Dance Me to the End of Love

I trust most of us are familiar with the song by Leonard Cohen which bears the titular name.

Several years ago, I was made aware of the following quote by Cohen when he was asked about the meaning of that song:

“I don’t think anyone needs to know what gave me the image of the “burning violin” but there were these little orchestras the Germans put together in the concentration camps. They played while people were being incinerated or gassed. If you want to read the song from that point of view, it becomes something quite different.”

That is the point of view I chose to read it from when I decided to teach it to my students before Yom HaShoah. And what an experience it was for all of us.

When I handed the song to them, I asked them to read it silently and share their impressions of it. To most of them, it amounted to no more than a love story between a man and a woman who have lived a full life sprinkled with episodes of joy, crisis, love and pain. None of them even remotely related it to the Shoah.

In order to make my choice of interpretation of this song clearer to them, I decided to focus on a few lines which, at least for me, reinforced the notion that I was trying to convey to them. I pointed to the first line.

“Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin…”

Though all my students were familiar with the history of the Shoah, many, unfortunately, were not aware of the quartets or “little orchestras” that the Nazis put together to welcome the new inmates of the concentration camps. They were composed mostly of violins.

Naturally, when considered from my point of view, the burning violin, mentioned in the first line, is a reference to the fate of many of the residents who were burned in the ovens of those camps.

“Dance me to the panic till I’m gathered safely in…” is the next line I drew their attention to. Of course, they have all been introduced to the conditions in which those doomed to death were brought to the camps. They have seen movies and photos; they have heard testimonies about the freight trains they were pushed and crammed into. They know about the poor sanitary conditions on cattle cars, the stench, the hunger, death and despair. Who would not be experiencing “panic” under such conditions?

What most of them did not know, though, is that the Nazis had lied to the Jews and promised them that the trains they were about to embark were for the purpose of relocating them to a “nice, safer place,” a “new home.” Many Jews believed these lies and were fooled by them. What reasons did they have to think otherwise? Hence, in my view, the shred of faith echoed in the words “till I’m safely gathered in.”

“Oh, let me see the beauty when the witnesses are gone…” is where many of my students realized why I chose to teach that song the way I did. They, like many other fellow Jews, are aware that those who witnessed the Shoah, those who lived to tell and share the horrors they had been through, abate in numbers. Soon, there will be none left. It will, then, be my task, as a daughter of two Shoah survivors, to ensure that “Never Forget” is alive. After me, it is them who will have to bear the torch of that vow and ensure that it is never extinguished. They are ready for that.

Finally, we reached the line referring to the children, our most precious asset. “Dance me to the children who are asking to be born…” a line that melts a frozen river in me, breaks a dam, frees the gushes of tears that surge in my eyes and blurs my vision each time I hear it.

The first time I read that line, I recalled Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s book Kappa, a science fiction describing Japan in the early 20^th century. One of the ideas discussed in this book is that, after they are presented with an overview of what life has in store for them, the soon to be born babies of Kappa can choose or refuse to be born. Most of them choose to be aborted.

Unlike the children of Kappa, Cohen’s babies are asking for practicing their right, and our duty to allow them “to be born.” After all, it is in accordance with that which the Torah commands us, “And you should choose Life!”

As I was about to finish the lesson, I looked around the classroom. The silence that prevailed, the bittersweet scent of the air we were breathing as the rays of the shining sun were alighting the room and their beautiful faces, I knew that from then on, this song will not be just another song they hear and enjoy. In Cohen’s own words, it has “become something quite different,” a more meaningful piece of poetry, one that connects them to our People’s past and their role in its future.

Shabbat Shalom 

Peace and Unity among us

My dear friend, Dr. Mordechai Kedar once told me, while co-authoring an article with him, "we cannot fight that which is Right by using and employing that which is Wrong."

These words have resonated with me always, more so in recent days.

Last week, we Yisraelis, commemorated Yom Hashoah and paying tribute to our six million brothers and sisters who perished in the Shoah. Today, we honour the fallen heroes who gave their lives during Yisrael's unending wars of existence. We also remember the victims of Terrorism. 

Each year, on both occasions, our nation stops whatever it is doing and stood united while the sirens are wailing, reminding us how the shared pain and suffering inflicted upon our People has joined us together and forged us into one cohesive group.

It is these brief moments that I longed for and would have given anything to experience and relive during all the long years that I resided in the Galut. It was not the pain, neither the mourning nor the grief that I longed for. Rather, it was the unity that they sowed and produced even for a brief moment.

Last week, just like yesterday and today, as I was standing still, along with the millions of my Yisraeli brothers and sisters, sharing the sense of togetherness and devotedness, I asked myself, "why can't it be like that always? Why do we need bereavement to remind us of the need to remain united? Why not let our shared history, glorious present and promising future be the criss - cross threads in the fabric of our nationhood?"

It is at moments like these, that I recall Dr. Kedar's wise words.

It is then that the troubling gnawing questions keep surfacing. How can we be united when many of us continue to use language which contributes to nothing but merely to deepening the divide? How can we expect unity and Peace among us when in order to achieve these desirable RIGHT and wishful results we use, instead, the WRONG means and the WRONG compass to negotiate the challenging terrain that could get us there?

Rather than dignifying differences, we shun and humiliate that which is foreign to us. At every opportunity, we wage war on anyone and anything that disagrees with us.

How can we live with each other when instead of exchanging, some resort to insults and name calling? How can we allow Peace to settle among us when each time we run out of good and logical arguments, many  start throwing curse words and using foul language at each other?

But most importantly, how can we remain a family when we put the needs of others before those of our own, needs which are in dire need of attention? If one of the founding principles of our heritage is "Kol Yisrael Arevim Zeh lazeh" (All of Yisrael are guarantors for one another), why can we not think of our own FIRST, adhere to it and put our People’s needs before those of others?


After all, isn’t that what those who we commemorate today had in their essence when they rushed to defend us in war? Did they not choose that which is RIGHT to beat that which is WRONG when they entered the battlefield? Did they not put themselves, as Arevim for us, before all?

May Am Yisrael finally learn the lesson of the old adage “United we stand, Divided we fall.”

Happy Birthday Medinat Yisrael