New Book - Who By Fire, Matti Friedman

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TGuy
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New Book - Who By Fire, Matti Friedman

Post by TGuy »

Canadian born Israeli author and journalist Matti Friedman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matti_Friedman
has published a book titled (in Hebrew) "Who By Fire, Leonard Cohen in the Yom Kippur War".

who by fire.jpg
The book unfolds LC's arrival in Israel as war breaks out in October 1973 and his "enlistment" by Israeli artists to tour with them and entertain the troops.

"Leonard Cohen's tour in the Yom Kippur war is Israeli mythology, but few details surrounding it are known. Cohen almost never spoke of the experience, but it resonated deeply with him. This is evident from his songs and life. It is expressed in lost texts found in the archives of his estate.

In Who By Fire Matti Friedman weaves a dramatic story of an exceptional artist, who maintained a complex relationship with his Jewish roots and Identity. He returns to the place where the unique relationship between Leonard Cohen and Israel was born."


The English translation is scheduled to be published at the end of March 2022.
https://www.amazon.com/Who-Fire-Atoneme ... 143&sr=8-1
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LisaLCFan
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Re: New Book - Who By Fire, Matti Friedman

Post by LisaLCFan »

This book sounds very interesting -- I'll certainly be awaiting the English translation. Thanks for the info!
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Re: New Book - Who By Fire, Matti Friedman

Post by B4real »

Lisa & all,
At my request in the 'never-ending gallery' thread, Geoffrey has kindly provided for me two days ago a couple of links, inadvertently at the time, referring to this book - https://www.leonardcohenforum.com/viewt ... 10#p377414
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Re: New Book - Who By Fire, Matti Friedman

Post by LisaLCFan »

Thanks, Bev -- I did see those links, and I also read a few other things about the book elsewhere, which led me to believe that it may be an interesting read!

Cheers!
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Re: New Book - Who By Fire, Matti Friedman

Post by WiTS »

english version
Publication date 14 Apr 2022
https://www.bookdepository.com/Who-by-F ... 982&sr=1-3

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Re: New Book - Who By Fire, Matti Friedman

Post by B4real »

More info on this book including the original lines Leonard wrote about the Israeli soldiers.
(they were previously written in my Sept 2021 link above, courtesy of Geoffrey)

Tour Of Duty: When Leonard Cohen Serenaded Ariel Sharon On The Battlefield

https://www.thenorthatlanticleague.com/ ... ttlefield/
October 1973 may be the most horrific month in Israeli history. During this much-documented time, when approximately 2,300 Israeli soldiers were killed during the Yom Kippur War, a surprising figure who seemingly had nothing to do with the bloody events was there on the front lines. Just like Israel, he was also soul-searching.

Leonard Cohen’s Sinai tour during the 19-day war enjoys a relatively prominent place in Israeli lore, but is less well-known among his global fan base. This is understandable: Cohen rarely spoke of his journey into the desert. However, many Israeli soldiers, whose brutal battles with Egyptian forces were interspersed with serenades of “Suzanne” and “So Long, Marianne,” would never forget him.

As a Jewish-Canadian journalist and Israel Defense Forces combat veteran, as well as the author of three books that explore little-known tales from Israeli and Jewish history, Matti Friedman is uniquely qualified to recount the story of Cohen and the Yom Kippur War – which he does expertly in “Who By Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai.”

“I’m always looking for stories that seem marginal but that say something big,” Friedman tells Haaretz in an interview. “I wanted to use the war to see Leonard Cohen the singer in a different light and use the singer to see the war in a different light.”

Unlike most books about the war, which deal primarily with the battles and politicians, Friedman shows how music touched those going through some of the most difficult moments of their lives.

The idea came to him during a Cohen concert at Ramat Gan Stadium back in September 2009. The singer-songwriter had disappeared from the public eye for well over a decade, living in a Buddhist monastery, only making a comeback after discovering that his manager had emptied his bank account.

The music of his fellow Canadian meant a lot to Friedman, but he was surprised by how connected Israelis were to him too. Around the time of the concert, he read an article in an Israeli newspaper about the 1973 visit, which helped him understand why Israelis loved Cohen, and he began researching the book.What started with the sporadic gathering of newspaper clippings eventually led to a surprise discovery: 35 pages of Cohen’s unfiltered thoughts typed upon returning from Israel, held in the archives of the Canadian publishing company McClelland & Stewart as part of an unpublished memoir, “Final Revisions of My Life in Art.”

