Twenty years on, the real and radical legacy of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach

By Maayan Jaffe

JNS.org - August 25, 2014

“He was part hippie, part yippie, part beatnik, and part New Age,” wrote Elli Wohlgelernter in a Jerusalem Post eulogy in 1994, following the Oct. 20 passing of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach.

Twenty years later, more robust accounts of Carlebach’s life have come to the surface. Earlier this year, Natan Ophir published the book “Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach: Life, Mission & Legacy.” This past summer, Rabbi Shlomo Katz’s “The Soul of Jerusalem” hit the shelves.

But even the authors will admit that this larger-than-life, soul-hugging rabbi’s legacy cannot be fully captured in black-and-white pages. 

“Shlomo did not seem to fit any restrictive, defining label,” Ophir told JNS.org. “Reb Shlomo was… a charismatic teacher who combined storytelling, sermonic exegesis, and inspirational insights into creating a new form of heartfelt, soulful Judaism filled with a love for all human beings.”

Carlebach—born in Germany, from where his family fled following the Nazi invasion—in March 1939 immigrated to New York from Lithuania, just six months before the Nazis invaded that country. In 1945, the family moved to Manhattan so his father, Rabbi Naphtali Carlebach, could take over Congregation Kehilath Jacob on W. 79th Street. After his father’s passing, Carlebach assumed leadership of the synagogue, today known as “The Carlebach Shul.”

It was from his home base at The Carlebach Shul that Shlomo Carlebach set up the first known Hassidic outreach program, Taste and See God is Good (T.S.G.G.). According to Ophir, the organization was based on the idea that, as Carlebach said, “You cannot begin to talk to people about God unless you have first given them a taste of God is good.”

In 1968, Carlebach established the House of Love and Prayer in San Francisco, the first Jewish commune. 

“His empathetic approach toward the spiritual imports from the Far East was radical for an Orthodox rabbi,” said Ophir.

Everything Carlebach did was radical. He traveled to Germany in the 1960s to teach people whose parents had murdered scores of Jewish people that the time for peace and forgiveness had come, recalled Ben-Zion Solomon, whose home is next door to the late Carlebach’s in the central Israeli community of Moshav Mevo Modi’in, also known as the “Carlebach moshav.”

Carlebach was a scholar in his own right, studying at some of the most renowned American yeshivot. He later connected with the Lubavitch movement, whose leader at the time, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, encouraged him to go into outreach. This mandate was the start of what became his calling, serving as the rabbi of the hippie movement. 

He had followers around the globe. Many young Jews returned to a Torah lifestyle as a result of their relationship with Carlebach.

In 1963, philanthropist Michael Steinhardt, founder of Birthright Israel, set up a company called The Shabbos Express to help Shlomo channel his talents in a business-like manner. Steinhardt told Ophir, “I knew Shlomo quite well and I was perfectly prepared to accept his eccentricities. … Shlomo, however, continued to travel the globe in altruistic style in disregard of conventional time and business.”

Daughter Dari Carlebach said in a previous interview that her father was caught between two worlds—the religious/yeshiva world and the hippie world. She said her father had a huge desire “to love and heal the world,” and he did it with “such heart and grace and empathy.” 

Shlomo Carlebach’s unbridled passion might account for why it has taken this long to begin to canonize his legacy. Solomon recounts the way that his rebbe could focus on whoever needed him at the time, that “whoever he was talking to, he became their best friend.” 

Solomon and wife Dina met Carlebach in California. Carlebach encouraged Solomon to learn in Israel and eventually to make aliyah, and then handpicked his family to live on the Carlebach moshav. 

Solomon recalled that when he arrived in Israel he was told by the Orthodox-affiliated Diaspora Yeshiva that his wedding to Dina was not valid, as they did not have a ketubah (Jewish marriage contract). He called Carlebach in a panic. The rabbi told him to get some wine and cake and meet him at the Shabbos House in Jerusalem at 1 a.m.

“We’re waiting for Shlomo and then we see him coming down the block with 300 people. … We were singing and dancing until daylight,” Solomon told JNS.org.

Carlebach is best known for his Jewish music. “He’s universally accepted as the father of Jewish music,” said Rabbi Avraham Arieh Trugman of Mevo Modi’in.

