Burning Darker Beyond "You Want it Darker": Leonard Cohen`s Hebrew Hineini Kaddish

The genius of the late, great, Leonard Cohen lies in his daring juxtaposition—here for the first time he is explicit in his Jewish liturgical moves in Hebrew in his songbook. In his last song, “You Want it Darker”, the words of Kaddish are juxtaposed with the prayer leader’s prelude of: “Hineni, hineni/I’m ready, my lord”. While this locution of Hineni resonates most strongly within the rubric of High Holiday liturgy, the Montreal bard is blowing on its ancient prophetic resonances—that call which roused prophets. More than a mere biblical dirge, or an invocation by the priests of prayer, the bard is calling forth, with his prophetic impulse into a love song. By staring this horror in the face through the death awareness meditations of Maranasati or hibbut hakever, what separates the bard from the philosopher is one thing— prayer. Cohen’s prayerful song hovers in non-dual consciousness testifying to the power of prayer as the necessary offering, no matter how broken. By singing the eternal present in song, this self-reflection becomes a deeper interrogation for the bard who is not only willing to confront himself, but to also confront the Over-Self which the liturgy knows as God. This confrontation is not foreign to dramatic theological images of high holiday liturgy, like in the Une Tane Tokef, to which the bard casually riffs on as the divine dealer.