselves to suffering with a self indulgent, bourgeois spirituality obsessed with personal happiness that blames the suffering of others on the choices they make.
I didn’t know I had permission to murder and to main/You want it darker… This is the true gift of the Mad God and His religions: the sanctioning of our darkest impulses that we might unleash our demons while calling them angels.
Hineni, hineni/ Hineni, hineni /I’m ready my lord/ Hineni, hineni / Hineni, hineni
The hymn ends with a chanting of our readiness to darken the world all the more. We have learned nothing. The new year will be only a darker version of the last year.
Cohen has given us a Torah worthy of this year’s Rosh haShanah. I hope we have the courage to wrestle with it.