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From This Broken Hill I Sing To You: God, Sex and Politics in the Work of Leonard Cohen
Thu, December 16, 2021 at 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
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On the fifth anniversary of the death of the iconic Leonard Cohen, Marcia Pally’s From this Broken Hill I Sing to You: God, Sex, and Politics in the Work of Leonard Cohen explores the bard’s thoughtscape through 60 years of song, poetry, and novels. Pally traces Cohen’s understanding of humanity’s relational, indeed covenantal, nature and his despair at our breaches of the relationships we need in our personal and political lives. Cohen knew himself to be a covenant fail-er par excellence and struggled with why God made him—made all of us—relational and yet so easily able to break relationship and bolt, causing loss and pain to ourselves and others.
Please join Marcia Pally and David Kraemer in conversation about Cohen’s faith, frustration, and shimmering insights into the human condition. We will be focusing on Cohen’s more complex Jewish poems and songs.
Marcia Pally teaches at NYU and held the Mercator Guest Professorship in the theology faculty at Humboldt University-Berlin, where she is now an annual guest professor.
David Kraemer is Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at JTS, and director of its world-renowned library.
