The Awareness Center closed. We operated from April 30, 1999 - April 30, 2014. This site is being provided for educational & historical purposes.
We were the international Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault (JCASA); and were dedicated to ending sexual violence in Jewish communities globally. We did our best to operate as the make a wish foundation for Jewish survivors of sex crimes. In the past we offered a clearinghouse of information, resources, support and advocacy.
One
of the most important aspects of helping a sex crime survivor heal is
to encourage them to find ways to feel empowered. This is a critical
step because during the crime(s) committed against the survivor, choice
was taken away from them. By allowing a survivor to choose what happens
to them after the assault and encouraging them to trust their own
judgement and make decisions, an individual who was a victim of a sex
crime can begin to regain a sense of self. It is for this reason that it
is vitally important for someone working with survivors to stay
unbiased, neutral and non-manipulative when it comes to survivors
choosing NOT to file police reports or having their cases prosecuted.
Over the last few years various individuals have been acting on their own, or created their own organizations,
declaring that they were experts and knew how to advocate for survivors
–– and solve the problem of sex crimes in the chasidic world in
Brooklyn. It appears that it has become standard policy to manipulate survivors
into making police reports or having the survivor blackmail their
offenders into making cash payments to them to avoid potential
prosecution.
The mindset of these untrained advocates has been that unless a
survivor makes a police reports and have the offenders prosecuted
whenever possible, even if it goes against the wish of the survivor --
the survivor can not heal. What ends up happening is that the crime
victim ends up feeling re-victimized which may lead to an increase of
instances of self-harm, a few suicide attempts and even death.
Jim Hopper, Phd
When asked if survivors should press charges against their offenders? and, If so, when? Psychologist Jim Hopper,
who is a clinical instructor in psychology at Harvard Medical School,
replied: “It depends on so many factors. What if any relationship does
the person who was abused have with the perpetrator now?” “And what
about relationships of the abused person's family members and other
significant people with the perpetrator, and what if any influence does
the perpetrator have in the community?”
The number one concern needs to be to help the survivor heal and make
sure they have a strong support system in place, prior to making a
police report –– if that’s what they choose to do.
“Because statutes of limitations can differ across states and
countries, it's critical to know how long the person has to decide
whether or not to press charges.”
“The person may need helping sorting out what they are hoping to
achieve [by a licensed mental health professional who specializes in
sexual abuse/assault], which may include holding to account, revenge,
protecting others -- and it's always a mix of motives. It's also
important to take an inventory of the resources one can bring to what
could be a long and very difficult process. Internal resources include
realistic expectations about he process and outcomes, and one's capacity
to deal with major disappointments. External resources include money,
competent attorneys, and support from family and friends.”
“Finally," says Hopper, "people should be cautioned that once they go
the legal route and involve attorneys (who have a financial motive,
even if they also have a strong motive to seek justice), then other
potential avenues of healing and justice involving the perpetrator will
most likely get shut down, permanently. This may be most important for
those whose perpetrators are family members.”
Polly Poskin, who has been the executive director of ICASA
(Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault) for just over 31 years, and
who has authored numerous laws in Illinois, shared her thoughts on this
topic:
Polly Poskin - Executive director of ICASA
"It should always be the survivor's choice whether to request that
criminal charges be filed against her or his perpetrator. If a survivor
chooses to request charges be filed, it is best for the investigation
that she or he report sooner than later, but that is often impossible
for a victim of child sexual abuse. The perpetrator may be a family
member or a friend of the family, or a teacher or her spiritual leader.
How would a child challenge such authority? How would a child find his
or her own way to a prosecutor's office? Thanks to victim advocates
who have gone through the forty hour training and educated policy
makers, laws have changed to accommodate the barriers faced by survivors
of child sexual abuse. For instance, in Illinois, a survivor of child
sexual abuse can request that criminal charges be brought against her
perpetrator up to 20 years past the age of majority (20 years of age).
This law recognizes that a child may have to grow into adulthood before
she has the physical independence and emotional strength to seek justice
for the heinous abuse perpetrated against her as an innocent, dependent
child. All survivors have remarkable resilience and awesome courage.
They may need supportive loved ones and/or victim advocates to help push
open the doors of a once reluctant criminal justice system. We all have
an obligation to create access where once denied and promote justice
when so well deserved."
