by Jeff Burger
I remember reading speeches of his where he spoke with great pride that the Jewish community of Montreal had absorbed its refugees from Kishinev without ever asking the municipality or the government for a single cent. [In 1903 in Kishinev, which is now the largest municipality in Moldovia, an anti-Jewish riot resulted in death or severe injury for hundreds of Jews and the destruction of hundreds of Jewish homes and businesses. —Ed.] Montreal Jewry was very well organized.
And I am proud to say that he was one of the organizers of these institutions. Baron de Hirsch Fund was one of his undertakings. Also B’nai B’rith and the Jewish General Hospital. And the [philanthropic] Hebrew Free Loan Association was a very special interest of his. And of course all the institutions connected with Shaar Hashomayim.
AK: Both grandfathers were immigrants?
LC: They were both born in Europe; I think my grandfather came here when he was three. His father, who was also a very interesting man, Lazarus Cohen, came in 1860.
AK: To Canada?
LC: Yes, with his son.
AK: Are you named after him?
LC: Oh there’s a tradition of L’s. Lazarus, Lyon, Leonard.
AK: One of the reasons I’m asking you about your grandparents is that Jewish family history and genealogy is an interest of mine. In fact, there’s a book on the shelf behind you that I wrote called From Generation to Generation …
LC: Oh, yes?!
AK: … which is a guidebook for people who want to learn how to do Jewish genealogical research.
LC: Ah, that’s interesting!
AK: So I did a lot of genealogical research in my own family. I went to Eastern Europe a number of times to the towns where my grandparents had come from. A couple of my trips to Eastern Europe had a connection with you. I’d like to tell you about both of them.
LC: Yes?
AK: I researched my mother’s family and discovered she had a first cousin she thought was killed during the Holocaust, who was living in Budapest with his wife, children, and grandchildren. So not that long ago I discovered …
LC: Family!
AK: Yes, family in Budapest, and it was wonderful. I have a second cousin, Zsuzsa, who lived in Budapest. She’s now in Australia, but she grew up in Budapest. I met her for the first time in Budapest. We were speaking in English and I said to her, “Where did you learn English?” and she said to me “Cohen.”
LC: Ah! [Laughs.]
AK: I said, “What do you mean ‘Cohen’?” and she showed me your albums and she said, “This is how I learned English.”
LC: Ah, that’s very nice! Thank you!
AK: Extraordinary.
LC: Yes! Thank you! Thank you for telling me that!
AK: That was in Budapest. Then I went to Warsaw, Poland, where I also discovered a cousin of my father, who I also didn’t know existed, who also survived the Holocaust and is living in Warsaw with his wife and daughter. One afternoon they introduced me to an actress, a young woman, who was a friend of theirs, with whom we spent the day. As we were walking through the streets that were once the Warsaw Ghetto, I said to her, “What music do you like?” She said, “Cohen.” [Cohen laughs with pleasure.] So my question is this: Why do you think it is that you have this following in Eastern Europe?
LC: I did a tour of Poland before the government changed, before the Solidarity government was established, and I discovered—I had known, but without a great deal of data—that Poland was probably my largest audience in the world. Unfortunately, they paid me in zlotys, which, as you know, are nontransferable.
But I discovered a huge audience there, and at times, when my so-called career in the West almost evaporated in most places, there was always this following in Eastern Europe generally, but Poland specifically. I don’t know why.
My great-grandfather came from Vilkaviskis, which was part of Poland at the time [and is now in southwest Lithuania], and I was very pleased to be able to say that I came from Poland, although they didn’t really think of me as Polish. But it was very interesting.
I don’t know. Of course, I grew up out of that world in some way. It was not hidden from me. Actually when I arrived in Greece, in ‘59 or ‘60, I really did feel that I had come home. I felt the architecture was familiar, I felt the village life was familiar, although I had no experience with village life.
