Matti Friedman on Leonard Cohen’s turf

because a number of things that came together all at once: Inflation, rising costs, rents. Everything else that came packaged during COVID is now unravelling, There’s no government programs any more. It’s very difficult.” Meanwhile, the organization is facing new challenges. Donations of both money and food soared as people were motivated by the crisis to help those less fortunate at the peak of the pandemic. But as life returns to a new normal, donations have dried up. At the same time, food distributors are reserving stock for the big chain stores and setting aside less for smaller purchasers like food banks. For now, Chasdei Kaduri has been able to purchase from supermarkets at competitive prices, Tebeka said. Launched about a decade ago by Tebeka’s mother—who knew a few hungry families in the neighbourhood—the food bank is entirely volunteer run. No one, including the executive director and the social workers assessing the claims, takes a salary. People order what they need online and the groceries are quietly deposited on their doorstep, to maintain confidentiality. But where it once took about a week to assess potential client needs, it can now take a month. “It’s longer than we would hope it to be. When someone needs help, and it’s something like food, it’s a very urgent matter,” Tebeka said. “But at same time, people need to understand our help is not one time. We do need to do our due diligence.” The pressures besetting Chasdei Kaduri are not unique, nor are they likely to let up any time soon. Canada’s Food Price Report 2023 predicts a 5 percent to 7 percent price increase in food prices in 2023. The increase comes on top of a 10 percent rise in 2022. The forecast prepared by several Canadian universities, estimates that a family of four will spend $1,065 more on food next year. Pressures are being felt by food banks across the country. Visits to food banks are up by 15 percent this year from 2021 and have grown by 35 percent since 2019, according to Hunger Counts 2022, a survey of 4,700 food banks. In Montreal, where the Mada Community Centre is now in its 30th year providing meals and groceries, demand has gone up by 25 percent this year, said Paula Lecker, director of food services. About 1,800 boxes of cooked meals are distributed weekly. Families can also order a box of groceries, about 5,000 boxes are distributed monthly. At Rosh Hashanah, the centre distributed 20 percent more food boxes than usual, which went primarily to larger families struggling to make ends meet. But even though demand in Montreal is growing, the agency is now starting to expand to Ottawa, after speaking with rabbis about the need for food assistance, Lecker said. New immigrants (including from Ukraine), students and people who lost jobs during COVID and haven’t found work again, all need help, in ways they didn’t before, Lecker said. The meal program which was started during COVID, mainly for seniors who were afraid to go out and shop or who were socially isolated, has also continued to grow. The increased demand has put more emphasis than ever on fundraising, Lecker said, “We reach out to our community for more and more funding and we get creative to find donors who are willing to help us, because the need is so great.” In Vancouver, the demand is stretching Jewish Food Services to the bursting point. In the last five months, about three new families are looking for food assistance every week, as many as 40 or 50 people a month, says Stacy Friedman, director of food security for the agency. The JFS Grocery Program (formerly known as the Jewish Food Bank) serves 950 people. Another 700 to 800 receive kosher meals and food vouchers. The grocery program has expanded and now offers food delivery at hubs outside the city, extending into the Lower Mainland. The food bank puts an emphasis on providing quality food and offers fresh produce, eggs and dairy products. Canned goods are limited to high-protein items and vegetables. “We’re at our internal capacity… We are starting to reach a capacity where it’s not just about our finances, but also about our physical space,” Friedman said. “Literally, just in the last few weeks, we are hitting our capacity. We try to respond to everyone who comes to our door, but the numbers are growing.” Some of those seeking help have had to be put on waitlists, Friedman said. The “critical” shortage of housing in Vancouver, as well as inflation and wages that haven’t kept up, are factors driving the numbers. “There were people who were getting by, people who were doing OK, but now it’s pushing people to the limits,” she said. To cope with the growing numbers, JFS is looking for new space and trying to recruit more volunteer drivers to deliver food. The agency is also examining how to restructure its resources to meet the unceasing demand for assistance, Friedman said. “There is a growing need and we want to address it both from a strategic way in our organization and by understanding that there are issues globally and within our community that need to change to ensure that everyone has access to healthy food.”n

Lila Sarick is news editor of The CJN.

‘What was the guy who wrote “Suzanne” doing in the Sinai?’: Matti Friedman talked about Leonard Cohen—and his own writing about Israel— during a visit to Montreal

