“Why did God make us needy of him and others and yet flounder in inconstancy? Why is it so difficult to sustain covenant, so easy to abandon, abuse, and be left with gaping loss? The problem of covenant unsustained is the theme of Cohen’s theodicy. Beneath each interrogation of why humanity fails covenant is the more anguished question of why God created us so prone to fail it. Cohen’s problem was not a crisis of faith — he never ceased believing in God — but the scandal that God makes it so hard for us to live by our beliefs. If one promise of Judaism — indeed, the central promise at Sinai — is covenant with the God of grace and compassion ('el rachum v’chanun,' Exodus 34:6), why are we so on-our-own to forsake and be forsaken? Why is each of us out there, dangling like 'a bird on the wire,' trying to be 'free,' having 'torn everyone who reached out for me' ('Bird on a Wire,' Songs from a Room, 1969)? In this song, Cohen says he’ll repent, 'I swear by this song / And by all that I have done wrong / I will make it all up to thee.' Yet he breached this and so many promises over the next half century, each failure fueling the next song.”