Leslie Pomerantz and Michael Hoffman are both Jewish song leaders. Pomerantz told JNS.org that Carlebach made Jewish music “accessible” and taught song leaders the value of using music for engagement.

“For him, it was not a performance, but an inclusive process,” Pomerantz said.

Hoffman said he was raised at Jewish summer camp, and when he became a song leader he envisioned Carlebach to be another Debbie Friedman, whose music had a significant influence on the liturgies of Reform and Conservative Judaism. He recalled that when saw a picture of the late rabbi, “I was like, ‘Wow!’”

Hoffman described Carlebach’s music as “timeless” and noted how people have forgotten that many immensely popular niggunim (tunes or melodies) were in fact composed by Carlebach. For example, it was Carlebach who in 1965 invented “Am Yisrael Chai” for the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry movement, which was later adopted for Jewish causes as a theme of resilience and perseverance. Other famed Carlebach compositions include “David Melech Yisrael,” “Od Yeshoma,” and “Esa Einai.”

Recent books work to shed light on Carlebach’s Torah teachings, which followers say were the basis for his tunes. 

“It wasn’t music for music’s sake. It was a part of a bigger Torah vision he wanted to share with the world,” said Trugman.

Author Shlomo Katz told JNS.org he first connected with Carlebach’s teachings at the age of 14 when a classmate shared his headphones during recess. 

“I put on the earphones and I was transported instantly,” Katz recalled regarding the music and teaching he heard. “I knew my whole world was about to change because my neshama (soul) was more alive than ever at that moment—and it never stopped.”

Katz has devoted his professional life to collecting, transcribing, and teaching Carlebach’s Torah teachings, which can be found on tens of thousands of tapes and in hundreds of journals across the world. 

Solomon said he used to learn Talmud with Carlebach every morning at 5 a.m.

“He said things a gaon (genius) would say,” said Solomon. “Those special mornings taught me a whole other aspect of learning Torah.” 

But Carlebach’s legacy is not without controversy. He faced allegations that became public in a 1998 Lilith magazine article, claiming he routinely made sexually suggestive late-night phone calls to female acquaintances and that he physically molested numerous women over the course of decades. Such accusations naturally provoked fierce controversy about how to remember a man many considered a saint.

“Can you imagine, in a period of a month, after one of his yahrzeits (anniversary of death), getting 50 phone calls about the same person from all over the world? He has victims in Israel, the U.S., Australia, South Africa—any place he went, he had victims,” said Vicki Polin of the Awareness Center, a non-profit with the mission of ending sexual violence in the Jewish community. “He did a lot of kiruv (outreach), but what about those who converted to other faiths—walked away completely—because of this assault?”

Carlebach’s followers have rejected those allegations. And this generation, said Katz, is hungrier than ever for his message.

“Today’s youth won’t compromise for anything less than something that touches the depths of their own souls, which is really what [Carlebach] does through his teachings—so mind-blowing and deep, but in the same instance… he puts the sweet inside, so it goes down in a way that resonates,” Katz said.

Nechama Silver recalled meeting Carlebach in the 1970s at a coffee shop concert in Pennsylvania. She said he “turned me on to yiddishkeit (Jewishness).”

“I remember saying, ‘Is this guy for real?’” she said. “He is the realest thing you will ever meet.”

Let 5773 be the year for Healing of Survivors!

When The Awareness Center (International Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault) was first created over 10 years ago, I was inundated by phone calls and e-mails from women from all over the world. I had no idea who this man was at first and would later realized that over the years that I have spoken to hundreds of women who disclosed that they were sexually abused by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach; along with individuals who identified themselves as being spouses, relatives and or friends of the survivors.

One common theme with this calls was the enormous about of internal pain they felt each year when their synagogues created special Carlebach Minyon’s (gathering) in his honor, which was often right before Shlomo Carlebach's Yahrzeit (anniversary of his death).

View slideshow: It's time to honor the female survivors of Shlomo Carlebach

Due to the degree of emotional pain created by their victimization, several of the women who contacted me also disclosed that they had walked away from the Torah observant lifestyle, going to synagogue or even practicing Judaism in any shape or form. There have also been numerous callers who also shared that they had converted to other faiths -- as a result of being sexually victimized by this serial sexual predator -- and due to the way the allegations they made had been handled by rabbonim.

