He spent several years as a Buddhist monk and some of his most powerful songs are rooted in ancient biblical or kabbalistic sources. A Benedictine monk and a Jewish writer discuss a musician and poet who saw the Jewish and Christian faiths as each containing the essence of the other

He spent several years as a Buddhist monk and some of his most powerful songs are rooted in ancient biblical or kabbalistic sources. A Benedictine monk and a Jewish writer discuss a musician and poet who saw the Jewish and Christian faiths as each containing the essence of the other

“You can’t miss it,” said the old man in the flower shop in the centre of the Jewish cemetery in Montreal. Moments later I was kneeling at the grave of Leonard Cohen, six months after his death on 7 November 2016. Now we approach the fifth anniversary of his passing. This is marked by the publication of a new book about him by Harry Freedman, a Jewish writer who interprets his people’s history and culture for the British public. In an hour of conversation, he and I discussed Leonard Cohen and his legacy.

The singer had brought us, Jew and Christian, together and we remarked upon his ability to transcend confessional divides. “Faiths,” said Freedman, “sit in silos, and you do not look from one silo to another.”

It follows that there is a barrier, not ­necessarily hostile, between them and “one of the things Leonard Cohen did so well was to see Judaism and Christianity as a continuum.” The title song on the album he released just 17 days before his death, “You Want It Darker”, is an example: “He sings the Kaddish in there, the prayer we recite for ­people who have died – ‘Magnified and ­sanctified / Be thy holy name’ – and then he turns it into Jesus … ‘Vilified and crucified’.” In “Story of Isaac”, from his second album, Songs from a Room, Freedman pointed out, “He starts off effectively giving you a reworking of the story in Genesis where Abraham takes Isaac up the mountain and it ends up with the Crucifixion and it’s all one story.”

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