by Jeff Burger
LC: I don’t really think about these things very deeply. It seems to be part of a conceptual point of view that you can develop, and develop a very legitimate argument. When I say “conceptual,” I don’t mean that scornfully. I mean that it involves the mind and an idea and an experience. And I can get into a whole number of very fascinating conceptual propositions, and reincarnation is one of them.
It doesn’t have the urgency of the present demand—that we get right with ourselves and with our Maker. The absolute demand, from moment to moment, that we not violate the birthright and the position that we have as human beings.
These Tibetans, this book that I’m supposed to be narrating, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, is a very, very careful examination of these various states. And in Chasidism it is, for example, very, very clear how long the spirit hovers above the body. There are people who are very sensitive.
The same people who said, “you shall not kill” also talked about shellfish, and I think we have to accord a certain respect for these matters. If somebody can pick up very clear ideas about human behavior, and also mention shellfish and cooking the lamb in the milk of its mother, I think we should take these things a lot more seriously than we might, because the same minds are perceiving the absolute importance of both of these possibilities. Very delicate and subtle minds tell us the spirit of the individual is hovering over the body, so I don’t think there’s any reason to discard that notion.
When I say, “What about reincarnation?” my old teacher says, “Tibetan fairytale.” That’s his point of view. It’s not that he wishes to denigrate or degrade that position. It’s more like, “Don’t you have anything better to think about? Your position in the cosmos is at stake at this moment. How do you want to deal with it? How would you like to be with me in this room?” I tend to feel that way.
AK: A moment ago, we were talking about how they spoiled Judaism for many of us. They also spoiled poetry for many of us.
LC: I have to exclude myself from this “us,” because they didn’t spoil Judaism for me.
AK: Nor for me either.
LC: There was something in it. Yes, I had to go whoring after false gods, and maybe I’m still in the bed of one. But, there was something about what I saw … people have their stories: I grew up in a Catholic city and my Catholic friends have horror stories about what Catholicism was, and my Jewish friends have horror stories about what Judaism was. I never had them. I never rebelled against my parents, even when I was taking acid and living in the Chelsea Hotel. It never occurred to me once to blame my family, my city, my religion, my tribe, my destiny, my position, on who they were. I always thought it was great! I always thought my family practice was great, and I’ve tried to keep it up—in my half-ass way.
But poetry …
AK: Yes, poetry. I run the Jewish Book Club. We sell books of Jewish interest to twenty-two thousand households. We sell a lot of books. But poetry never sells, no matter who it is. And, as you can see I am ignoring that data by offering your new book. [Cohen laughs.] Why do you think that is? I know my own horror stories in high school, the murdering of poetry! What are your thoughts on this?
LC: I don’t think it’s for everybody in its pure form. It’s like bee pollen. It’s nice to have honey in your cakes, but there are purists who like the pollen and the propolis. There are bee cultists.
I feel that way about poetry. The honey of poetry is all over the place. It’s in the writing in the National Geographic, when the thing is absolutely clear and beautiful. It’s in movies. It’s all over. The taste of significance is what we call poetry. And when something resonates with a particular kind of significance, we might not call it poetry, but we’ve experienced poetry.
It’s got something to do with truth and rhythm and authority and music. It’s all over the place. For the few cultists and purists who like to look at a page where the words don’t come to the end of the line, I think that’s a very specific kind of interest and a very specific kind of appetite, and I really don’t think it’s for everybody.
So I’ve never been dismayed. My feeling is, I was completely hooked on this stuff as a kid. I loved it when I first came across it—in the songs my mother sang, in the liturgy, in the pop music. There was a certain resonance when something was said in a certain kind of way. It seemed to embrace the cosmos. Not just my heart but every heart was involved, and loneliness was dissolved, and you felt like you were this aching creature in the midst of the aching cosmos and the ache was OK. Not only was it OK but it was the way that you embraced the sun and the moon.
