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).
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
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