Can someone help me interpret Leonard Cohen's poem "The Genius"?

Question

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

Answer 1

This is an interesting poem, one which I had not seen before.

In this poem, Cohen embraces his Jewish heritage, albeit in a rather left-handed way, by addressing the most familiar of the anti-semitic stereotypes laid upon Jews over the centuries.

"Ghetto Jews" lived in segregated communities in medieval European cities, and when diseases infected the cities, they were frequently unjustly accused of poisoning the wells. Their modern descendants, the ultra-Orthodox Haredi and Hassidim, wear traditional clothing which includes white stockings. Hassidim sometimes engage in ecstatic dancing.

During the Renaissance, the Spanish Inquisition made Jews a particular target of their over-zealous conversion efforts. Occasionally a Jew would turn traitor, become an apostate, convert to Christianity, and lie about Judaism to please his new masters. One such lie is the "blood libel", that Jews murder Christian children in order to use their blood for the making of Passover matzah.

Elsewhere in Europe, where Jews were forced to become money lenders because Christians considered "usury" a sin, some Jews succeeded and became very wealthy bankers. If an irresponsible nobleman or king borrowed too much and lost his inheritance, the Jewish banker he borrowed from might be blamed for "ruining" him.

In America, immigrant Jews gravitated towards retail sales, the garment industries, and the entertainment industry. American Jewish merchants continued to be slandered with old stereotypes that Jews succeeded in business because they were dishonest or cheap.

"Broadway Jew" refers specifically  to popular performers such as Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, and Sophie Tucker, whose success depended on their denying their Jewishness to assume the stereotyped behaviors and musical styles of minstrel-show Negroes, even to performing while wearing "blackface" makeup. Al Jolson was famous for his rendition of "Mammie" in blackface.

The children of those immigrant Jews entered the professions in great numbers. Becoming a doctor was especially highly admired, as it combined the Jewish cultural values of education and of helping save lives. But Cohen implies that even a successful American Jewish doctor cannot escape the stigma which non-Jews associate with circumcision. Sewing foreskins back on again is a literal impossibility, and here serves as a metaphor for assimilation of Jews into mainstream American culture.

The ultimate in anti-Semitism, of course, was in n**i Germany, and Hitler's "Final Solution". Dachau was one of the most notorious death-camps, where millions of Jews suffered and died in unimaginable horrors.

Without knowing to whom the poem is addressed, understanding its meaning is a bit difficult. The tone is somewhat ironic, as he is proposing to do some things which Jews never did (e.g. poison wells, murder children). Cohen seems to be saying that out of respect or love or the person he is writing to, he is willing to embrace his Jewishness despite the burdens of the millennia of anti-Semitic hatred and lies which he has cataloged in this poem.