My Yom Kippur Fast
Leonard Cohoen
Fasting slows me down and connects me to my inner landscape of sadness and joy, gratitude and struggle. On Yom Kippur, I would rather walk outdoors in God’s garden than sit in a man-made synagogue, however beautiful. Yet I miss the cantor’s voice, so I turn instead to Leonard Cohen.
Some artists dare to go where most of us hesitate to deal with love, lust, betrayal, and death. Poet-musicians like Bob Dylan and Cohen lead us there with tenderness and unflinching honesty. I have long admired Cohen, knowing the demons he wrestled with. Yet, like a fine wine deepening with age, he ripened into something wiser, moving from youthful songs of longing to meditations on mortality.
At my age, Cohen’s last album, You Want It Darker, feels less like a farewell than a hymn for the living. Drawing from the story of Abraham, asked to sacrifice his son, Cohen lifts the words of the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, and answers with sacred defiance: Hineni. Hineni. Hineni. Here I am. Here I stand.
These are anxious times. America is divided, the national debt looms, and wars rage in Ukraine and the Middle East. Yet this is not new. It is not our first brush with uncertainty, and it will not be our last.
Let us draw strength from the deep wells of our prophets and poets. Let us remember their call: to stand, to stay, to be present.
Hineni. Hineni. Hineni.
Here we stand, committed to building an enlightened community, a shelter from the gathering storm.
— Sina.