The key words in both Hopper’s and Poskin’s responses were that
survivors need to be given the choice. Yes, it is important to inform
the survivor of all legal remedies available to them, yet victim
advocates MUST provide survivors of these options from a nonjudgmental,
unbiased perspective.
One of the most important aspects of working with survivors of sex
crimes or any form of child abuse is to follow the survivors own agenda.
A trained victims advocate will learn how to separate out what they
personally want a survivor to do, from what the needs and wants of the
individual they are trying help needs and wants to do.
Unfortunately, this is not what always happens with untrained,
self-proclaimed victim advocates. There has been case after case in
which self-proclaimed advocates have jumped on the bandwagon and
inadvertently pressure survivors to follow an agenda that is not in the
best interest of the individual survivor.
Michael J. Salamon, PhD
New York Psychologist, researcher and author, Michael J. Salamonreiterated
the views of Dr. Hopper when he stated: “Every survivor comes with
their own history and pain. Some survivors are more resilient, others
more motivated. The question can and should be answered by each
individual survivor after they have explored the benefits and costs to
them in their own therapy.”
Timothy J. Conlon
Attorney Timothy J. Conlon
who’s law office is in Providence, Rhode Island shares the views of
therapists in stating: “The most difficult cases are those in which no
other victims have come forward. Being the first is hard. That said,
more often than not even the first finds they are the first of many to
come forward, once they find the strength. I suggest having the support
of your therapist in making the decision that you are strong enough to
hold the perp accountable, and when you are, to do so.”
Mic Hunter, PhD
Author/Psychologist, Mic Hunter
shared “I counsel clients that the legal process criminal and civil
are very stressful. If going through the courts empowers the client then
I am all for it. But if the stress of the court system puts the client
at serious risk of suicide or other serious problems then I don't think
it is worth that. Also I ask the survivor what he or she hope to get
from court proceedings. Inhale found that even some of those who get a
settlement from a civil case, or see their perpetrator go to prison are
still left dis-satisfied because they wanted the offender to say he or
she is sorry, but that doesn't happen.”
Jim Austin -Social Worker
Social worker, Jim Austin
of Peterborough, Ontario Canada who specializes in working with adult
survivors of child sexual abuse, believes that a survivor should only
utilize the legal system “when and if they [survivors of child sexual
abuse] have the strength to speak their truth. If a Survivor chooses to
proceed, they should be sure to have a support network in place. It's
going to be a bumpy ride.”
If you are a survivor of a sex crime and live in Brooklyn or any
place else, it is imperative that if someone calls themselves an
advocate and wants to work with you, be sure this individual is trained
and connected to a legitimate rape crisis center affiliated with your
states coalition against sexual assault. It is the only way you can be
sure that the “advocate” has gone through the proper training program
and is being supervised by a trained professional.
If you are a crime victim and feel as if someone is trying to
manipulate you or is suggesting that you on your own blackmail your
offender into financially compensating you in exchange for not reporting
the crime to the police, it is important to report these incidents to
your local states attorney’s office. It is important to know that any
form of manipulating a crime victim can also be seen as a form of witness tampering,
which is a crime and depending on the circumstances the defendant could
face jail time. As a survivor you have a right to decide for yourself
if and when you make a police report -- let alone have your offender
prosecuted. You have a right to heal in what ever manor works best for
you.
The Awareness Center has been contacted by family members
and friends of some of the individuals on our sex offender's registryof alleged and convicted offenders.
To help clarify our intentions and policies regarding listing
individuals' names on our site, we decided it is best to make our intentions
and policies public.
The purpose of the information provided on our website
is to educate our community on issues pertaining to sexual violence in Jewish
communities on an international level. The Awareness Center is a victim
advocacy organization. One of the goals of The Awareness Center is
to prevent anyone else from being sexually victimized (sexually abused, sexually assaulted, clergy sexual abuse, incest) sexual misconduct, sexual harassment).
Please note, the only individuals who are listed on
our site, are ones who'd had allegations made against them which were then
published in reputable newspapers, have transcripts from televisions shows
where the case(s) have been discussed, have police records and/or we have
court documentation regarding the case, or
at least two executive board members have felt we had significant information regarding.
