Cohen & Dylan<\/p>\n
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Since the recent release of Bob Dylan\u2019s (nee Robert Zimmerman) The Basement Tapes Complete, and Leonard Cohen\u2019s 80th birthday, I\u2019ve been contemplating two of the greatest musical icons and poets laureate of rock music in the sixties and onward and how their music emerges from their Jewishness.<\/p>\n
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The title track of Dylan\u2019s 1965 album, Highway 61 Revisited, begins provocatively with a partial retelling of the opening lines in the binding of Isaac narrative (akedah) that originally appear in Genesis 22. The first stanza reads as follows: \u201cOh, God said to Abraham, \u2018Kill me a son\u2019\/ Abe said, \u2018Man, you must be puttin\u2019 me on\u2019\/ God said, \u2018No\u2019 Abe say, \u2018What?\u2019\/ God say, \u2018You can do what you want, Abe, but\/ The next time you see me comin\u2019, you better run\/ Well, Abe said, \u2018Where d\u2019you want this killin\u2019 done?\u2019 God said, \u2018Out on Highway 61.\u2019\u201d A few years later, Leonard Cohen released his own version of that same biblical narrative in \u201cThe Story of Isaac.\u201d Part of its message was a protest against the older generation\u2019s decisions to send their children to war. Consider Cohen\u2019s rebuke: \u201cYou who build these altars now\/ to sacrifice these children\/ you must not do it anymore\/ A scheme is not a vision\/ and you never have been tempted\/ by a demon or a god\/ You who stand above them now\/ your hatchets blunt and bloody\/ you were not there before\/ When I lay upon a mountain\/ and my father\u2019s hand was trembling\/ with the beauty of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The akedah\u2019s theme of trial, sacrifice, martyrdom and death of the beloved son which so critically informs and shapes subsequent Jewish, as well as Christian, theology seeps its way into modern popular music. These songs cannot possibly be understood without first understanding their rootedness in a long Jewish tradition engaging the significance of music, and second, without a close look at their direct referent \u2013 one of the most powerful and shocking passages in the Hebrew Bible.<\/p>\n
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The very name \u201cIsrael\u201d midrashically compounds the words song (shir) and God (el) which captures both the metaphysical bond between God and music, as well as the physical uniqueness of Israel as the national reflection of this integral bond. Moses Nahmanides considers the song at the end of Deuteronomy a pr\u00e9cis of the entire Jewish historical experience \u2013\u201cNow this song, which is our true and faithful testimony, tells us clearly all that will happen to us.\u201d Jewish experience and chronology is a divine musical score. Thus by renaming Jacob Israel, the angel he struggled with introduces music into his existence. It is no coincidence that immediately afterward, if only for a fleeting moment, Jacob reunites with Esau, his estranged brother, in a genuine mutual expression of love.<\/p>\n
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The formal mitzvah that obligates Jews individually to write a Torah scroll is derived from a particular divine mandate addressed to Moses and Joshua to inscribe one small segment of the Torah, the Song of Moses \u2013 \u201cAnd now write you this song and teach it to the Israelites\u201d (Deuteronomy 31:19). The rabbinic rereading of the command transforms the entire Torah into an epic poem, a song. The minor poem of Ha\u2019azinu mirrors the major \u201cpoem\u201d of the Torah from Genesis to Deuteronomy.<\/p>\n
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Just as only nature heard the divine voice at Creation, the poem commences in kind with nature \u2013 the heaven and the earth \u2013 as God\u2019s audience. And just as the Torah moves from the universal story of creation to the particular story of a single people, concluding with it and its leader on the cusp of establishing its own homeland, so too does the poem crescendo from its opening in creation to its climax in the people of Israel and its land.<\/p>\n
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R. Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin, (Netziv) (1816-1893), claimed that the poem captures the nature of the Torah much better than prose in its covert allusiveness that discloses meaning far beyond the simplicity and overt message of prose. The profound discoveries of the sage transform the talmid hacham into the Torah\u2019s troubadour.<\/p>\n
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Dylan and Cohen, rock\u2019s talmidei hachamim, emerge out of this tradition in which song and Torah study, poetry and spiritual devotion are intertwined in a sacred embrace. Their turns to Judaism\u2019s sacred texts are not sacrilegious but rather midrashic extensions of the profound role music plays within the tradition. In order to afford them their due we need apply Netziv\u2019s methodology, searching for meaning in the songs\u2019 allusions.<\/p>\n
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Highway 61, winding its way some 1,400 miles across the USA, from the south in New Orleans to the north in Minnesota, symbolizes the spectrum of genres of quintessential American music. Dylan anchors that route in the image of the akedah, which animates it with both the terror of encounters with God and the adventurous discovery of the lengthy road that traverses a wide swath of his own country. The road therefore discloses the endless musical possibilities it encompasses. If the killing is to be done on that highway then perhaps Dylan appropriates Abraham\u2019s encounter and trial as a paradigmatic symbol of breaking new ground in poetry and musical creativity.<\/p>\n