AK: Some of the articles I’ve read about you over the years have indicated that you dabbled or more than dabbled in various kinds of spiritual paths. Can you tell me if I’m right in thinking the line “Did you ever go ‘clear’?” from “Famous Blue Raincoat” [from the album Songs of Love and Hate] was a Scientology reference?
LC: It was. I did look into Scientology. I looked into a lot of things when I was a young man. Scientology was one of them. It didn’t last for long.
But it was very interesting, as I continued my studies in these matters, to see, really, how good Scientology was from the viewpoint of their data, of their information, of their actual knowledge, their wisdom writings, so to speak. It was not bad at all. I know it’s scorned. I don’t know what the organization is today, but it seems to have the political residue of any large, growing organization. But I was surprised to see how well organized the studies were. Yeah, I did look into that.
AK: There were others?
LC: Well, from the Communist party to the Republican Party. From Scientology to delusions of myself as the High Priest rebuilding the Temple.
AK: How do Jewish things fit into all of that?
LC: Well, I became a very serious student of a Zen monk. Although, I think “dabble” can describe anybody’s activity in these matters, because who of us can say that we have fully embraced this material? But I remember Allen Ginsberg saying to me at a certain point, “How do you reconcile this with Judaism?” because he was a student of Chogyam Trungpa [a Tibetan Buddhist master, author, and founder of Naropa Institute who died in 1987]. I said that I find no conflict myself. But the organization, or the man that I was in contact with, was a very different order than Trungpa. Much less organized.
As you know, there are Jewish practitioners in the Zen movement— very serious ones. In fact, there is a succession holder, there’s a dharma teacher, an actual successor to a roshi [a spiritual guide], in Los Angeles, who I think is married to the daughter of an Orthodox rabbi. And he maintains a Jewish practice in the midst of the zendo [Buddhist meditation hall] regime, very much the way some [Roman Catholic] Trappist monks maintained a zendo in the midst of their monastic discipline. I don’t think these are necessarily mutually exclusive, depending on your position. In Japan itself, Shinto, the family religion, and Zen, are often practiced side by side. The fact is that Zen was often not accorded the status of a religion in various periods in the East. And as I’ve received it from my teacher, there is no conflict because there is no prayerful worship and there is no discussion of a deity.
AK: So there’s room for it?
LC: It’s not even that there’s room for it. One of the patriarchs, when asked, “What is the essence of Zen?” replied, “Vast emptiness and nothing special.” So there’s not only room for it, there’s boundless space available for whatever mental constructions you happen to wish to establish.
I’ve inherited an extremely good religion. I have no need to change it. For instance, in the Hollywood Reporter recently [October 12, 1993] there was a notice that I was going to narrate a film of the National Film Board of Canada on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. And they said something like, “We had expected that Richard Gere would have been asked, but Cohen, a Buddhist, was …”
And I wrote them. I don’t know if the letter has been published yet, because this appeared a couple weeks ago. I said, “My mother and father, of blessed memory, would be very disturbed to hear me described as a Buddhist.” I said, “I am a Jew,” and I said, “Some time ago I became intrigued with the incoherent ramblings of an old Zen monk [Roshi Sasaki, founder of the Mount Baldy Zen Center in California], who just recently said to me, ‘Leon
ard, I’ve known you for twenty-five years, and I’ve never tried to give you my religion, I’ve just poured you sake.’ And I lifted my glass to him and I said ‘Rabbi, you are indeed the light of your generation.’”
And that’s the way I feel. I’ve met some very impressive young Jewish men around him. For instance, the leader of the Ithaca Zen Center comes from seven generations of rabbis. And his feeling is that he’s found a real rabbi. That’s my feeling also.
In other words, there’s something that is not negotiable about the absolute, some refusal to name qualities about the absolute that fits in with my most rigorous, deepest appetites, about the matters of which I was taught or were indicated to me.
