Daniel Kahn's Hallelujah in Yiddish: as good as Leonard Cohen?

In one of the earliest posts that I wrote in this blog, I noted a very sig­nificant event in my life. In 1969, when I met my then-boyfriend now-husband, his first present to me was a book of Leonard Cohen poetry. This was a wise gift from my young boyfriend; it made him appear to be insightful, sensitive and literary-minded.

I also wrote I still loved Cohen’s music passionately. And we saw the Canadian each time he performed in Melbourne, rememb­ering ALL the lyrics of his old songs. That was true for the thous­ands of people who filled Melbourne’s Rod Laver Stadium to the raft­ers back in 2009, mostly people over 55. For the concert that night, Hallel­uj­ah was as beautiful as ever.

Later I saw Hallelujah again, this time on-line by a diff­er­ent singer in a different country and in a different language.

deutschlandfunkkultur

Listen to youtube 

I had never heard of Daniel Kahn but I easily found this summary. He (b1978) was born in Detroit, stud­­ying theatre and poetry at Michigan Uni. In terms of Jewish educ­at­ion, engaging with Kahn’s cultural herit­age, Yiddish, lit­erature, folk, culture, music, theat­re, socialism, immigration iss­ues, resilience, liberation and revol­ut­ion, were all things that he had to find on his own. After living in New Orleans and New York, he moved to Berlin in 2005 and founded The Painted Bird, touring the world and winning awards with their 5 albums. He's a theatre director, actor, singer, songwriter and accordionist who com­bines English, Yiddish, German and Russian in a rad­ical combin­at­ion of Eastern European Klezmer, lyrical folk ballads, dark cabaret and political punk.

In 2016 Kahn translated Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah into Yiddish. In a interview that year Kahn said Hallelujah was essent­ially a Yiddish song Leonard Cohen wrote in English, by which he meant it was Jewish. It’s like the Song of Solomon, the double work­ing of de­vot­ion to God and devotion to a lover, the juxtaposition of erot­ic­ism and spirituality. In his opinion these were all very Jew­ish themes, so to do it in Yiddish made sense. Hallelujah, a song that had nothing to do with politics, was a kind of solace for so many wound­ed people and he was honoured that people understood that through his performance.

Kahan had been to four Leonard Cohen concerts. He’d been a fan and stu­dent of his since his teens. He was in his very late 30s in the interview and wouldn’t have become a songwriter without Cohen.

My own Yiddish was adequate as a child. I understood everything about food, clothes, cleaning my bedroom, taking care of the puppies and having a ironed school uniform each morning, but I learned noth­ing about politics, class­ical literature, classical music, econ­omics or sex. So thank you to a blogger for the translation. 

There was a secret tune
That David played for God,
But for you it would never be such salvation.
One sings it like this: a Fa, a Sol,
A prayer raises a voice,
The confused king weaves a hallelujah...

Your faith has grown weak,
Bathsheba bathes herself on the roof,
Her charm and the moon are your remedy.
She takes your body, takes your head,
She cuts a braid from your hair,
And pulls down from your mouth a hallelujah...

Oh dear, I know your style,
I've slept on your floor,
I've never lived with such a treasure of a woman.
I see your castle, see your flag.
A heart is no King's throne.
It's a cold and a ruined hallelujah...

Oh, tell me again, like before,
What's happening down there in your lap.
Why must you be ashamed, like a virgin?
Just remember how I dwelled in you,
How the holy feminine spirit glows in our blood,
And every breath utters a hallelujah...

You call me an apostate,
I blaspheme with the Holy Name.
No matter, I'm not expecting the messianic age.
But it burns hot in every letter,
From alef-beys all the way to the end,
The holy and ruined hallelujah...

And that's all, it's not a lot,
In the meantime, I'll do what I do.
I come here like a mensch, not a scoundrel.
Though all is lost anyway,
I will praise Adonai,
And cry To Life: Hallelujah...

Khan with accordian and The Painted Bird

The Cedar

Kahn must have been very skilled at taking Yiddish songs from the past and getting them to sound like modern folk music. Yet he rem­ain­ed loyal to his source material. Ilana Sichel was right - this Yiddish version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah moved me to tears; Kahn’s music was even more haunting than the orig­in­al. In Yiddish, it cannot help but feel like a sort of musical kaddish/lament to a lost culture. But more im­p­ort­antly for me, it was an honour to my late parents and grand­parents, and to Coh­en himself.