/ Hannah Srour-Zackon

Israeli-Canadian author Matti Friedman’s newest book is Who By Fire: War, Atonement, and the Resurrection of Leon-

ard Cohen, the story of Cohen’s tour of Israel during the Yom Kippur War, Friedman was in Montreal Dec. 1 for an event at the Jewish Public Library and sat down with The CJN’s Hannah Srour-Zackon to talk about the book and about his writing more generally, including how being Canadian influences his work, and writing about Israel for North American audiences. What drew you to write about Leonard Cohen for this book? I grew up with Leonard Cohen like many young Canadian Jews and I was surprised to learn this story of his tour in the Yom Kippur War. It popped up in press coverage around the time he gave a concert in Israel in 2009. Israelis went crazy for Leonard Cohen and had a powerful connection to him, and it turned out that it was in part because of his tour during the Yom Kippur War. But I had never heard of it. I decided that someone needed to unravel the story. I was also drawn to it as a Canadian-Israeli story, there aren’t many of those. It’s a story that puts together the two halves of my own life, as someone who grew up in Canada and moved to Israel when I was 17. But beyond that, I was interested in that tension that exists when art meets war. It works its way into art in interesting ways, and I was wondering if that had happened with Leonard Cohen. He seems so distant from wars and the Middle East. What was the guy who wrote “Suzanne” doing in the Sinai desert? That was all part of the draw for me. One thing that stood out to me in the book was how Leonard Cohen had these different forces of home that were pulling at him, whether it was Canada, Greece (where he was at the time), or Israel. How do you think his experience during the Yom Kippur War changed his relationship with these different homes? He moved around a lot and in many ways, he was homeless. He was on this island in Greece where he was unhappy, then he came to Israel, which he called his ‘myth-home’. It’s a very interesting phrase to unpack. He had a very powerful but also very upsetting experience there; he didn’t feel at home in the ‘myth-home’. One of the interesting parts of the war stories is that he asks people to call him Eliezer (which is his Hebrew name), he wears something that looks like a uniform, and he sleeps on the ground with the soldiers. In the story of the missing verse from “Lover, Lover, Lover”, he calls them his brothers, so there’s something very familial going on there. He understands that this is somehow a place that has to do with him, but he can’t stay there. Still, he feels deeply connected to it. I don’t claim to have intimate access to Leonard Cohen’s brain, but I think his home is Montreal. He can never really escape the gravitational pull of Montreal and of the Shaar Hashomayim, which is why at the end of his life, he returns there. In “You Want It Darker,” he chooses Gideon Zelermyer, the cantor from his childhood shul, to sing the Hebrew word in one of his last songs. I think he sees himself as a man with various homes, but ultimately, he’s Leonard Cohen from Westmount. In the end, he reconciles himself with that. How did you go about researching this? There were two main halves to my research: one in Israel, and one in the world of Leonard Cohen. First, I started by trying to find soldiers who had seen Cohen in the war and who had interesting war stories to tell. That was a bit tricky at first, but in Israel, you can usually find someone who can give you a few more numbers. I ultimately collected a lot of stories, not all of which appear in the book but that was part of the research. The other half of the research was trying to figure out what Leonard Cohen thought about all of this, which turned out to be hard. I had this moment when I thought I could interview Cohen in 2015. I discovered that my publisher in Canada, McClelland & Stewart, is Leonard Cohen’s publisher. I asked my editor in Toronto if it was possible to get to Cohen and he didn’t see why not. He told me to write a summary of the book to send to Cohen’s people. So in my head, I’m interviewing Leonard Cohen about the Yom Kippur War, which would solve the problem because we know nothing from him about the experience. I wrote this summary and included the photograph of him with Ariel Sharon, which I thought would jog his memory, and sent it to my editor at McClelland & Stewart. This was November 2016. I went to bed and woke up the next morning to find an email in my inbox with the subject line “Holy shit,” and it’s Leonard Cohen’s obituary. He died as I was writing that. I did have two breakthroughs, though. One was an unpublished manuscript that he had written after the war, which was in the McMaster University Archives (where McClelland and Stewart keep their own archive). The truth is, as much as I would love to have met Leonard Cohen, journalistically that manuscript is better because it’s written right after the event. I also got access to his notebooks he wrote during the war from the Leonard Cohen estate. They had drafts of songs like “Lover, Lover, Lover”, bits and pieces of experiences, and phone numbers and names. The book is based on all these sources. Was there anything that surprised you during your research? I was surprised to find how deep the trauma of the Yom Kippur War was for Israelis. I knew about the war, of course, but I don’t think I really understood what it was like. It was an earthquake for people, and for a lot of Israelis it’s still going on. People who are responding to the book are responding in a deep way to an experience that shaped their lives. I didn’t really understand that until I started working on the book, and particularly until it came out because I’ve received responses from readers beyond the usual ‘I found your book interesting’. It’s addressing a very central experience in the lives of Israelis. How else have people responded to the book? The book has come out in a few different languages, and in English people see it as a book about Cohen. In Israel, people mainly see it as a book about the Yom Kippur War and respond to it very strongly as a war story in which Leonard Cohen features. Cohen is a figure that really speaks to people, and he meant something to people of that generation. Something about Leonard Cohen elicits deeply personal feelings, and a lot of the responses have been like that. It’s a combination of a figure who means a lot to people and a historical event that means a lot of people that makes the response a bit potent at times. As an English-language writer living in Israel, what is it like to write for a largely North American audience? Writing for a foreign audience requires taking a few steps back from the nitty- gritty of life in Israel and looking at the