5/24/2023 0 Comments Lenny cohenHis maternal grandfather had written A Treasury of Rabbinic Interpretations. His speech, part of a symposium on the future of Judaism, carried weight in part because he was a son of one of the most notable Jewish families in Canada – his paternal grandfather was the founder of the Canadian Jewish Times, whose uncle had been unofficial chief rabbi. He had published two narrowly acclaimed volumes of poetry and a experimental novel. “I consider it one of my duties to expose the platitude which we have created.” Cohen had come to imagine himself as part of an underground “catacomb religion” of poets, a new kind of “cantor”, “one of the creators of the liturgy that will create the church”.Īt that time, Cohen had never sung on a record or a stage. I n 1963, when he was 29, Leonard Cohen gave a speech in Montreal’s Jewish Public Library: “I believe that the God worshipped in our synagogues is a hideous distortion of a supreme idea – and deserves to be attacked and destroyed,” he said.
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