In the fall of 2009 the “poet of rock,” the bard of Montreal and the Chelsea Hotel, landed in Tel Aviv. Leonard Cohen had emerged from a Zen monastery in California not long before to discover that a former manager had emptied his bank account.
He embarked on a concert tour after years of absence and discovered that he hadn’t faded into irrelevance but had, in fact, ascended to the heights of fame. On stages across North America and Europe that year, he fell on his 75-year-old knees night after night, surrendering theatrically to “the lord of song,” clutching his fedora to his chest in a pose of elegant gratitude. In Israel, a country whose population is roughly that of New York City, he drew 50,000 people.
