Posted on 11/11/2018 4:18:40 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
Live performance from yesterday's Royal British Legion's Festival of Remembrance in London. So poignant...Video:
(Excerpt) Read more at youtu.be ...
How Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ Brilliantly Mingled Sex, Religion
Thank you.
Cohen’s song really messed up the Bible and borders on blasphemy. I doubt if people listen, but the tune is good. There is a Christian version, though.
My goodness, aren't the Brits worried they'll upset the muzzies in the U.K. with that song? After all, they refused the asylum request of Pakistan Christian Asia Bibi because they didn't want to offend the muzzies.
Agree.....not good
The program as a whole is good.
Of course it is but it's more than that:
The song is about a love that has soured and gone stale. Cohen used a lot of religious imagery, including references to some of the more notorious women in the bible. Here's some lyric analysis:
"You saw her bathing on the roof, her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you" - Bathsheba, who tempted the king to kill her husband so he could have her.
"She tied you to her kitchen chair, she broke your throne and she cut your hair" - Delilah, who cut off Sampson's locks that held his superhuman strength.
"But remember when I moved in you and the holy dove was moving too" - This could be a reference to the divine conception and Mary.
The lines referring to the immaculate conception can also be interpreted as having a sexual connotation: "And every breath we drew was hallelujah."
Leonard Cohen was a brilliant song writer, arguably the best of my lifetime and deeply religious. So what is your point?
Cohen deeply religious? You sure? I never heard that about him. I always thought the opposite for him.
Yes, I'm sure. There are many articles on him and his religious beliefs that can be found on Google.
Here's one such article:
http://www.aish.com/ci/a/Leonard-Cohen-Always-a-Jew-at-Heart.html
Cohen was involved with Buddhism beginning in the 1970s and was ordained a Buddhist monk in 1996; he continued to consider himself Jewish: "I'm not looking for a new religion. I'm quite happy with the old one, with Judaism."[163] Beginning in the late 1970s, Cohen was associated with Buddhist monk and rōshi (venerable teacher) Kyozan Joshu Sasaki, regularly visiting him at Mount Baldy Zen Center and serving him as personal assistant during Cohen's period of reclusion at Mount Baldy monastery in the 1990s. Sasaki appears as a regular motif or addressee in Cohen's poetry, especially in his Book of Longing, and took part in a 1997 documentary about Cohen's monastery years, Leonard Cohen: Spring 1996. Cohen's 2001 album Ten New Songs is dedicated to Joshu Sasaki.My friend Brian Johnson said of me that I'd never met a religion I didn't like. [...] That's why I've tried to correct that impression [that Cohen was looking for another religion besides Judaism] because I very much feel part of that tradition and I practise that and my children practise it, so that was never in question. The investigations that I've done into other spiritual systems have certainly illuminated and enriched my understanding of my own tradition.[165]
So yes, deeply religious in a meaningless pan-spiritual (Coexist?) sort of way. My point as stated, the song "Hallelujah" is about King David and Bathsheba having sex.
Did you read the Rolling Stone article? The progressive underground music culture embraced the song because it ripped apart traditional understandings of religious faith. My S-in-L's mother had that song played at his Father's funeral. I was mystified to hear it and chagrined to even be there.
Don't get me wrong, I like the song but it isn't appropriate to be played in church or in any other solemn occasion. Just because a song has the word Hallelujah in it does not make it a religious song.
Well, hallelujah brother, let's go have another drink! Does that sound religious?
King David impregnated Bathsheba before he had her husband killed. The adulterous conception was the reason for Uriah the Hittite’s death.
Delilah did not cut Samson’s hair. “She made him sleep upon her knees,” Judges 16:19 (make of that what you will), and a man shaved Samson’s head.
The “Immaculate Conception” does not refer to the conception of Jesus, but to the conception of Mary, by natural human processes but with a soul free of Original Sin. (Whether or not you believe this, that’s what the term means.)
In summary, the italicized material gets all the source material wrong.
The lines referring to the immaculate conception can also be interpreted as having a sexual connotation: "And every breath we drew was hallelujah."
Leonard Cohen was Jewish so I don't believe he was referring to the Immaculate Conception in his song lyrics but if he was writing of it with a sexual connotation, that is blasphemy to all of Christianity.
Thanks!
This was very moving. Thanks for posting.
At least it’s not about king David making sure Uriah was killed in order to cover up his supreme betrayal....
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