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The music that deserves traveling this road needs to adopt the boldness, the morally shocking, the risk taking, the offensiveness and the suffering that must have informed Abraham\u2019s willingness to sacrifice what he most loved. If the poet\/songwriter wants to play it safe and compose comfortable music then she \u201cbetter run.\u201d For music to approach the realm of the transcendent it requires the censure and moral outrage that novelty and pioneering so often attract. The toll for the musical highway of meaningful inventiveness is sacrifice of the highest order.<\/p>\n
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Cohen\u2019s treatment of Abraham, like Dylan\u2019s, is tinged with both reverence and revulsion. Abraham\u2019s relationship with his son starkly contrasts with those \u201cover 30\u201d in Cohen\u2019s own time, who fail to measure up to the tragic nobility of their biblical predecessor.<\/p>\n
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The present child sacrificers are \u201cschemers\u201d not driven by a \u201cvision.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Misguided or not, Abraham sets out sincerely to accomplish something much larger than himself, to pursue a vision that leaves a sacred legacy. A scheme on the other hand colloquially conveys a sense of deviousness and of immoral plotting to exploit others for one\u2019s own benefit. Playing on the midrash that Abraham\u2019s trial is prompted by Satan, one can judge Abraham\u2019s test to have been invoked either negatively by a \u201cdemon\u201d or positively by a \u201cGod,\u201d but his temptation to murder at least reflects a relationship with the Transcendent, with something beyond his own existence. The parents of Cohen\u2019s Vietnam era have no such excuse, no temptation other than their own cruel self-interest.<\/p>\n
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Also reminiscent of the midrashic uniqueness of Abraham\u2019s knife, signified by the rare Hebrew term ma\u2019akhelet, Abraham\u2019s weapon in Cohen\u2019s hands is elegant. Earlier in the song Abraham\u2019s axe is said to be \u201cmade of gold.\u201d<\/p>\n
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It was neither \u201cblunt,\u201d nor crafted to cause the most excruciating pain, nor \u201cbloody\u201d, since at the end of the trial Abraham in fact does not sacrifice his son. Axes used as weapons are normally made of copper, bronze, iron, or steel, and so the preciousness of Abraham\u2019s axe of gold almost certainly indicates ornamental use rather than weaponry.<\/p>\n
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Cohen\u2019s contemporary generation\u2019s willingness to sacrifice its children is no real test, for the love its parents feign for their children is superficial, and therefore effortlessly overcome. Their love bears no resemblance to Abraham\u2019s passionate and all-consuming love for Isaac, as the midrash understands the implications of the heightened biblical multi-phrasing \u201cyour son, your only one, the one you love, Isaac.\u201d They \u201cwere not there before\u201d and thus cannot hope to stand in Abraham\u2019s shoes.<\/p>\n
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Cohen exquisitely blends the biblical narrative, rabbinic midrash, and his own midrashic ingenuity to evoke first the nightmarish terror in the murderous movement of Abraham\u2019s hand over Jacob\u2019s throat. But it also resonates paradoxically with a type of \u201cbeauty\u201d in Abraham\u2019s gesture that contrasts starkly to the cruel, crude and barbaric drafting of Cohen\u2019s contemporary children to the foreign battlefield. Cohen\u2019s music itself annotates the \u201ctrembling\u201d of the akedah with \u201cbeauty.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Now I understand what initiated one of the great Jewish master-disciple relationships of the 20th century.<\/p>\n
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After years of study and searching for a teacher to whom he could indenture himself, R. David Cohen, known as the Nazir, visiting the same residence in Switzerland as R. Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook (1865-1935), overheard R.<\/p>\n
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Kook praying in the morning. He was so enraptured by R. Kook\u2019s musical rendition of the akedah, \u201cwith an exalted song and melody,\u201d that he immediately knew his quest had come to an end and became R. Kook\u2019s devoted acolyte for the remainder of his life.<\/p>\n
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He captures R. Kook\u2019s melodiously overwhelming effect by adopting the biblical description of King Saul\u2019s own transformation as a result of joining a prophetic musical troupe when he \u201cwas turned into another man.\u201d<\/p>\n
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If the retelling of a horrifying narrative such as the akedah, imbued with what Kierkegaard called \u201cfear and trembling,\u201d could, by its chanting, be spiritually transformative and inspire the kind of cathartic enlightenment Saul himself experienced, then one can be certain that the singer, in this case R.<\/p>\n
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Kook, is the one who knows how to extract beauty from every other part of the Torah. Leonard the kohen, in his rendition of the akedah, follows the lead of these earlier kohanim in communicating its inner beauty through song.<\/p>\n
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The writer is the Joseph and Wolf Lebovic Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. A lengthier version of this article appears in the journal Milin Havivin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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