We are well aware that unfortunately, there are many
other cases in which there is NO paper trail to be found, cases that were
not brought to law enforcement's attention, and where no news media group
wrote an article referring to the case. Although our intention is first and
foremost to help raise awareness to cases of abuse and minimize re-victimization,
we cannot post names of alleged persons without similar documentation.
The Awareness Center encourages everyone to
make hot-linereport, if and when you suspect a child is at risk of harm.
If you or a family member has been victimized, immediately
go to your local emergency room. That is one resource that is usually trained
in collecting the forensic evidence needed. Your emergency room is mandated
by law to call the police and child protective services.
The Awareness Center encourages individuals who have
been victimized and family members to make police reports, follow through
with pressing criminal charges, and to testify when requested. If you or
anyone you know is being threatened or harassed by an alleged offender, or
someone who represents him/her, it is critical that you notify your local
police department. You may also want to contact your local rape crisis center
for both counseling and legal help (especially if there is any form of witness
tampering).
Some of the common threats include prohibiting the
child victim and their siblings from being allowed in any Yeshiva (Jewish
School), or that rumors would be spread about them to make sure that they
not find a spouse when they come of age. Unfortunately, this is a heartbreaking
reality. Remember, witness tampering is also a crime that needs to be
investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
The Awareness Center encourages offenders (emotional,
physical and sexual abuse) to seek treatment and make amends with those they
hurt.
The Awareness Center adopted the following policy.
If an alleged or convicted offender complies with
all the following, our board of directors will meet to discuss removing the
name from our
page:
After the offender or alleged offender can demonstrate
that he/she has apologized directly to the victim(s), and the survivors feel
that the apology was sincere.
After the offender has made a public statement
acknowledging his/her relevant behavior.
After the offender has entered treatment with a licensed
psychotherapist who meets our criteria of someone specializing in sex offender
treatment, and can present a certified letter from this therapist stating
that "the individual is no longer a threat to those he or she preyed
upon.
After the offender has paid restitution to the survivor(s)
for the pain and suffering they have endured and also pays for counseling
for his/her victim(s).
The offender agrees to sign a written statement stating
they will not work (paid or volunteer) for any agency, organization or
institution that has any connections with children, or what ever population
the offender has victimize.
If an individual listed on The Awareness Center's
web page believes they have been falsely accused and wishes to be removed
from The Awareness
Center's web page:
The alleged offender will need to be evaluated by a
licensed mental health provider (at their own expense) who meets our
criteria of someone who specializing in sex offender treatment.
The alleged offender will need to sign a release of
information form so that the licensed mental health professional can discuss
the case with us.
The licensed mental health professional will need to
send us a certified letter stating "the individual does not fit the criteria
of someone who is a sex offender or fits the criteria of an individual with
a sex addiction".
Rabbi Moshe Feinstein BANNED Music by Shlomo Carlebach back in 1959
Serial Sexual Predator
Sexually Assaulting Women and Teenage Girls Worldwide
Neo-Hassidic rabbi and
singer
Call to Action: Accountability in the
Portrayal of Shlomo Carlebach --
Tzadduk (saint)? Serial Sexual
Predator?
November 3, 2004
Some of you may be aware of the fact that for the last
10 years there has been a movement to glorify the accomplishments of a man
named Shlomo Carlebach. The Awareness Center firmly believes there is a problem
in doing this. There have been numerous accusations that Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach
sexually harassed and assaulted many young women, and sexually assaulted/abused
a few teenage girls.
The Awareness Center is looking for survivors of Rabbi
Shlomo Carlebach who would want to be interviewed by a journalist and have
their story published. If you are interested, please contact
Vicki Polin for more
information.
The Awareness Center asks that when ever an article
comes out regarding Shlomo Carlebach you it to us, including a link on the
page it was found.
The Awareness Center asks that you write letters to
editors requesting accountability in the portrayl of Shlomo Carlebach. Please
forward your letters to The Awareness Center and send a note giving us permission
to publish your letter on our web page. _________________________________________________________________________________
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach
Shlomo Carlebach, the popular Neo-Hassidic rabbi
and singer, is the son of Rabbi Nephtali Hartwig and Paula Cohn Carlebach.
He is the descendent of a family of rabbis, most of whom had aligned themselves
with Hassidism, the mystical form of Judaism which emerged in central and
eastern Europe in the eighteenth century.