Friedman says Cohen’s writing helped him understand something he’d never realized before: “Our crisis in the Yom Kippur War was in some ways a way out of his own crisis.”

Cohen had just turned 39, was frustrated with his music and had recently announced his retirement. His relationship with his then-partner Suzanne Elrod, with whom he had a child, was also falling apart.

Besides this, Cohen’s religious upbringing had led to his Judaism becoming a greater part of his identity, which led him to seeing Israel as a sort of long-lost home. He performed there for the first time in a year and a half before the war in Tel Aviv. When the war broke out, along with the need to get away from his home on the Greek island of Hydra, it felt natural for him to be there.

Singer without a guitar
It’s not clear what Cohen intended to do upon his arrival shortly after the war began on October 6. Perhaps he planned to volunteer on a kibbutz that was missing workers who had been sent to the war. Performing for the soldiers wasn’t apparently on his mind – after all, he had arrived in Israel without his guitar.

However, by total chance, Cohen was recognized by singer Oshik Levi and actress-singer Ilana Rubina (aka Rovina) while sitting at a cafe in Tel Aviv. Levi convinced Cohen to play for the soldiers and quickly assembled a band that included future Israeli star Matti Caspi, just 23 at the time.

At an air base where he would give his first performance of the war, Cohen wrote “Lover Lover Lover,” including a verse about Israeli soldiers – which was later removed when the song was recorded in 1974. Friedman discovered these lyrics in a notebook that Cohen’s estate gave him access to, and are revealed for the first time in his book:

“I went down to the desert to help my brothers fight

I knew that they weren’t wrong

I knew that they weren’t right

But bones must stand up straight and walk

And blood must move around

And men go making ugly lines

Across the holy ground.”


“Who By Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai” author Matti Friedman.
Mary Anderson
In order to piece together what had taken place in Sinai, Friedman also interviewed Israelis who had seen the musician there. This was how he discovered that the tour’s logistics were dictated by the chaos of war. In fact, there is no official record to prove that Cohen was even there. The singer-songwriter himself had no idea where he was being taken to or where he was; his manuscript refers to the whole Sinai area as “The Desert.”

One of the few performance dates Friedman was able to verify with any level of certainty, October 14, was because a soldier recalled seeing Cohen the day after a well-known Israeli general, Albert Mendler, had been killed in action.

He also reveals how the process for deciding where Cohen would perform was often an argument between representatives of different units as to who had more dead soldiers and was therefore more deserving of a concert.

Leonard Cohen performing for Israeli soldiers in Sinai. Some performances were deep into enemy lines.
Isaac Shokal

Deep impression
The best example of the chaos surrounding the tour is its most iconic image, where Cohen is seen singing for dozens of soldiers. Standing next to him is then-Maj. Gen. Ariel Sharon. The photograph was taken at an Egyptian air base on the southern side of the Suez Canal. How Cohen was allowed so deep into enemy territory is unclear. Sharon’s son, Gilad, told Friedman he had no recollection of his father ever mentioning Leonard Cohen. Indeed, Friedman speculates that the army general had no idea who Cohen even was.

In the manuscript, Cohen wrote that he would often be driven around in the middle of the night, until his jeep happened upon tired soldiers. He would sing a few songs for them, and then move on.

The sight of musicians performing for soldiers during wartime often looks absurd. There is archival footage of an IDF entertainment troupe performing for soldiers in the Golan Heights during the war, in which the performers are seen helplessly smiling and clapping in a bid to perk up the shell-shocked combatants.

The dissonance between the soldiers’ experiences and those of the troupes and their cheerful songs would often have the opposite effect of what was intended. But something about Cohen performing his melancholic songs, and then later sleeping under the same conditions and eating the same rations as the soldiers, seemed to leave a far deeper impression on those who saw him. The sense was that he truly identified with those in battle.

The book gives some surprising insights into who Leonard Cohen was. Unlike the sweet, fedora-wearing elderly gentleman most are familiar with from his later years, Friedman says the Cohen who showed up in Sinai – at least as far as his writings reveal – was a dark and flawed character, both angry and depressed. He was driven by lust, treated women awfully and was totally self-involved.

