Hallelujah!

September 25, 2009 - 10:05 AM by David
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You just haven’t lived until you’re in a stadium with 49,999 other people, all of whom are singing along with Leonard Cohen as he performs “Hallelujah.”

This was just one of the countless transcendent, goose bump-invoking moments in Cohen’s concert Thursday night in Ramat Gan Stadium. It was one of those shows where you enter some kind of suspended time zone in which for three hours, somehow all seems to be right on the planet.

Full of joy, hope, great musicianship, and excrutiatingly beautiful moments, the show was perfectly placed only a few days before Yom Kippur, a time of reflection and self examination. Seeing and hearing Cohen sing his songs like in some long-carved-in-stone prayers transformed the stadium into the world’s biggest, yet most intimate synagogue. And when the singer offered a dramatic rendering of the Bikat Kohanim (the Priestly blessing) late in the show, it only added to that feeling.

The audience, consisting of ages from teen to Cohen-era 70s, hung on his every lyric and delivery. A few times when he kneeled, there were a few gasps from people fearful of a repeat of the fainting incident that occurred in Spain last week, but Cohen was only making the moves for dramatic effect.

The three and a half hour concert (including a 25-minute break in the middle), included a slew of encores, with Cohen seemingly unwilling to leave the stage on his last show of a huge European tour. In fact, he brought out all the crew members on stage, introduced them and thanked them at the end.

Even though there were definitely some Palestinians and Israeli Arabs in attendance, some involved in the Fund for Reconciliation, Tolerance and Peace, which was launched earlier in the evening with proceeds that Cohen donated from the show, I kept thinking how nice it would have been if the crowd had been half Jewish, half Arab.

If only Cohen’s message of hope, peace and reconciliation had been allowed to be heard in Ramallah as well, and not been banned by angry Palestinians who refused to let a planned concert take place there. Witnessing 50,000 Palestinians singing “Hallelujah” and applauding efforts for reconciliation would have been a real New Year gift for all of us.

Tags: , , , , • Category: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, coexistence 

Comments

3 Comments on Hallelujah!

  1. k on Fri, Sep 25th 2009 5:30 PM

    2. Nice post. But I disagree with having the crowd be half Arab, since it is a Jewish state after all – a society that longs to live independently. This concert is about entertainment, and every artist that comes to Israel does not need to turn their show into a political event.

  2. David-Joe on Sat, Sep 26th 2009 4:08 AM

    3. [Witnessing 50,000 Palestinians singing “Hallelujah” and applauding efforts for reconciliation would have been a real New Year gift for all of us.]

    What is it that you people don’t get? Can you not get it around your minds that the Arabs HATE Israel and they will never accept it?

    And if you have a sing along you pretend that it would be wonderful? This is American kumbaya style emotionalist nonsense.

    In New York City I have Palestinian acquaintances who matter of factly state quite openly that Israel is occupying their land and that if they could they would destroy it.

    I answer back anytine we have that sort of discussion that they will fail as they have done and they will condemn themselves to live in a state of permament war.

    Well, they do not care because unlike liberal Jews they understand the situation.

    And of course the other conundrum is HOW can American Jews support not only the Dems, but Obama and any liberal because it is these entities that today are the anti-Isarel movement?!

    In the next 18 months when it is planned I return to Israel permanently I will return never being able to understand the liberal Jewish American.

  3. David-Joe on Mon, Sep 28th 2009 4:45 AM

    4. Thank you.

    With respect – asthetics you have to consider is the outcome of politics. It is not accidental or whimsical that tyrants always attack the intellectuals of a nation first when rising to power. It is essentail for them because the intellectual is the conveyor belt between the philospher and the people.

    So when a performer refuses to distinguish between those who defend themselves and those that attack, he is showing moral equivalence and undermining the philosphical foundation upon which the free nation, Israel, stands.

    At this time especially, when Israel is not only attacked in the mid-east but is being compartmentalized as a criminal state in the European courts and the United States led by Obama stands by and does nothing, then everything IS political.

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