The first time Leonard Cohen visited Israel was not during the Yom Kippur War. A year and a half earlier, in April 1972, he climaxed a tour of mostly problematic shows, including one in Berlin, in Tel Aviv. The concert there ended abruptly when fighting broke out. That particular concert was filmed, including backstage improprieties, which no doubt added to the singer’s notoriety. The final show of that tour was in Jerusalem. There, unable to focus, not connecting to his audience, he began to preach Kabbalah; then he walked off. Immediately the audience was offered a refund, but instead chose to sing. And they sang and they sang and they sang, until the star, upset as he was, returned, and sang with them, and then for them.
Jerusalem is truly a wondrous city. Cohen and his band, tears flowing, thanked the audience, and left with dignity. Could that have been where his pintele yid (Jewish spark) emerged? Maybe not quite yet. What might be called his epiphany visit happened the following year, among the boys and girls caught off guard on the afternoon of October 6, 1973, by Syrian tanks suddenly rolling down the Golan Heights toward the Jordan Valley, and Egyptian planes suddenly crossing the Suez Canal into the Sinai Desert. Just kids they were, mid-prayer in the synagogues, or lollygagging on the beaches, suddenly losing arms and legs and lives. Leonard Cohen was there, guitar in hand, seeking in the foggy, smoky, dusty, dark battlegrounds little clusters of an audience that needed him to sing his songs.