Also, the writer notes, Cohen’s knowledge of Judaism and its entrenchment in his identity was surprisingly deep. This is a key theme of the book and explains how his affiliation with the Jewish people motivated him to go to Sinai. During the tour, those there say he asked them to call him by his Hebrew name, Eliezer.

However, when he found himself feeling relieved that the dead soldiers being brought in on a helicopter were Egyptian and not Israeli, he became disgusted with himself and realized that he had allowed his tribal instincts to push him too far. He felt that as a poet, his work needed to have a universal outreach. He would backtrack even further years later and say that “Lover Lover Lover” was written for the Egyptian and Israeli soldiers. “In that order,” Friedman emphasizes.

The author believes, though, that Cohen never ran away from his Jewish identity; he just wrestled with it. The title track on his final album, “You Want It Darker” – released a few weeks before his death in November 2016 – featured the cantor from his synagogue. And even though Cohen wrote a poem in the 1980s that was scathingly critical of Israel, being a critic of Israel is a big part of being Jewish, Friedman argues.

Cohen’s manuscript reveals another previously unexplored aspect of his Judaism: his preoccupation with his being a Kohen – a high priest in the Jewish tradition who is believed to be descended from Moses’ brother, Aaron. He wrote often of a spiritual role that required him to call down for divine protection in the name of the community.

In retrospect, it is impossible to fully understand Leonard Cohen without examining this chapter in his life. A musician who had recently called time on his career would, just four months after the war, be recording his fourth album, “New Skin for the Old Ceremony,” which contained the war anthem “Lover Lover Lover” and “Who By Fire,” whose lyrics were inspired by the Yom Kippur liturgy. His Sinai tour gave him a full understanding of who he was as an artist, Jew and man.

Perhaps more than anything, Friedman’s book is a reminder of how the world’s relationship with Israel has changed in the decades since. Nowadays, Israeli military operations draw global condemnation and performers are increasingly pressured to boycott the country. But in October 1973, as the state fought its bloodiest war since gaining independence, one of the greatest artists of the 20th century not only came, but traveled deep into enemy territory to share his music during the nation’s darkest hour.

“Who By Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai,” by Matti Friedman, is published by Spiegel & Grau and is out on March 29.
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Re: New Book - Who By Fire, Matti Friedman

Post by Geoffrey »

B4real wrote:courtesy of Geoffrey
saint.jpg
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B4real
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Re: New Book - Who By Fire, Matti Friedman

Post by B4real »

Geoffrey wrote: Sun Feb 27, 2022 9:16 pm
B4real wrote:courtesy of Geoffrey
saint.jpg
“I practiced on my sainthood
I gave to one and all”
..... ;-)
It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to B4real ~ me
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Re: New Book - Who By Fire, Matti Friedman

Post by Geoffrey »

B4real wrote:"i practiced on my sainthood, i gave to one and all . . ." ;-)
the mood of 'came so far for beauty' always makes me think of 'adagio cantabile' :)
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Re: New Book - Who By Fire, Matti Friedman

Post by lizzytysh »

Thanks for posting that long review, Bev. It has been frustrating over the years to pretty much just see that photo that we're all familiar with, and that's it. It's heartening to know that we can now find out more about the time he spent with the soldiers, and that the information is substantive. I look forward to reading this book.

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Re: New Book - Who By Fire, Matti Friedman

Post by B4real »

Always my pleasure, Lizzie :)

Here's a couple more links to do with that time for Leonard and his song Who By Fire -

https://blog.nli.org.il/en/leonard-cohen-sinai/
“I am in my myth home but I have no proof and I cannot debate and I am in no danger of believing myself …
Speaking no Hebrew I enjoy my legitimate silence.”

https://plus61j.net.au/editors-picks/yo ... n-classic/
He cites the Yom Kippur liturgy and shifts the focus from a theological message to an inquisitive investigation into the mystery of death, almost flirting with the thought of how one may die – by fire, by water, by powder, in the snow or in spring. Instead of the fear to die Cohen practices intimate contemplation with the concept of death.
It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to B4real ~ me
Attitude is a self-fulfilling prophecy ~ me ...... The magic of art is the truth of its lies ~ me ...... Only left-handers are in their right mind!
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Re: New Book - Who By Fire, Matti Friedman

Post by lizzytysh »

Thanks for those links and additional quotes, Bev. VERY interesting. 8)
"Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken."
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