Blog : Philosémitisme

"Je ne suis pas en quête d'une nouvelle religion. Je suis très heureux avec l'ancienne, qui est le judaïsme." (Leonard Cohen)

Leonard Cohen a annoncé qu'il va faire une tournée en Israël en septembre. La déception est immense dans le camp des boycotteurs.

Immédiatement les professeurs Haim Bresheeth, Hilary Rose et Jonathan Rosenhead du Comité britannique pour les universités de Palestine lui ont adressé une lettre ouverte très lyrique qui commence ainsi :

"Vos chansons ont fait partie de la bande sonore de notre vie ? comme une respiration pour certaines d'entre elles. Mais nous ne comprenons pas votre décision d'effectuer une tournée en Israël en septembre de cette année."

Et pourtant, dans le paragraphe suivant, les boycotteurs commettent une erreur. Ils font appel à Cohen non pas en tant que juif, mais en tant que bouddhiste.

Or selon Jonathan Freedland [photo], bien que Leonard Cohen se soit retiré dans un monastère bouddhiste, il n'a jamais renié la foi dans laquelle il a été élevé. "Je ne suis pas en quête d'une nouvelle religion", a-il dit déclaré. "Je suis très heureux avec l'ancienne, qui est le judaïsme."

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Source: Boycotters target Leonard Cohen "as a Bhuddist" par Jonathan Freedland, Engage

"If the learned professors didn't know of that quotation, they could have simply listened to Cohen's songs. For he is surely the most Jewish musical artist at work in the world today. (Indeed, with the possible exception of Philip Roth, Howard Jacobson and a few Israeli novelists, he is probably the most Jewish artist in any medium.)

Start with Who by Fire, the darkly insistent song unashamedly inspired by the Unetanah tokef prayer incanted every Yom Kippur which plaintively asks, "who shall live and who shall die'" Or consider Hallelujah, the song that introduced Cohen to a new generation, thanks to its selection as the victory anthem on The X-Factor. Its opening line reverberates with the sound of the psalms: "I heard there was a secret chord, that David played and it pleased the Lord'"

There's more at work here than mere liturgical name-dropping. In Anthem, Cohen voices what sounds like a distinctly Jewish belief, one that does not seek immaculate perfection but embraces humanity as it truly is. "Forget your perfect offering," he sings, "There is a crack in everything/That's how the light gets in." To my ear, that is a profoundly Jewish observation, arguing that it is our very flaws that make us vessels for the divine.

So Cohen is not just a Jewish artist because his grandfather was a rabbi or because, when he retreated to live on a Greek island, he kept Shabbat, lighting candles and saying prayers. He is Jewish because when he needed a title for his second book of poems, he chose The Spice-Box of Earth, drawing inspiration from the havdalah ritual. He is Jewish because his poems seem to address God, sometimes with devotion, sometimes with fury - an alternating dialogue which has been the Jewish way since Abraham.

Which means the boycotters should have addressed Cohen not as a Buddhist, but as a Jew. Even then, I suspect their attempt would have been doomed. For it is surely futile to try to keep Cohen out of the Jewish homeland - if only because the people of Israel, perhaps more than anyone else, need to hear the cry of a Jewish soul like his."

You Tube Leonard Cohen - Isle of Wight 1970

Omar Barghouti s'inscrit à l'Université de Tel Aviv tout en prônant son boycott