I went into pop music. I felt that that’s where I could manifest it. Just on the page wasn’t going to do it for me. Because I wanted to live it! And I didn’t want to live it in poetry readings, although there’s nothing wrong with that. I just felt that there was a lute behind it, there was a ten-stringed instrument behind it. That was the way that I got the stuff. So I naturally moved into this kind of expression that I got lost in.
AK: So there’s no difference between a poem and a lyric?
LC: It’s the life that you want to lead. You can be the subject and poetry can be the object, and you can keep the subject/object relationship and that’s completely legitimate. It is the point of view of the scholar.
But I wanted to live this world. When I read the Psalms or when they lift up the Torah, “Etz chayim hi l’mah chazikim bah.” [Literally, “It is a tree of life for those who grasp it” This verse is sung as part of the response from a congregation upon seeing the raised Torah scroll.] That kind of thing sent a chill down my back. I wanted to be that one who lifted up the Torah. I wanted to say that. I wanted to be in that position. When they told me I was a Kohayn, I believed it. [“Kohayn” is Hebrew for “priest” and the source of the name “Cohen.”] I didn’t think this was some auxiliary information. I believed. I wanted to wear white clothes, and to go into the Holy of Holies, and to negotiate with the deepest resources of my soul.
So I took the whole thing seriously. I was this little kid, and whatever they told me in these matters, it resonated. I wanted to be that figure who sang, “This is a Tree of Life; all that you hold on to.” So I tried to be that. I tried to become that. That world seemed open to me. And I was able to become that.
In my own modest way, I became that little figure to myself. So that was poetry to me. And I think it’s available to everybody.
AK: Were you making the point before that there was some connection between your breaking your knees and your adopting of Torah observance? How did you break your knees?
LC: I fell. I was running across a mountain at night and I ran into a wall. A low stone wall. I tripped over it and I badly damaged my knees and I had to have microsurgery. Fortunately, I just tore the meniscus in both knees. It was painful but not catastrophic.
And so I couldn’t practice. I was used to sitting straight, in silence, with my knees crossed and my back straight, which were the instructions of that teacher called Shakyamuni or the Buddha. He didn’t say that much about anything except to sit, fold your legs carefully under you, and sit with your back straight. And that’s it. Then figure it out for yourself. That’s basically the instructions he gave.
AK: And suddenly you were in a situation where you couldn’t do that?
LC: Yes. I had some friends who were rabbis, and one particular friend, Simcha, was the head of the Chabad at McGill. [Chabad is an acronym for the Hebrew Kabbalistic terms “chochma,” “bina,” and “da’at,” meaning wisdom, understanding and knowledge, In general use, it refers to the Chasidic group known as Lubavitch.] And we used to meet and talk—and drink actually. And I had been interested, but I never really led a formal Orthodox life. And I felt the appetite. I felt, “What is this tefillin?” [Tefillin refers to a set of two small black leather boxes containing verses from the Torah.] I inherited my grandfather’s tefillin. I had the bag. And I wondered, “What is this thing? What are these morning prayers?” And I began to look into them, and to study them, an
d to say them and to try to penetrate them. And to try to make sense of them, in the deepest way.
And it was my studies with this old Zen monk, it was my experience in the zendo, that opened it for me for the first time. I saw I really could use this material, and I saw how exquisite and skillful these prayers were, how they had been designed by minds that you have to incline your heads toward. These minds who designed these prayers or received the inspiration to design these prayers—these are incredibly subtle and exquisite prayers for lifting the soul.
So I began to practice this form that was such a happy homecoming. I wrote Book of Mercy out of that period. I tried to make my tiny homage to a tradition that had somehow been withheld, not deliberately withheld, but had been lost to me, let’s say, and lost to my own family practice.
AK: I keep thinking, as you’re talking, of that image of your grandfather going back to that verse, and again, back to that verse. Somehow he saw something and achieved something.
LC: Oh yes! Well, he was a wonderful spirit. He swam in it. It wasn’t that he could ever leave it.
