7:00 pm on Zoom – Beit Tikvah Book Club
Join Rabbi Doug Heifetz and other book mavens to talk about the next selection of the BT Book Club: “Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai” by Matti Friedman.
The untold story of Leonard Cohen’s concert tour to the front lines of the Yom Kippur War, including never-before-seen selections from an unfinished manuscript by Cohen and rare photographs
In October 1973, the poet and singer Leonard Cohen — thirty-nine years old, famous, unhappy, and at a creative dead end — traveled to the chaos and bloodshed of the Sinai desert when Egypt attacked Israel on the Jewish high holiday of Yom Kippur. Moving around the front with a group of local musicians, Cohen sang for hundreds of young soldiers, men and women at the worst moment of their lives. Those who survived never forgot the experience. And the war transformed Cohen, reigniting his creativity and inspiring him to compose some of his most memorable songs. Who by Fire provides a riveting account of those weeks in the Sinai, drawing on Cohen’s previously unpublished writing and original reporting to create a kaleidoscopic depiction of a harrowing, formative moment for both a young country at war and a singer at a crossroads.
If you’d like to join us for this event, please contact us at info@beittikvah.org for information and the Zoom link. The book is available on Amazon in paperback, hardback, Kindle or Audible.
