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.”