So this young man’s idea is that this old man is the real thing, that this is the purest expression of that reality that is expressed in the Shema [a central part of Jewish prayer]: there is only one thing going on, and don’t even suggest that there is something else going on. There is an absolute unity that is manifesting on this plane, and on all planes, and nothing can compromise this understanding.
Zen, or at least the lineage of this particular teacher, seems to be able to provide a landscape where Jewish practitioners can manifest their deepest appetites concerning the absolute.
There is a story—it may be apocryphal, but the facts are not; some of the details would need to be checked: when this same young man was at Cornell, he began to study with this old teacher. The leader, or whoever it was, of the Chabad house, said to one of the other Jewish students, “Now that you know your studies and are progressing well, and your understanding has matured, go up to the mountain and bring David back.” David was the errant student who had embraced these other teachings and was living a life of what you might call “biblical purity.” He was very passionate, a very passionate heart.
So, the other David—they are both called David—prepares himself and goes up to the mountain and sits with him and says, “What’s going on here? Enough is enough. You’ve taken enough acid, you’ve eaten enough mushrooms, you whored after enough false gods. Now, come back and take up your burden.”
So the first David says, “Stay with me for a little while.”
Well, the upshot of the story was that the second David abandoned Chabad and began to study with the first David, feeling that this was indeed the real thing.
We’re in a period when a radical approach to these matters, if not affirmed, is at least tolerated. And I think we are in a period when these relationships will be redefined radically.
AK: I grew up in a Jewish household with parents who were quite respectful toward Judaism, and I attended a Conservative Hebrew School for a few years before my bar mitzvah. But it was not until I stumbled across [spiritual teacher and Timothy Leary associate] Ram Dass …
LC: So you understand the trip completely.
AK: I always felt that stuff opened me up to Judaism.
LC: I understand that.
AK: Now, “There’s a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.” [from “Anthem,” on The Future] This, to me, is such a Jewish idea….
LC: I think so too.
AK: Is it also a Zen idea?
LC: I can’t even locate a Zen idea. [Kurzweil laughs.] As I said, I don’t really know that much about Zen or Buddhism because I was never really interested in a new religion. When I was young, I investigated various forms around, because they were there. You met a girl or you met somebody, you went on the trip. I had a good Jewish education. I remember sitting with my grandfather, studying the Book of Isaiah. He was already well along in his years, and he’d read a passage, and he’d speak about it and nod off, and his finger would go back to the beginning of the passage as he moved his body, and he’d start fresh, with that same verse again and read it again and expound it again, and sometimes the whole evening was spent on the exposition of one verse.
So I had a clear idea of the implications of what a Jewish life was. I saw my family was deeply involved in the organization of a community. It was no joke.
AK: Yes!
LC: This was not like a theoretical thing. The Hebrew Free Loan Society— people could borrow money free! That’s a translation of a Jewish idea into action. I saw this all the time, all around me. And also found my family’s businesses conducted at a level of ethics and honor that you couldn’t help but be impressed by.
So I saw the thing. So as I say, the ideas in Zen, I’m not sure what they are, because I’ve only known one old man. I don’t know how authentically he represents his tradition. I just know that he’s provided a space for me to kind of dance with the Lord that I couldn’t find in a lot of the other places I went to.
AK: Why do you think that so many of us young Jews went to the East? Since you observed Jewish communal life and organizational life up close, what was it about it that was bankrupt or that was a turnoff in some way?
LC: I was brought up in the Conservative tradition, which I have the deepest respect for. I’m a member of my synagogue. I light the candles Friday night. And I feel very close to the whole trip. I don’t think we were able to develop a meditational system that could seize and address the deep appetites of our best young people, the people who really had to have an experience with the Absolute. We didn’t take that seriously.
I think our faith is full of atheists and agnostics. I think that there are lots of nominal Jews around. But I think there are people who really believe, who have really had an experience, who have really been embraced, who have felt this embrace, who have felt themselves dissolve in the midst of a prayer. And felt that the prayer was praying them.
