Patrick Comerford
We are in the countdown to Christmas in the Church, with just 12 days to go to Christmas. Sunday was the Second Sunday of Advent (10 December 2023), and we are almost half-way through Advent.
Today (13 December), the Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship remembers the lives of Saint Lucy (304), Martyr at Syracuse, and Samuel Johnson (1784), Moralist. Later today, I have a meeting at Saint Mary’s Church, Church Green End, Bletchley, and I hope to be part of a choir carols rehearsal in the evening in All Saints’ Church, Calverton. But, before the day begins, I am taking some time for prayer and reflection this morning.
Throughout Advent this year, my reflections each day include a poem or song by Leonard Cohen. These Advent reflections are following this pattern:
1, A reflection on a poem or song by Leonard Cohen;
2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
The Songs and Poems of Leonard Cohen: 11, ‘The Genius’:
Leonard Cohen’s second book, The Spice-Box of Earth, was published in 1961, when he was 27. It became the most popular and commercially successful of his early books, established his reputation as a poet in Canada, and brought him early literary acclaim.
I was recalling on Monday morning that my copy of this book, to paraphrase a line in another Leonard Cohen song, ‘has grown old and weary.’ Or, rather, it is long battered, stained and dog-eared. As I read through it, I still recall the poems I selected for poetry readings in Wexford in the early and mid-1970s, including ‘I have not lingered in European monasteries’ and ‘The Genius.’
On Monday, I was discussing ‘I have not lingered in European monasteries.’ That other poem, ‘The Genius,’ is often misread yet is both enigmatic and disturbing.
There are some echoes in ‘The Genius’ of Leonard Cohen’s later ‘I’m Your Man’, written and first recorded in 1987 as the title track for his eight album. In that song, the singer pleads he is willing to be a lover, a partner, a boxer, a doctor, a river, to be struck down in anger, to crawl, fall, howl, steer, disappear, to wear a mask, to ‘claw at your heart, and … tear at your sheet’ and to ‘walk … a while across the sand.’
But ‘The Genius’ is a poem not about how Cohen is willing to do almost anything imaginable for the love he seeks of a woman, or perhaps even to realise the love of God.
Instead, this is a poem about the stereotypes projected in antisemitic hatred and racist vitriol down through time, belittling Jews across the centuries – even his use of the lower case ‘j’ for the word ‘jew’ rather a capital ‘J’ for ‘Jew’ indicates that this poem is about belittling and demeaning projections.
In six stanzas, Cohen repeats are six tropes that have been used to confront and debase Jews for generations. The first five are: the ghetto Jew who dresses differently and poisons the town wells; the ‘converso’ Jew who secretly maintains his religious beliefs but is confronted by the Inquisition and accused of ‘blood libel’; the banker Jew who secretly seeks to make and break world powers; the entertainer Jew who is basically dishonest; and the doctor Jew who is a danger to children.
This language begins with low-level hate speech that eventually reaches its climax. When society turns a blind eye to these libels, the inevitable consequence is reached in the sixth stanza: the deportations, the concentration camps and the ovens of the Holocaust.
These antisemitic tropes continue to be used on the far-right today: they target George Soros and his ‘networks’, the ‘Elders of Zion’ have been replaced by ‘globalists’ and ‘cultural Marxists, blood libel has been replaced with QAnon, and instead of accusations of deicide there are accusations of ‘white genocide.’
‘Cultural Marxism’ was used earlier this year as a term of abuse in a speech by the Conservative MP Miriam Cates. The phrase has its origins in a conspiracy theory that Marxist scholars of the Frankfurt school in interwar Germany, many of whom were Jewish, devised a programme of progressive politics intended to undermine western democracies.
Suella Braverman, who resigned recently as Home Secretary, used the phrase in 2019, and 26 Tory MPs signed a joint letter to the Daily Telegraph in 2020 accusing the National Trust of being beset by ‘cultural Marxist dogma’.
‘Globalist’ is used as cheap shorthand to allege left-leaning institutions and banks are seeking to take over the world. The phrase is often connected to antisemitic conspiracy theories, especially when tied to people such as the Jewish financier George Soros. The former Ukip leader Nigel Farage has pioneered the use of much of the populist-nationalist language now being employed by some Conservatives, and has been criticised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, among others, for using Soros as a central trope in theories about globalists.
But some people on the left too fall into the trap of using similar tropes. On marches protesting about the present violence in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank, some of the slogans and placards have projected the policies of the present Netanyahu government onto every Israeli and even onto every Jew.
The New Stateman spoke last month of ‘the return of the longest hatred’ (24 November 2023), reporting that antisemitism is surging across the world and that Jewish people are once again living in fear. The following edition took as its cover theme ‘Being Jewish now’ (1 December 2023). With antisemitism rising and divisions on the left over the Gaza war, several writers reflected on being Jewish now.
In this poem, Leonard Cohen deals with ‘the longest hatred’ and in each stanza dramatically presents a different Jewish stereotype, a role projected onto Jews in antisemitic attacks that reach their eventual climax with the deportation of Jews to the concentration camps and the Holocaust.
Perhaps Leonard Cohen is addressing everyone, challenging hidden antisemitism throughout the world. But the ‘you’ he addresses may also be God. Perhaps the poet is also saying that no matter how others in the world find him or belittle him, no matter what the consequences are of the belittlement and hatred he meets in the world, no matter how heavy the burden or the yoke is, he remains a Jew, and he remains faithful to God.
Leonard Cohen, The Genius:
For you
I will be a ghetto jew
and dance
and put white stockings
on my twisted limbs
and poison wells
across the town
For you
I will be an apostate jew
and tell the Spanish priest
of the blood vow
in the Talmud
and where the bones
of the child are hid
For you
I will be a banker jew
and bring to ruin
a proud old hunting king
and end his line
For you
I will be a Broadway jew
and cry in theatres
for my mother
and sell bargain goods
beneath the counter
For you
I will be a doctor jew
and search
in all the garbage cans for foreskins
to sew back again
For you
I will be a Dachau jew
and lie down in lime
with twisted limbs
and bloated pain
no mind can understand
Matthew 11: 28-30 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 28 ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’
Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 13 December 2023):
The theme this week in the new edition of ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘The Faith of Advent.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (13 December 2023) invites us to pray in these words:
Heavenly Father, as we prepare our hearts to celebrate the birth of your Son joyfully, we thank you for the example of faith we have in Mary.
The Collect:
God our redeemer,
who gave light to the world that was in darkness
by the healing power of the Saviour’s cross:
shed that light on us, we pray,
that with your martyr Lucy
we may, by the purity of our lives,
reflect the light of Christ
and, by the merits of his passion,
come to the light of everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
God our redeemer,
whose Church was strengthened by the blood of your martyr Lucy:
so bind us, in life and death, to Christ’s sacrifice
that our lives, broken and offered with his,
may carry his death and proclaim his resurrection in the world;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Reading ‘The Genius’ by Leonard Cohen (The Spice-Box of Earth)
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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