JESUS
"I'm very fond of Jesus Christ. He may be the most beautiful guy who ever walked the face of this earth. Any guy who said "Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the meek" has got to be a figure of unparalleled generosity and insight and madness… A man who declared himself to stand among the thieves, the prostitutes and the homeless. His position cannot be comprehended. It is an inhuman generosity. A generosity that would overthrow the world if it was embraced because nothing could weather that compassion. I'm not trying to alter the Jewish view of Jesus Christ. But to me, in spite of what I know about the history of legal Christianity, the figure of the man has touched me"
– 1988 interview | quoted in "Leonard Cohen in his Own Words" (1998) edited by Jim Devlin
“… there are many things about Christianity that attract me. The figure of Jesus is extremely attractive. It’s difficult not to fall in love with that person.”
- 1987 interview with Robert O’Brian | quoted in "Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen: Interviews and encounters" edited by Jeff Burger (2014)
"Our natural vocabulary is Judaeo-Christian. That is our blood myth...We have to rediscover the crucifixion. The crucifixion will again be understood as a universal symbol not just as an experiment in sadism or masochism or arrogance. It will have to be discovered cause that's where man is at. On the cross”.
– 1968 interview in the New York Times | quoted in "Leonard Cohen in his Own Words” (1998) edited by Jim Devlin
"... there are certain wounds that time does not heal. So I even have found myself arguing from the theological point of view that if the wound of Jesus comes to express his love for mankind then it will never heal."
– 1988 interview with Alberto Manzano | quoted in "Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen: Interviews and encounters" edited by Jeff Burger (2014)
“… in “Ain’t No Cure for Love,” … the whole idea is funny, even though it’s very true. There’s a surface to the song. You don’t have to go beneath the surface. You’re not invited to penetrate the song and analyze it but if you should be so foolish as to want to penetrate the song and analyze it you’d find that it is correct even theologically. Jesus appears in the last verse and whispers to me that you can’t get away from this; even the angelic host understands. Well, Christ who gave himself a lot, who knew that the only way to love was to sacrifice, he knows that if you love, your love will take a wound, so those parts of the world that are inhabited are still there, but nobody’s invited to look at them if they don’t want to.”
- 1988 interview with Alberto Manzano | quoted in "Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen: Interviews and encounters" edited by Jeff Burger (2014)
“When Jesus Christ was hanging from his final branches, He looked beneath him at the foot of the cross, at the upturned faces, faces of anger, envy, regret, contempt, bewilderment, indifference. And He heard the voices crying out, "Get a life, get a life." He knew for certain that a lever had been thrown in the cosmos and nothing would ever be the same again. He knew for sure, He knew for certain, He knew without a doubt, He knew grand finality, that there ain't no cure for love.”
- July 17, 1988 concert in Boston, USA | prolgouge to “Ain’t No Cure For Love” | find source here.
“Ah I hope you all pass a pleasant Easter and a pleasant Passover. I hope you left the land of Egypt as your fathers did. I hope you are resurrected with the living Christ.”
- April 17, 1988 concert in Antwerp, Belgium | prologue to “Passing Through” | find source here.
An Online Chat with Leonard Cohen
Seth: You have such vivid Christian imagery in many of your songs, and much of it is contrasted with the selfishness of the “modern” individual. I was wondering what’s your take on the state of Christianity today?
Leonard Cohen: Dear Seth, I don’t really have a ‘take on the state of Christianity.’ But when I read your question, this answer came to mind: As I understand it, into the heart of every Christian, Christ comes, and Christ goes. When, by his Grace, the landscape of the heart becomes vast and deep and limitless, then Christ makes His abode in that graceful heart, and His Will prevails. The experience is recognized as Peace. In the absence of this experience much activity arises, divisions of every sort. Outside of the organizational enterprise, which some applaud and some mistrust, stands the figure of Jesus, nailed to a human predicament, summoning the heart to comprehend its own suffering by dissolving itself in a radical confession of hospitality.
JEWISH FAITH
"I grew up in a very conservative, observant family, so it's not something I ever felt any distance from … It is essential to my own survival. Torah values are the ones that inform my life.”
"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 realize we are the ones who wrote the Bible. And, at our best, we inhabit a biblical landscape..."
This conversation, between Leonard Cohen and Arthur Kurzweil, took place on the morning of Tuesday, November 23, 1993.