‘Do you need social media?’ Disappointed by her friend Kwame, who has gone on a date with a woman on the pretense that he is straight, yet another story of man betraying woman—this time involving a man she trusted and cared deeply about—Arabella goes to see her therapist. If you watched I May Destroy You, the BBC summer sensation, you may remember the visuals of this episode well, as it is Halloween, and Michaela Coel, the writer, director, and lead actor of the series, is clad head-to-foot in a black devil costume, giant Maleficent horns emerging from her forehead, a force to be reckoned with.
But in this scene, she is doing something that the rest of the episode, as she populates Instagram with righteous thoughts and fierce images of herself, has her failing to do: listening. Her therapist questions Arabella’s (oh, and all of our!) internet addictions, the compulsive need for affirmation in the virtual world. ‘Do you remember the three R’s?’ she asks Arabella. Arabella remembers: rest, reflect, rejuvenate. ‘Look, if you can’t abandon it altogether,’ she suggests, ‘take a break.’ Arabella pauses, groans, but her therapist continues. ‘We take breaks. We don’t work weekends. We break for half-term. Even a cantor has a sabbatical.’
Wait—what? How did that line end up in a BBC television series that does an incredible job of giving voice to Black British experiences—without ever actually reducing Black Britishness to a monolith? As Bolu Babalola writes in Vulture, ‘It would be easy to call [the series’] Black Britishness a “lens,” but “lens” is clinical and anthropological — “lens” is external and removable. It is less of a lens and more of a feeling that coats the chords of the show. A culture rarely seen in mainstream television, it’s not that Black Britishness (and the specificity of being a Black Londoner) assists in telling the story, nor is it that Black Britishness is its own character within the story. It is that it helps form the story. The rhythm and pulses chug narrative along, enriching the grain of the series. It’s a millennial tale, but it’s a Black British millennial tale, and within the nucleus of Black Britishness is a nexus of cultures, a diasporic mutuality that recognises our diversity whilst also drawing them together in communion.’ This is a series with nary a Jewish character in sight.
But, along with musicians primarily comprising those from the African diaspora in the soundtrack, I May Destroy You features a cantor: Cantor Zelermyer, along with the choir from his Montreal synagogue, Shaar Hashomayim.
Did you hear him? The first time Cantor Zelermyer’s music shows up on I May Destroy You, in episode 5, is fleeting. But at this time of year, if you’re listening, the song will be very familiar: it’s Ein Kitzvah from the Machzor, the High Holy Day liturgy. ‘It was just about two seconds of in-your-face audio, and then it disappears into the background,’ Zelermyer told me. Ein Kitzvah might be brief, but Uvchein Yitkadash, which is played in episode 8, is almost impossible to miss. It resounds during perhaps the most dramatic moment of the entire series, when Arabella, à la Virginia Woolf, wades into the water and disappears beneath the surface. As the camera zooms back from our heroine, a smaller and smaller figure in a growing sea of blue, the music rises to a pitch. On the final note of the song, Arabella is gone.
These two musical clips on I May Destroy You are not the latter-day Yossele Rosenblatt’s first brush with fame. In 2016, shortly before his death, Leonard Cohen z”l, contacted Zelermyer as the cantor of the shul that had as its former presidents Cohen’s grandfather and great-grandfather (Cohen was later buried in Shaar Hashomayim’s cemetery on Mount Royal). ‘When Leonard invited us to participate in You Want it Darker [his last album], he said that he was “looking for the sound of the Cantor and choir of his youth,”’ recounted Zelermyer in his Globe and Mail piece written in the weeks that followed Cohen’s demise. The title track, featuring the vocals of Zelermyer’s and the Shaar Hashomayim choir, won a Grammy for Best Rock Performance in 2017. It also found its way into various corners of popular culture: in an episode of Billions, an episode of Peaky Blinders (used as the background music for an erotic asphyxiation scene!), and for the opening title music of Black Earth Rising. The last of these was a 2018 Netflix television drama series about the Rwandan genocide, starring John Goodman as the American attorney. His assistant was played by (none other than) Michaela Coel.
Zelermyer told me about watching Black Earth Rising with his wife. ‘We watched two episodes of the show and were completely blown away by it. It’s an amazing show. We knew that we were going to binge it.’ I jot down the recommendation. ‘The next morning,’ he continues, ‘I wake up and there’s an email in my inbox from Michaela Coel.’ As happens. Philippe Sands, human rights lawyer and author of seventeen books on international law, who had met Coel through Black Earth Rising, and Zelermyer through his Leonard Cohen fandom (Leonard Cohen’s music forms part of the performance piece created out of Sands’s bestselling book on the origins of genocide, East West Street), put them in touch. En route home from Israel last summer, Zelermyer stopped over in London, where he saw the David Mamet flop Bitter Wheat and hung out with Coel at Piccadilly Circus until the wee hours. They hit it off. Coel told Zelermyer it was too bad he didn’t live in London, and Zelermyer said he would love to do a sabbatical there. ‘A sabbatical?’ She was confused. Weren’t only academics eligible for this highly coveted yet seemingly archaic remnant from Biblical times? Zelermyer corrected her, and Coel must have been delighted by the idea, because, along with Zelermyer’s music, it made its way into her show: ‘Even a cantor has a sabbatical.’
With Yom Kippur around the corner, I’m thinking about the break the holiday promises: from food, from caffeine (though it hurts!), from the toxic world of the internet. Yom Kippur is a full body and mind reset. Everyone needs it. Remember: even cantors take breaks (just not on the High Holy Days).
