Sinead O’Connor’s memoir includes a chapter titled “Shevti Adonai L’Negdi Tamid”. Taken from the Book of Psalms, it translates to “I place God before me always”.
O’Connor, the singer and activist who died yesterday at 56, converted from Roman Catholicism to Islam. But she also had ties to another Abrahamic faith, Judiasm and also had what she called a “Jewish Period”.
In her memoir Remembrances, she wrote: “I tried to get lessons in Jewish ways of understanding the Scriptures, but no one would take me because I’m not Jewish”.
But O’Connor did have Kabbalah classes with a “very kind teacher” named Z’ev Ben Shimon Halevi in a school in Regent’s Park.
Halevi, although a considerate teacher, was not exactly what O'Connor was looking for – she had long “fantasised” about a handsome rabbi who would want to marry her so she “had to become Jewish”.
Singer Sinead O'Connor performs on stage at the State Theatre on March 18, 2008 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Gaye Gerard/Getty Images)
These sessions continued until she became famous – Halevi warned her that “fame is a curse and the devil is a gentleman,” something which she took to heart.
Before, and after, her “Jewish period,” the singer’s work was deeply influenced by Jewish artists.
At 11, she heard “a kind man’s voice singing to a girl that she needn’t cry anymore”. That kind man was Bob Dylan. “His voice is like a blanket,” she said. “He’s as beautiful as if God blew a breath from Lebanon and it became a man”.
Dylan became an inspiration for O’Connor, and when he chose her to perform at his 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration, there was only one thing she cared about. “All I want it for Bob to be proud of it,” she said.
Unfortunately, the concert came only months after her now infamous SNL appearance, during which she ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II in protest of the Catholic Church's attitude to clerical sexual abuse. The crowd reacted with a “sonic riot,” and she couldn’t sing. She instead recited the lyrics to Bob Marley’s War.
But Dylan wasn’t the only Jewish artist who influenced O’Connor. Barbara Streisand was her “favourite singer” in her mother’s collection. She sounded “like a wild bird,” O’Connor said. “I would love to sing in a musical one day and be like Barbara,” she remembers thinking.
Lou Reed, whose family were Jewish immigrants from Russia, was the only person O’Connor was ever starstruck by. She begged him to let her sing backing vocals for her, and he did – she was “in heaven” while doing so. She “had a beautiful experience with the same beautiful man not long after”.
After she was shunned for her SNL appearance, Reed was one of the few people who stuck by her. “I’ve had a soft spot in my heart for Mr. Lou Reed ever since,” she has said.
O’Connor dedicated her 1997 EP, Gospel Oak, to the people of “Israel, Rwanda, and Northern Ireland”. She named the album after the neighbourhood in which she would see her Jewish psychiatrist six days per week. She was “madly in love with him in lots of ways,” she said.
The singer’s relationship with Judaism was also influenced by the period of time she spent studying theology in 2000. “I learned the Psalms in the Judaic way,” she said. She names her fourth child Nevi’im Nesta Ali Shane – Nevi’im meaning “prophets” in Hebrew.
O’Connor’s relationship with Israel has been more complex. In 2014, she said she wanted to cancel her show there, but could not afford to. She had not been aware, when she accepted the gig, of the request of “the Palestinian people” to boycott Israeli shows.
She had played there in 1995, and then planned to again in 1997 – but had to cancel her performance due to death threats from extremists. Her concert was titled “Two Capitals, Two States,” and the threats against her were claimed by the group Ideological Front.
O’Connor addressed a letter to the head of the group, Itamar Ben Gvir – now Israeli Security Minister – expressing her sadness at having to cancel the concert.
“I have always had the most passionate love for the Jewish people,” the letter reads, “and for what they have suffered through the centuries”. She said that Ben Gvir had succeeded in securing his “soul’s failure” and asked: “How can there be peace anywhere on Earth if there is no peace in Jerusalem?”
