Why the Israeli child of Holocaust survivors was the right person to hear the reclusive artist out and tell her tale
By David Yaffe for Tablet Magazine
“I think Joni is Jewish,” said Malka Marom, the author of Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words. We were speaking mischievously about a story that Joni Mitchell had, on separate occasions, told to both of us. Some years before the death of her parents, she learned that her father had his name changed at Ellis Island. She had already learned that he also had Native American blood. So she asked her mother, “What’s it like to be married to a Jewish Indian?” But Mitchell, who turns 71 today, is not about to have Henry Louis Gates, Jr. find her roots on PBS, and Marom was speaking figuratively. Marom is definitely Jewish—she is Israeli—and because she feels intimately connected to Joni Mitchell, she feels that Joni is of the tribe, at least in spirit. (Joni’s second husband was Jewish, but their wedding was Buddhist.) “In her soul she is Jewish, even if not in her blood,” Malka said with a laugh.
Joni Mitchell does not like to be limited to any religion, musical genre, or any other pop culture archetype that may be applied to lesser figures. She is, when she feels like it, a marathon talker (Full disclosure: I am writing a book about Joni Mitchell. Our first conversation, which lasted 12 hours and could have gone longer if I didn’t have a plane to catch, ranged from her work on a ballet based on her music, to her new album—her first of new material in 10 years, to her on-and-off admiration of Bob Dylan, her former lover Leonard Cohen, alternate guitar tunings, a memorable night with Miles Davis during his silent period, the stupidity of the music business, and the imminent destruction of our planet, which she, like an environmental Cassandra, sees coming.)
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