He happened to be in a confrontational, belligerent stance regarding the rabbinical vision. There was something about it that he didn’t like. But he was in it, and there was no way that he could be anything else but Rabbi Solomon Klonitsky-Klein.
Incidentally, when he died, he was writing a dictionary without reference books. He was a little gone, but nevertheless he felt confident enough to sit: A … B … C … He was really one of those people who could put the pin through a page and know the letter it touched on the other side. You know what I mean! He was one of those minds. [In 1917, in the journal Psychological Review, psychologist George Stratton documented a group of Talmudic scholars from Poland who memorized all 5,422 pages of the Talmud so when a pin was stuck through any page they could tell you what word was stuck on the other side. Rabbi Solomon Schechter, founder of the Conservative movement in America, claimed to have witnessed this amazing feat.]
AK: Is it true that your father gave you a leather-bound book of poetry that made an impact on you?
LC: My father left me a library of poetry. When it was his bar mitzvah, which was around 1907, it must have been the custom in Montreal to give these leather-bound books of English poetry. When he died I inherited his library. And I don’t even know if I made this up now, because it seems highly unlikely, but he gave me a book called The Romance of the King’s Army. [The book, by A. B. Tucker, actually appeared in 1908. —Ed.] He was an army man, a patriarch, an Edwardian kind of gentleman.
He wore a monocle. He had spats and a cane. He would go out with his service medals on his tuxedo. That kind of thing. A very distinguished, wonderful figure. Very disciplinarian.
So he gave me this book before he died, and the quotation in the beginning of the book—and that was what really struck me—was, “You would be surprised, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed.” The quintessential religious position is that this world, the world that is governed without God, is a world of folly. “You would be surprised, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed.” To give that to a kid of eight … it was a very, very strong message from someone. And he died shortly afterward.
But that seemed to undermine the whole secular position. That there was no wisdom in the world. You had to turn elsewhere.
[Kurzweil and Cohen sit in silence for a long moment.]
AK: Why the monocle? Was that a style?
LC: I think they were designed to peer at your inferiors. [Cohen and Kurzweil laugh.]
AK: Your Hebrew name is Eliezer?
LC: Eliezer.
AK: And your father’s Hebrew name?
LC: Nissan.
AK: So, Eliezer ben Nissan.
LC: Nissan, Nathan. Natan it would be today, isn’t it?
AK: Nissan is Natan, which is Nathan. Yes, Natan. As we are talking about these things, I keep on thinking about that line, “I’m the little Jew who wrote the Bible” [from Cohen’s song “The Future,” from the album of the same name].
LC: Exactly. That line was spontaneous, and I asked myself whether I wanted to keep it there. But it is the way I feel. I do feel that this is my position. This is where I am situated.
AK: I have to admit that I wondered, when I thought about inviting you to have this conversation and I chose your book to be a selection of the Jewish Book Club, not knowing you personally, if you want to be “the little Jew who wrote the Bible” or “the Jewish poet.” But, obviously, I am hearing something very different.
LC: Oh, I am the little Jew who wrote the Bible. I am the little Jew who wrote the Bible. “You don’t know me from the wind. You never will, you never did.” I’m saying this to the nations. “I’m the little Jew who wrote the Bible.” I’m that little one. “I’ve seen the nations rise and fall, I’ve heard their stories …”
AK: “… heard them all …”
LC: “… heard them all. But love’s the only engine of survival.”
I know what it takes to survive. I know what a people needs to survive and as I get older I feel less modest about taking these positions because I realized we are the ones who wrote the Bible. And, at our best, we inhabit a biblical landscape, and this is where we should situate ourselves without apology.
For these things, for the burning bush, for those experiences. Those are the experiences that we have the obligation to manifest. That biblical landscape is our urgent invitation, and we have to be there. Otherwise it’s really not worth saving or manifesting or redeeming or anything, unless we really take up that invitation to walk onto that biblical landscape. That’s where we are.
