Leonard Cohen, Who By Fire

A song built on the Unetaneh Tokef, the Days of Awe prayer that lists the ways a person may die in the coming year — and which ends, where the prayer names God, with the question "and who shall I say is calling?"

⭐⭐ THE CLEAREST EXAMPLE IN THE WING OF SOMEONE WHO KNEW EXACTLY WHAT HE WAS QUOTING AND CHANGED ONE THING. The liturgy answers its own list: repentance, prayer and charity avert the severity of the decree. Cohen keeps the list, drops the answer, and puts a telephone operator's line where the resolution goes. ⚠ It is a setting of liturgy rather than of Kabbalah — see the objection node — but the mechanism it uses is one this app describes everywhere: an ancient form kept whole with its ending withheld, which is a small act of tzimtzum performed on a prayer.