The Carlebach conundrum

Natan Ophir attempts to address the perplexing questions that surround the life of the controversial hippy rabbi.

By MORDECHAI BECK
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach (photo credit: JERUSALEM REPORT ARCHIVES)
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach
(photo credit: JERUSALEM REPORT ARCHIVES)
WHO WAS Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach? Controversy has always swirled about this influential composer of Jewish religious music. During his lifetime (1925–1994), and even afterward, questions were asked about his musical abilities, his religious outlook, his hippie-like lifestyle, and his relations with women.
They are not easy questions to answer, as Natan Ophir’s book “Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach: Life, Mission, and Legacy” makes clear. In fact, Rabbi Dr. Ophir, who currently directs the Jewish Meditation Institute Jerusalem, changed the goal of the book during the writing.
“At first,” explains the author to The Jerusalem Report, “I wanted a book that would cover both biography and teachings. But as I collected details of where he went – and he went all over the world – I found that I had amassed some 350 pages of biography. So I thought I’d do the biography and then a separate book about the teachings.”
Ophir himself first met Carlebach in 1969, at the age of 16, when he saw him at a UN demonstration. “I was at Yeshiva University high school at the time and didn’t have too much time for this singing rabbi. But I eventually went to the Carlebach Synagogue [named after his father] to find out what the fuss was about. This was a completely different type of prayer from anything I had experienced before. I still have the picture in my mind of the hippies sitting in the front row and the older men and regulars sitting at the back, and asking what the rabbi was doing.
“Shlomo was a very colorful figure and there were many people whose lives intersected with his. I knew about the role of his ‘partner,’ Reb Zalman Shachter- Shalomi, the father of the Jewish Renewal Movement in America. Together they turned thousands of young Jews onto Judaism.
“To understand his impact became a central challenge of writing about his personality. In 1991, for example, he gave an aliya (a c all t o t he Torah) t o a 19-year-old girl – an unorthodox event for an Orthodox rabbi. He suffered as a result. He was ostracized by the religious world.
“This radical departure for an Orthodox rabbi was even more pronounced in the 1960s, when he encountered the hippies in Haight Ashbury in San Francisco.
Here was an Orthodox rabbi saying to them, “I understand you. I sympathize with you and we have an alternative – nearby, in Berkeley, where you can find a Shabbat experience.” Today this approach is accepted.
Today there is a ba’al teshuva [Jew returning to Judaism] movement. Back then there was none. Shlomo began his outreach program in the early 60s. He was the pioneer of this movement. ” The story of how he came to Haight Ashbury and Berkeley is rooted in Greenwich Village in New York.
“Through his connections in the Village in New York, he became friendly with Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and others. They encouraged him to go out to the Folk Festival in Berkeley. That’s when he began to discover the world of the hippies. He had a number of followers there. They gave Shlomo the connections he needed to start the House of Love and Prayer, which was opened in April 1968, and served as a center for experiencing Shabbat, studying Judaism or just crashing for a night or two.
“Shlomo himself had this double career all along, both as a Torah scholar and as a wandering minstrel.
Having been born in Berlin, he came to New York in his early teens in 1939 to join his father who had accepted a post as the rabbi of a small synagogue there.
“In 1950, when he still didn’t know English that well, he was just playing piano. Sarah Kelman, a student who was organizing events for Hillel, invited him to a pre-Shabbat event at Hillel. Nine years later, she was at a Shlomo concert and he shouted out, “Sarah Kelman! You were the first person to invite me to perform in front of an audience. My very first sponsor.” He was musically inclined from a very early age. In one interview he said, “I dream in music.” This helps explain something of his genius, of how he was able to compose so many songs.
“Yet even someone who has inspiration [especially of a divine nature] has to have the vessels to receive the inspiration. How was Reb Shlomo able to create so many songs and why have these songs continued to have an impact today? Recently, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra performed a whole program of Reb Shlomo’s songs. What is it that makes the music so powerful that so many synagogues use it, even if they weren’t followers of Reb Shlomo or were against him?” In May 1954, fresh from receiving his rabbinic diploma from Chabad, Carlebach was invited to a famous Method Acting studio to explain Hasidism to a troupe of actors about to perform a Hasidic play. For several months, he would sing and teach the actors a song each week. One of the actors would accompany them on guitar, which so impressed Carlebach that he decided to buy a guitar and learn to play it. He met a teacher of flamenco guitar, Anita Sheer, who taught him to play. She also transcribed his songs to notes (Carlebach never learned how to write music).