Being from an unaffiliated background, when the calls first started coming in I had no idea what to think. I had never heard of Shlomo Carlebach. I found myself needing to research out who this man was. I ended up asking various rabbis for the missing background information needed. It was explained to me by some of the most highly respected rabbis that “Shlomo Carlebach was an artist . . . a musician. . . someone who was responsible for bring hundreds if not thousands back to Judaism.” . . . “Due to the number of neshema's (Jewish souls) he saved it was enough reason for him to deserved to be respected.”

These same rabbis all acknowledge that “Shlomo Carlebach had a little problem with loving women a little too much.” When I further questioned these same rabbis about their statements, I was told things such as: "boys will be boys -- you know how musicians are, etc." In today’s society Shlomo’s “loving women a little too much”, would be considered sexual assault -- could have been prosecuted, and placed on the National Sex Offender’s Registry.

One secret many rabbonim have kept from the public for several decades is the fact that back in 1959 Rabbi Moshe Feinstein made a rabbinic decree banning Carlebach’s music as a way to deter him from assaulting more women. With no place else to go, Shlomo fled from the orthodox world and started doing kiruv (Jewish outreach) to unsuspecting women in the secular world.

If you think about it, back in the 1950s, 60s and really up until 1984, there were very few laws on the books to protect women from this type of criminal sexual behavior. Like back in the 1950s when the first known cases of clergy sexual abuse were made against Shlomo Carlebach, the blame for the assaults were place on the women who were sexually victimized -- instead of where the blame belonged -- on the alleged assailants, such as in the case of rabbi Shlomo Carlebach.

Nearly ten years ago Rabbi Yosef Blau, who is the Mashgiach ruchani (head spiritual advisor) at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, stated to me that the reason for the volume of calls I was receiving was: “you have to understand some of the facts. Shlomo traveled a great deal, he was a Kiruv worker (Jewish outreach worker). Let's say Shlomo was ‘with’ one woman a week -- times that by forty years. So basically that would mean he would have been with 2,160 women."

"The problem is that Shlomo most likely had a sex addiction. Knowing Shlomo the odds are he was with at least one or two woman a day; that would mean he was with (sexually assaulted) over 14,600 women."

I have no idea of the accuracy of Rabbi Blau’s statement, yet I do know that over the last eleven years I have received more calls from survivors of Shlomo Carlebach, then any other alleged or convicted sex offender. I personally believe he had molested more women then any other sexual predator in the history of the Jewish people.

Just as with survivors of any other sex offender, each and every one of the women who had been sexually violated by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach deserve to have their voices heard.

With the coming of the Jewish New Year, I’m asking everyone to say a prayer for the women who had been sexually assaulted by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, and to put the end to promoting this serial sexual predator as a saint.

-- 
This article was originally published by The Examiner  on September 11, 2012
 

Facing A Mixed Legacy: First Carlebach conference to grapple with issue of abuse head on; opposition to street naming.

By Adam Dickter - Staff Writer

The Jewish Week - September 9, 2004

As the 10th anniversary of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach's death nears, his family and followers are working on a tribute to the charismatic man whose guitar-strumming, story-telling and bear-hugging approach to Judaism inspired a worldwide spiritual outreach movement that continues to thrive. 

But the first international conference on his legacy may be tempered by past allegations — some dating back decades — that the pioneering rabbi harassed or abused women, although no such accusation was brought publicly while he was alive. 

The Awareness Center, a Baltimore-based advocacy group for Jewish victims of sexual abuse, has issued a "call to action" against efforts to rename an Upper West Side street Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach Way. 

And in planning the three-day international conference here in late October to commemorate the rabbi's teachings, Carlebach followers seem to be tackling the issue head-on by scheduling a session on boundaries between rabbis and their disciples. 

Rabbi Naftali Citron, leader of the Carlebach Shul in Manhattan, which is organizing the conference, would not say if the session stemmed from the allegations, but cited increasing attention to the issue of relationships between clergy and their flocks. 

"This is more the reality of what is going on in the last few years," Rabbi Citron said. "Sometimes people get very close to their spiritual leaders." 

He said other sessions at the conference would include workshops on spiritual activism, how to start a Carlebach minyan, and new and old chasidic teachings. 

Rabbi Citron said it was unfair to allege improper behavior after Rabbi Carlebach's death.

"Reb Shlomo was a great man, and it pains me that different things are being said about him when he is not here to defend himself," Rabbi Citron said. "People could have come forward when he was alive to talk about what he did or didn't do." 

