Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song

For those of you who are unaware, Leonard Cohen was a Jewish Canadian mystic poet. His concern was the apparent conflict between the sacred and the profane. One day he realized what he was writing might actually be songs, and so began a concert and recording career. The song in the title "Hallelujah" was a track on an album which his company refused to release -- in my opinion, Cohen's mixture of the sacred and the earthy in this song likely offended the equally Jewish head of the company so much it was not released in the US. Nonetheless, the song caught on over the decades.

As a Jew, I find nothing surprising in this. As Cohen notes in one of the later interviews included herein, Judaism makes you want to raise your fist and to shout hallelujah. To Christians, who believe in a benevolent G*d, this seems to be confusing; however Jews recognize that the world is G*d's creation just as much as the Torah. Which is why there are more than a hundred verses in Cohen's notebooks, with subjects ranging from angels to bondage.

Cohen wrote some other excellent songs, too.