Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.
Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.
Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Deuteronomy 6: 4-9 NRSVue
I find celebrity auctions to be a curious phenomenon, especially when enthusiastic buyers spend big bucks for ephemera that would seem silly if there wasn't the famous-person cache. Over the weekend there was an auction for odds and sods owned by the late poet, songwriter, and music legend, Leonard Cohen. Some items were treasures, others trash, and a couple were religious. A notebook sold for a remarkable $120,000 USD.
Cohen grew up in Jewish Montreal, was often mystically spiritual in his lyrics, and spent years exploring Buddhism. On his last album he returned to his Montreal synagogue roots and the choir from Congregation Shaar Hashomyim sings, hauntingly, on You Want It Darker. He is buried in the cemetery of the synagogue.
It turned out that there were two of Cohen's mezuzahs in the auction, the small containers attached to the doorframes of Jewish households and doors inside as well. They contain verses of scripture, two particular passages from Deuteronomy. There have been times when displaying a mezuzah could be life-threatening for Jews during times of persecution. There was even a situation in the States where a condo board included mezuzahs on the list of banned objects outside units, a dumb prohibition overturned in court on the grounds of religious freedom.
The two mezuzahs sold for $7,800 ($11,000 Cdn) — more than 10 times above estimates. Go figure. I can imagine Leonard offering a wry smile and a slight turn of his head.
Bye the way, Cohen offered thoughts about Christianity along the way, commenting that he was fond of Jesus who was, after all, a Jew:
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.
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