This essay focuses on the poet/prophet as a speaker of the Divine Word. While the gift of prophecy is a very marginal matter among poets of every generation, those who received the gift have been the most important voices of our culture(s). Leonard Cohen reveals himself, at least during certain periods in his career, as being insecure about whether to accept the role of a priest, which he inherited, or a prophet, to which he naturally inclines. On the other hand, some still argue that he only stylizes himself into these roles. The Jewish community had objections to Cohen's literary works, especially in the 1960s, since he honored values that were at odds with the common religious practices. Therefore, he decided to become the partisan of a catacomb religion in which he merged the roles of a priest and prophet together. This experiment crystallized in his later work and may be seen as an achievement of high spiritual as well as artistic merit.

This paper, which the author delivered as his inaugural lecture as the Chair of Philosophy at Maynooth University, explores the relationship between philosophy, poetry, and religion. Through a line-by-line interpretation of Leonard Cohen's song "Steer Your Way," it discovers the poet in a space between postmodern disillusionment and a desire for faith. What opens Cohen to the latter is specifically the experience of pain and brokenness, which lead him to the figure of Jesus. The paper concludes with a reflection on Richard Kearney's notion of "anatheism," the return to a "God after God." Note: The text posted here is not the final published version. Please cite the published version.

In his lyrics, poems and literary texts, Leonard Cohen' constantly hints at Jewish sources by breaking the boundaries between tradition and autobiography. This article examines Cohen’s retellings of the narrative of Abraham and the near-sacrifice of Isaac through a path between the songs Story of Isaac (1969) and You Want It Darker (2016), with detours toward other purely literary texts of Cohen’s. The possible influence of contemporary Israeli authors on Cohen is also addressed.

The work of Leonard Cohen, called the "black romantic" by Stephen Scobie, has been explored for its sex, politics, darkness, and struggle with faith. Cohen's imagery has also been widely interrogated in critical and popular studies. The present article builds on this literature to explore a consistent theology and theodicy in Cohen's writings. The theology is grounded in the covenant of Cohen's Jewish tradition. It is Cohen's reckoning with humanity's failure to act covenantally with God and persons-though we are made as covenantal creatures, dependent on these bonds to survive and flourish. The easy theodicy says our suffering is self-inflicted: a fallen humanity breaks covenant for the possibility of gain and so injures itself. Cohen saw the tougher reality of many theodical inquiries: if we wound ourselves, the God who made us, made us so. We breach covenant because breaching is easy for us. Thus, the question and anguish that prod much of Cohen's work is not only "Why does humanity fail covenant?" but also "Why did an omnipotent God create humanity so prone to fail it?" The article begins with a discussion of covenant in the Jewish tradition. Cohen's theodicy is then traced through his verse. Attention is given to several topoi, including the use of doubled images to refer at once to divine and human persons; Cohen's use of Jewish and Christian imagery; and theodicy as a way to understand Cohen's relations with women.

Leonard Cohen is famous worldwide as a singer-songwriter, but he started his career as a poet and novelist, whose main themes were love and spirituality. His songs are far above the average popular products, and “The Window” is a good example of his sophisticated writing. Cohen, who was brought up in a Jewish family in Montreal, was influenced by the surrounding Catholic society, and later immersed himself in many other religious traditions, in particular Sufism and Zen Buddhism. These and other traditions, as well as various literary, mystical and psychological trends, can be detected in this song. While the imagery owes much to Sufi poetry, a close analysis reveals that Jesus Christ is a major figure in the song. The song is interpreted as both a mystical journey and a prayer for peace of mind, directed at a messianic figure which Cohen has woven together from the various religious and literary traditions that have been the key to his work.

Book of Mercy is a book of 50 prose-poem prayers published by Leonard Cohen in 1984. In this lecture, delivered in Krakow in 2010, I explore Jewish liturgical, Kabbalistic and Hassidic themes which occur in the book.

essay on two jewish nobel laureates louise gluck and bob dylan, both related to secular jewish commentary