“Similarly,” adds Ophir, “the founder of the Village Gate nightclub in Greenwich Village, Arthur Luboff invited him to play. Luboff grew up in a religious home in Brooklyn but became a left-wing atheist.
Shlomo performed there half a dozen times. This was quite a change from the things that were being performed there at the time. Certainly there was no other rabbi singing from the prayer book.
His third record was recorded live and called “At the Village Gate,” a reference to both the location and also to the Heavenly Gates. Shlomo wrote on the record sleeve that ‘I was on my way to the Village Gate to perform and it occurred to me that at one time or another we have all stood at the entrance to the gate. So this is an invitation to young people who know that life without Hashem is empty. Let us storm the gates of righteousness together.
Meet you at the gate.’” This was a pattern of what he was to do many times. He took an already existing motif – here, the gate – and turned it into a Jewish theme. Likewise, he took a Pete Seeger song, “I’m on my way to Canaan’s Land,” a purely Christian song, and turned it into a Zionist song urging aliya.
“What I tried to understand,” writes Ophir, “was how he created this neo-Hasidic revolution. He related to a wide range of items; from Women at the Wall – he was considered the first Orthodox rabbi to support them; to how to make peace with our neighbors. He was the first Orthodox rabbi to have women coming up to the stage to sing at his concerts. He dealt with feelings, such as the love of every human being, and the love of the Land of Israel. He had answers – not necessarily systematic – they’re scattered throughout his teachings. But he does give us a direction of how to deal with some of these questions. In the second book, I shall try to systematize his thinking. What he really thought, and how he resolved certain conflicts.”
Carlebach’s elder daughter, Neshama, whom he saw as the heir to his tradition (and who contributes a foreword to this book), has a problem in that the Orthodox world has become ever more strict about not allowing women to sing in public. “Yet that’s her profession, which Shlomo encouraged,” notes Ophir.
“This is a very difficult situation for Neshama and part of the reason that she recently declared that she was going to join the Reform Movement. She is not accepted in Orthodox circles. Reb Shlomo dealt with these cutting-edge questions – questions of women in Judaism, of love and peace, of the other (in religions or people) – a new brand of Judaism, the neo-Hasidic version. To what extent are his answers adequate today? That is an important issue.”
But what of the allegations against Carlebach about his conduct with women? During the interview Ophir is circumspect. “After the book came out, I received more and more feedback about the question of his relationships. I haven’t yet found anyone with a story of sexual abuse. I’m not saying there was no basis – since he was hugging and kissing everyone. Of every 10 people I interviewed, nine of them weren’t bothered at all, and one was.
But hugging is not sexual abuse when it’s done in a social context, and the social context was different in the ’60s, ’70s and even the ’80s.”
Ophir is similarly guarded in the book, essentially ducking the issue. “Many people who had been close to Shlomo ... stated emphatically that the allegations are incorrect... But others were harsh in their criticism. They cited stories to prove that Shlomo acted wrongly and that some women were hurt emotionally… eventually I decided to leave room for other writers to undertake the challenging task of judge or jury.” But then he slips in a word from Carlebach himself, saying that external superficial actions can be misleading and how it was vital to reveal the goodness of the other person and to abstain from critical verdicts.
This is strange in a book purporting to be a comprehensive biography. After all, his Biblical namesake built the Temple and yet was castigated in the Bible for allowing women to turn his head. There is nothing new in what Carlebach supposedly did.
His charisma had a powerful effect on people – men and women alike – and there is no point in expecting saint-like behavior from a creature of flesh and blood.
This is not to take away from the overall achievement of the book. Ophir interviewed hundreds of people to come to the conclusion that Carlebach was a modern Baal Shem Tov, considered to be the founder of Hasidim. Like the founder, Carlebach also discovered the spark of goodness in each individual, and lifting up the downtrodden and the unfortunate.
The way that Ophir recorded the complex life of one of the last century’s most intriguing and important Jews, concentrating on his wanderings and performances at the expense of his teachings, lessens the overall impact of the book. In the places where his teachings are quoted, the whole narrative brings Carlebach alive in the same way that listening to his incredible musical output does.
For both those who knew Carlebach, and for those who didn’t, this is a well-written, wellresearched book. It is an important reference source on this enigmatic and fascinating man. ■