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Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai QUOTES

Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai QUOTES

1 " The stadium was quiet. Cohen raised his hands and parted his fingers. He switched from English to Hebrew—not the new Hebrew of the Tel Aviv streets but the archaic language of the synagogue and the Diaspora, of the old men at the Gate of Heaven, the language of the priests, fifteen words. He blessed the people, and left the stage. "

― Matti Friedman , Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai

2 " Michael wasn't just happy to see his son again, he was relieved. He said something that Isaac never forgot, and which he repeated to me in a little kibbutz house a few hundred yards away from where this moment had happened forty-seven years before. He'd repeated the sentence, turning it over in his head, many times. His father said, "I'm so happy you came to the war."

Isaac loved his father until his death. He keeps a large photograph of him, one he took himself, on the wall. But he never forgot those words—the way his father was willing to sacrifice him, the idea that there were things more important than his only living son. It's an unsettling story, one of our oldest, from Genesis. If this were a novel, the character of the boy would have to be named Isaac, but in a novel you wouldn't dare call him that. It would be too much. "

― Matti Friedman , Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai