Rest in peace, seeker of peace

I MET Azriel Cohen when I was a freshman in college. He was the older cousin of one of my college roommates, Miriam. Back then, he was a clean cut guy living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

I remember the first time I saw his art — the logo he designed for another friend, for Miriam’s sister’s wedding invitation. Even as a young woman, I remember being wowed by his art. There were two lions flanking a design; it was a miniature painting. Not your typical wedding logo design circulating at the time.

Then in graduate school I spent some holidays in Silver Spring, MD, where much of my college crowd hailed from, among them his cousins. I shared a few New York-to-Silver Spring-and-back drives with Azriel. I got to know him more for the truly sweet, mellow, kind guy that he was.

Some time after that, Azriel  was passing through Denver while I was visiting at my parents’ home. He told us in his typical, humble, matter-of-fact way about what could only be described as the incredible work he was doing in India. Having taken note of the mass influx of Israeli post army youth to India, he began setting up huge sukkot and hosting Pesach seders in India.

The idea took off and grew with enormous popularity over the years. Today the Pesach seder in India is known as the largest in the world. Azriel was one of the pioneers of that. Out of respect to the local Tibetan monks, he only set up shop for his fellow Jews after personally requesting permission from the Dalai Lama, who granted it to Azriel with a smile, saying something to the effect: “You are the Jews. You are the chosen people.”

Years later in Israel, in a week’s time, he and his friend Nadia Levene, in conjunction with Carmei Ha’ir, organized all the logistics for  a seder for the homeless of Jeru-salem. He took the opening words of the Haggadah to be not just lip service or poetic, literary flourish, but literally. “Kol dichfin yeitei veyeichol, All who are hungry come and eat.” With Azriel, he always made a place at the table for every Jew.

A FEW years passed. I was visiting Jerusalem, exploring the possibility of moving there. Sitting at a table at The Village Green Cafe, chatting with a friend, I suddenly see this very familiar, tall, nice looking, warm, smiling guy in a hippie poncho and a beret walking with purpose toward me. Wait a minute . . . who could this be? As soon as he came closer I recognized him to be the one and only Azriel! It was a joyous moment, like those “only in Israel” reunions can be. Needless to say, Azriel pulled up a chair and we sat at the cafe catching up over the trays of  healthy organic food we had each ordered.

As it turned out, I moved to Israel. And Azriel was living there. From time to time we would bump into each other and enjoy a nice conversation over a cup of tea. Each time I would catch up a bit on his fascinating journey and travels throughout the world.

Sometimes we would talk about our shared interest at the time — mediation and conflict resolution — in which we had both trained. Sometimes he would show me a beautiful photograph of an ordinary spring flower, captured by his talented, seeing and spiritual eye. Always, Azriel had a quality of pure, quiet joy. Of curiosity and childlike innocence and wonder.

Raised Orthodox and proud of his illustrious, rabbinic-chasidic lineage, he was clearly searching for something. He had the courage to step into the unknown and truly dig deep, searching for truth, for the meaning of this universe. Searching to connect with different kinds of people over our shared humanity. He was so honest. To be with him was to witness someone being totally true to who he is, regardless of societal pressures or conventions.

There was something powerful and freeing in being in the presence of such a person as Azriel.

HE rejected anything even remotely echoing a smidgen of artifice, which drew him more and more inward and, over time, more and more in connection with nature, both the plant and the animal. Nature’s guilelessness was the perfect home environment for someone as pure as Azriel.

He was developing a lot as an artist when I moved to Israel in the early 2000s. The intifada was raging and it made him question some of his long held assumptions. Sitting in cafes across Jerusalem, both Israeli and Arab, he would unobtrusively be there for hours, his signature beret cloaking his head, sketching onto business-size cards with tiny brushes the size of a woman’s eyeshadow makeup brush, capturing in watercolor the simultaneous emotions of fear and of attempted normalcy of cafe life, as lived by amcha, The People.

This cafe art exhibit, “The Traveling Jerusalem Cafe,” was hosted at the arty, book-ish T’mol Shilshom (“Yesterday or the Day Before”), a coffeehouse tucked away downtown, among old Jerusalem cobble-stoned alleyways and courtyards. “T’mol Shilshom” imparted a sense of days gone by, or of “those were the days.” It is the title of one of Nobel Laureate S. Y. Agnon’s stories. After his exhibit there, this uniquely artistic angle on the intifada (the “matzav,” as it was known) went on tour around the world.

AZRIEL possessed an unusually gentle spirit as well as a truly sensitive soul. He was sensitive to beauty, and sensitive to pain. He experienced the world through this lens of sensitivity, through his gifted eye, which was the reflection of his huge, perceiving and loving heart.

He was evolving, becoming somewhat of a mysterious celebrity, a “guru” or guide of sorts, to different people from different walks of life. He makes an appearance in the book, The Jew and The Lotus. He is supposedly the persona of chapter 11 in the travelogue, “Holy Cow.” He was interviewed and respected by Deepak Chopra.

As the years passed, as Azriel’s travels deepened, he emerged as a bridge person — bridging between people of different faiths, bringing them to connection and understanding. He didn’t launch a program to do this. He didn’t need to. He simply, naturally, embodied it.

This was his essence. Healing and reconciliation. And you can’t be a healer without knowing pain. Azriel opened himself up to feeling the pain of the world deeply. In his true-to-himself, brave-and-honest spirit, he rode that wave as far as it took him.

From there he found his way to the therapeutic benefits and wisdom of Somatic Experiencing, as a way of healing wounds from the past. He came to learn from animals about the human body, about healing, about paying attention and sensing ever subtle shifts of the body more consciously. He created a workshop to share this wisdom and help others learn to overcome pain; to learn to live and understand and accept their bodies as fully as they can. The purpose of all this? To help soothe the spirit and to bring peace.

IN this vein, he began something unique. As an artist he worked in tandem with both his sense of hearing and sense of vision, connected by the teaching of somatic experiencing. He began painting a black and white jazz series expressive of the vibrations of the music he heard. I had told him that his black printed shapes on white reminded me of a kind of fluid safrut (traditional Jewish calligraphy on parchment). He liked that, and I felt pleased.

His was a lofty spirit on this earth, expressing himself in this world as an artist, a musician, a healer. If you Google his name, you will find a short video recorded last year in what was his current home of Thailand. This video now seems to carry his final message to the world.

I am reminded in Jewish tradition of the legend of Reb Zusha. Upon ascending to heaven, he said, G-d will not ask an individual why he or she was not as great as, say, Moses. According to Reb Zusha, the question that each and every one of us faces about our lives is one question only: “But were you Reb Zusha?” [fill in your own name]. Were you you?

To know Azriel, was to know a Jew who passed through this earth living and breathing that teaching. Even when it was a struggle, Azriel was never an imitation of someone else, but always, always only himself. Like Abraham who heard the clarion call for his journey — Lech Lecha — Azriel heard his personal calling and followed it. He was fond of quoting Joseph Campbell: “If a path exists in the forest, don’t follow it; for though it took someone else to the Grail, it will not take you there, because it is not your path.”

LAST night, after Sukkot came to an end, I heard the tragic news of the untimely passing of dear Azriel Cohen. I had dreamed of traveling to Thailand in the not too distant future and riding the elephants there, hearing and seeing the jazz Azriel painted, learning about Somatic Experiencing from him. I, along with thousands of others around the world, had a friend in Thailand. And I don’t anymore.

Sukkot is the holiday of joy for the Jewish people, but unlike all the other holidays, it is not solely particularistic. There is the universal dimension of Sukkot, too, of the nations of the world also making a pilgrimage to the Holy Temple to bring sacrifices. Azriel really was the Jew who, when all was said and done, was true to his tradition, was always Jewish, but who embraced the people of the world. The nations of the world.

Azriel’s  dream — for he dared to dream — was one that he pursued by sort of living an existence nourished by the more unrooted, the impermanent, passing-through traveling-and-exploring life and people approach — like the temporariness, the impermanence of the sukkah. At his core, Azriel understood and lived the temporariness of this world. His dream was the dream of coexistence for Jews with people from different faiths and walks of life. (This was another art project he created, “The Sefardi Travelogue,” where he explored and painted the co-existence of Jews and Muslims in North African countries as a model and inspiration of what could be.)

With a journey of 20 years of his life belonging to so many places, with all the travel and wanderlust of Azriel, I understand that after a long flight from Chiang Mai, Thailand, he arrived last Thursday in Passaic, New Jersey, at the home of his brother. Last Thursday was the ushpizin night of Aaron the High Priest — in Jewish tradition, the symbol of peace and bridge-building between people. After a year’s time he saw his parents, his brother and sister-in-law and his nieces and nephews, whom, like the uncle he was, he cared so much for and worried so much about. After all that diversity, and after all those travels, he departed from this world with the people he entered it with, in the embrace of his family.

I understand that after brief and loving hellos, Azriel lay down to sleep in his brother’s study, lined wall to wall with sifrei kodesh, holy Jewish books, and surrounded by some of his own paintings. Without knowing it, or perhaps his body was subconsciously sensing something? Azriel came all the way from Thailand to say goodbye to the people he loved. He lay down to sleep. And his beautiful neshamah that graced this world departed.

A friend of mine recently said to me, “Autumn is what autumn is. Learn from it. Nothing lasts. Everything dies. Even us. Do it colorfully. Make it worthwhile.”

Azriel made his life worthwhile.

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Colorfully.

Rest in peace, dear Azriel.

Copyright © 2012 by the Intermountain Jewish News