Amy Neustein, a sociologist who studies abuse in the Orthodox community, said until recently a perception of futility has kept such abuse victims from speaking out, as in the case of many religious communities. 

"They tend to hide their victimization because the community has hitherto been unresponsive to their plight," said Neustein, who contacted The Jewish Week in response to an e-mail from the Awareness Center. "What they often do is sacrifice their victims on the altar of shame." 

Allegations of impropriety by Rabbi Carlebach first became public four years after his death in a 1998 story in the feminist journal Lilith. The article claimed that he "sexually harassed or abused" women over the course of a Jewish outreach career spanning four decades. 

In the article, several women spoke of encounters with Rabbi Carlebach involving inappropriate contact or behavior. Others said they heard from other women about such experiences. 

According to Lilith, a group of Jewish women confronted the rabbi about his behavior in a private meeting in Berkeley, Calif., in the early 1980s and, after initially denying a problem, he declared, "Oy, this needs such a fixing," said participants. 

Rabbi Carlebach split from the Lubavitch movement in the 1950s, rejecting the strict separation of the sexes, and forged a brand of celebratory Judaism that encouraged the participation of women. Across the country today, his presence is felt in rousing Carlebach Shabbat ceremonies rich in song and dance at Modern Orthodox and other congregations.

He was known for literally embracing his followers, male and female — an untraditional practice among Orthodox rabbis. 

"It was a different time, a different way, a hippie kind of generation," said Rabbi Citron, a former student of Rabbi Carlebach. "It was no secret that he hugged and kissed women, and got plenty of flack from the religious community. From what I know of him he would never knowingly ever hurt somebody." 

But Vicki Polin, director of the Awareness Center in Baltimore, which is dedicated to addressing childhood sexual abuse in Jewish communities around the world, believes that renaming a street in honor of Rabbi Carlebach would be insensitive to those who have made allegations against him. 

"They also deserve to have a voice," Polin said. "It would be very difficult for them to walk down a street and see that it was named after him." 

Polin's Web site features a page on Rabbi Carlebach's history, including the Lilith article.

Penny Ryan, district manager of Community Board 7 in Manhattan, which must approve the name change before it is submitted to the City Council, said Tuesday that she had received several calls on the matter. 

"We asked them to come to the committee meeting when it will be discussed," Ryan said.

The meeting will be held Tuesday night at the community board's office. 

City Councilwoman Gale Brewer, whose district includes the Carlebach Shul on West 79th Street, where the street would be renamed, said she had been unaware of the allegations against the rabbi until Tuesday, when she heard from the community board about the calls. 

"I will go to the hearing and listen," Brewer said. "There will be discussions. I'd like to hear what everybody has to say. I know the daughters and the rabbi and I know they are good people." 

Carlebach's daughters, Neshama and Dari, have started an online petition to support the name change. 

"We have been given the opportunity to rename West 79th Street from Broadway to Riverside Drive in his name, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach Way," reads an introduction on the petition. "It is only too appropriate to honor him in this way, to forever remember how he changed lives as he walked up and down this street." 

A call to Neshama Carlebach, who has followed in her father's footsteps as an inspirational singer, was returned by a family friend, Corey Baker. 

"It's too early, on such a sensitive issue, to be giving a comment," Baker said.

Rabbi Goldie Milgram, one of the women who told Lilith she was molested by the rabbi — in her case at a summer camp when she was 14 — said she would not oppose the street renaming in his honor. 

"There are many public figures who had significant shadow sides," said Rabbi Milgram, an author and teacher in Woodstock, N.Y. "It is not for us to remove the places they have earned with their work but to rejoice in the good they have done, to provide opportunities for healing those who were hurt and not denying their pain." 

Naomi Mark, a Manhattan psychotherapist and longtime student of Rabbi Carlebach who will participate in the boundaries panel at the conference, said the rabbi "never wanted to be a flawless guru." 

As the 10th anniversary of his passing approached, Mark said she hoped Rabbi Carlebach would be remembered for his ability to empathize and inspire. 

"He really understood our lives and the sense of alienation people sometimes feel living in the modern world, trying to juggle spirituality and Judaism in the context of the many contradictions they feel," Mark said. "He understood what those struggles are like and that's what made him different from other traditional rebbes.