Now what is the biblical landscape? It is the victory of experience. That’s what the Bible celebrates. The victory of experience. So the experience of these things is absolutely necessary, as well as a teaching that enables the student to manifest, to experience these episodes that are burning through the Bible, that are now relegated to the realm of miracles or superstition, or something that can’t happen to you.
AK: The story of Isaac. We read it every morning.
LC: Yes, that binding! So that’s what I learnt from my old teacher, my old rabbi. And when I brought that writer Leon Wieseltier up Mount Baldy— he wrote about it in the New Yorker [“The Prince of Bummers” by Leon Wieseltier, the New Yorker, July 26, 1993]—I said to him, “I’m going to shul, do you want to come with me?” I meant it.
Harry Rasky—a wonderful Canadian filmmaker, did a wonderful movie on the Holocaust—when he got in trouble I said, “Come to shul. I’ll bring you here.”
He came, and he sat, and he studied with my old teacher.
That’s what it’s like. That’s how I imagined what a Chassidic court would be. That’s what it’s like to me.
I think that we can bring this experience back to our traditions. I see these like training centers. It used to happen. There were Jews who used to study with Sufi masters, at a certain great period in our history, and bring it back, and the opposite.
But this kind of exclusivity! A confident people is not exclusive. A great religion affirms other religions. A great culture affirms other cultures. A great nation affirms other nations. A great individual affirms other individuals, validates the being-ness of others and the vitality. That’s the way I feel about this thing.
AK: Yes! By the way, another uplifting line of yours, “I haven’t been this happy since the end of World War Two” [from “Waiting for the Miracle,” on Cohen’s The Future] …
LC: Right! [Laughs.] I know. As I’ve said before, if I knew where those lines come from, I’d go there more often.
AK: I have so many things I’ve collected, just to give you an indication of the extent to which I’ve gotten involved with your work. I have so many things. I even once sent for this stuff …
LC: Oh, yeah!
AK: … I don’t think I ever read it. But there was something just so intriguing to me about it. [Shows Cohen literature about Kateri Tekakwitha (1656–1
680), a Native American who converted to Roman Catholicism and who is referred to frequently in Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers.]
LC: Yes, well she’s buried just outside of Montreal. They’ve changed their name now, to Kahnawake from Caughnwaga. [Kahnawake Mohawk Territory is a reserve of the Iroquoian-speaking Mohawk nation. It is on the Saint Lawrence River, across from Montreal, on its south shore.]
AK: How do you pronounce her name?
LC: Tee-kahk-wee-tah. She’s wonderful. She’s in the soil around Montreal. It’s not remote. I always loved her, and I always loved the Indians. My father used to take me to this reservation.
AK: Oh, really?
LC: All the time. Before I ever heard of Kateri Tekakwitha. I used to go with him Sunday afternoons and we’d watch the dances of the Indians. Strange that I found out later that Kateri’s remains are buried there. I’m sorry. I forgot what you asked.
AK: I wasn’t really asking. I was just confessing about sending for these pamphlets about Kateri Tekakwitha!
LC: It’s amazing, it’s amazing. Well, you’re absolved. You know there’s a statue of her on the doors of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral here in New York.
AK: I’ll have to go over there.
LC: Sometimes when I’ve been in New York, there’s a flower store nearby, and I’d go and buy a lily and I’d put it with a rubber band on her braid because the braids come out of the door. It’s a very beautiful statue of Kateri Tekakwitha.
[Without missing a beat, Cohen changes the subject.] So, when the second David came up the mountain to the first David, he came into the zendo and sat down with the first David and said to him, “Look, this is wonderful. I feel this is the real thing. But there’s a statue of the Buddha. This is really intolerable. To have an idol!”
So the first David said, “Really?” And then he picked up the statue and threw it out. [Cohen and Kurzweil laugh.]
AK: That’s great. I think we’ve done it! Thank you very much for this conversation!