I think these things exist in our literature; we pick up a book by [Jewish philosopher Martin] Buber, a Chassidic tale, or something, and these things are hinted at. But in the mainstream, these things had the status of superstition. So I think that was a very unsatisfactory condition and many of our brightest and best looked into it, looked for it, but simply couldn’t find it.
Also, I think there is the prophetic element in Judaism, the prophets, that world vision articulated, let’s say, by Isaiah. I think that’s also not taken seriously. It was only after studying with my old Zen teacher for many years, when I broke my knees, and I couldn’t practice in the meditation hall—I began practicing a Judaism that I had never practiced. Laying tefillin every morning, and going through the Shemoneh Esreh [the central prayer of Jewish liturgy], and really understanding that there were these eighteen steps, and that they were a ladder, and that these were a way of preparing yourself for the day, if you really penetrated each of those paragraphs.
While starting from a very low place, you could put your chin up over the windowsill and actually see a world that you could affirm.
Nobody had ever talked to me that way about anything. The actual use of the liturgy, of our wisdom books, the actual use of them as a real thing, as a thing that is written with white fire on black fire or black fire on white fire, which is the way they say the Torah was written—that idea, of something passionate and not negotiable, that atmosphere, did not touch me at all in my education. And it has to.
Now it does touch other groups, but those other groups seem to have forgotten the messianic implication, which is that we all are part of a brotherhood under the Almighty. And the exclusive elements, the nominal elements, seemed to be emphasized and a kind of scorn for the nations, for the goyim. A kind of exclusivity that I found wholly unacceptable, and many people I know find wholly unacceptable. That has also precluded a number of our best from affirming their connection with groups that at least have the fire going. I don’t want to get specific, because I don’t want to mount criticism against any group that is passionately involved in that kind of destiny.
But you ask why some of our brightest and best have not been able to embrace the tradition. It’s because the tradition has betrayed itself, because the messianic unfolding has not been affirmed. And the medita-tional systems have not been affirmed. And we don’t have teachers who are warm in their invi
tation.
There’s something punitive about the invitation. “Do this or else.” The Mercy of the Lord is not affirmed, one side of the tree is affirmed, justice or judgment is affirmed, very, very strongly, but the other side is not affirmed and I don’t think it’s known. I don’t think it’s experienced. So we need a system that will provide experience in these matters, an experience that is not within the confines of an exclusive vision, that affirms one element in humanity and scorns the rest.
AK: Do you know the work of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz? He’s been translating the Talmud into English.
LC: Yes. I love it. I love it. I’ve only looked at a few of the volumes, but I’ve studied them. When I couldn’t practice in the zendo, I began to study these things. I had a Jewish education, but it didn’t have the real taste and the real juice. Yes, English! It says we can pray in seventy languages, we can study in seventy languages!
AK: One of Rabbi Steinsaltz’s mottos is “Let my people know.”
LC: Wonderful.
AK: You’re echoing what the rabbi often says, that we shouldn’t take somebody else’s word for what Judaism is. We should find out for ourselves. And we discover we didn’t know the treasures that we have.
LC: Wonderful.
AK: You made a comment earlier that reminded me of one of my trips to Eastern Europe. I visited Eastern Europe a number of times. On one of my trips all I did was go to old Jewish cemeteries. I went from town to town, from Jewish cemetery to Jewish cemetery to Jewish cemetery, for weeks. I couldn’t get enough of them. At a certain point, in the cemetery of the town where my great-grandfather was born, I had this experience of feeling, as vividly as can be, that I had been killed as a child in the Holocaust.
LC: Uh-huh.
AK: In my dabbling with books on Eastern religions, reincarnation was always a given. Without it, nothing made sense, and with it, everything started to make some sense. I later learned that many of the most illustrious Jewish sages throughout our history taught about the reincarnation of the soul. I then learned that a lot of people have had these similar kinds of experiences that I had. What do you think about reincarnation? Does it make sense to you?