Book Club

On Monday October 2, we invite you to join us at the FJCC as the FJCC Book Club discusses the book “Who By Fire:  Leonard Cohen in the Sinai” by Matti Friedman. We welcome new members! For more information, contact Adah Radzin.

This is the story of the Canadian poet and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen who gained the gratitude of Israelis for his presence during one of the country’s lowest moments. “What touched me deeply,” one veteran told Friedman, “was this Jew hunched over a guitar, sitting quietly and playing for us. Upon hearing of [the Yom Kippur] war’s outbreak, Cohen … made his way to the Sinai Peninsula, where he played and sang his tormented heart out for his suffering Jewish brothers and sisters. Performing for the troops, who were more and more dazed and battered as the days went on, Cohen found a kind of personal artistic and spiritual redemption, and the soldiers for whom he performed, touched and a little awed by his presence there (as were the musicians who accompanied him), did, too. -David N Gottlieb