Allegations of sexual misconduct against Rabbi Shlomo
Carlebach can be dated back to the 1960's. Among the many people
Lilith Magazine spoke with, nearly all had heard
stories of Rabbi Carlebach's sexual indiscretions during his more than
four-decade rabbinic career. Spiritual leaders, psychotherapists, and others
report numerous incidents, from playful propositions to actual sexual contact.
Most of the allegations include middle-of-the-night, sexually charged phone
calls and unwanted attention or propositions. Others, which have been slower
to emerge, relate to sexual molestation.
Rabbi Carlebach was seen as "being bigger then life",
"He touched many people on a level that they have rarely been touched in
their lives." Such idealization was only the beginning of a process of canonizing
Rabbi Carlebach, a process that has continued since his death. A number of
his followers told Lilith Magazine that Rabbi Carlebach, when alive, "walked
with the humblest of the humble" and "never said he was a holy man." But
with his death came an outpouring of love, and a degree of idolization that
did not easily allow followers to recognize what others gently call his "shadow
side. _________________________________________________________________________________ Serial Sexual Predator - Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach
As you watch this film clip that glorifies this sexual predator, it is important remember that Carlebach was kicked out of the orthodox world after numerous allegations of clergy sexual abuse were made. It is also believed that in every town he visited throughout his 40 year career he left a string of female survivors of sexual assault (both adults and children).
__________________________________________________________________________________ Disclaimer: Inclusion in this website does not constitute a recommendation
or endorsement. Individuals must decide for themselves if the resources meet
their own personal needs.
Is it permissible for victims of a perpetrator who
has since died to speak lashon hara about him?
The Talmud indicates that there is no prohibition of
speaking lashon hara about the dead, either because the dead do not know
what is being said about them or because they do not care what is being said
about them.<91> However, because their legacies are at stake, as well
as the reputations and well-being of their surviving families, and because
they cannot defend themselves, Shulhan Arukh, Orah Hayyim 606:3 cites a takanat
kadmonim (ancient enactment) that prohibits "speaking ill of the
dead."<92> Hafetz Hayyim rules:
And know also that even to disparage and curse the
dead is also forbidden. The decisors of Jewish law have written that there
is an ancient enactment and herem (ban) against speaking ill of and defaming
the dead. This applies even if the subject is an am ha-aretz (boor), and
even more so if he is a Torah scholar. Certainly, one who disparages [a scholar]
commits a criminal act and should be excommunicated for this, as is ruled
in Yoreh De'ah 243:7. The prohibition of disparaging a Torah scholar applies
even if he is disparaging him personally, and certainly if he is disparaging
his teachings.
However, despite this enactment, there are times when
one is permitted to speak ill of the dead. It is important to note that this
prohibition is not derived from the Torah verse banning lashon hara; it stems
from a rabbinic decree and is, thus, no more stringent than the laws of lashon
hara themselves. Since lashon hara which is otherwise biblically prohibited
is allowed if there is a to'elet, so too lashon hara about the deceased is
permitted if there is a to'elet. While the nature of the to'elet may
change—after all, the deceased is no longer a threat to anyone else's
safety—there may be any number of beneficial purposes in sharing this
information including: preventing others from learning inappropriate behavior,
condemning such behavior, clearing one's own reputation, seeking advice,
support, and help, one's own psychological benefit, and validating the abusive
experience of others who may have felt that they, and no one else, was this
man's victim.
Furthermore, the restriction on speaking ill of the
dead may be based on the assumption that death was a kapparah, i.e., it was
an atonement for sins. This atonement, however, is predicated on his having
repented before his death,<93> and that repentance requires both
restitution for the harm caused and reconciliation with the
victim.<94> If the perpetrator had not reconciled with his victim,
no atonement was achieved. And of such an unrepentant sinner the verse teaches,
"The memory of the just is blessed; but the name of the wicked shall rot"
(Proverbs 10:7).<95>
In addition, Jewish law does not recognize the concept
of statute of limitations in these matters.<96>
<91> Berakhot 19a :
Rabbi Yizhak said: If one makes remarks about the dead,
it is like making remarks about a stone. Some say [the reason is that] they
do not know, others that they know but do not care. Can that be so? Has not
R. Papa said: A certain man made derogatory remarks about Mar Samuel and
a log fell from the roof and broke his skull? A Rabbinical student is different,
because the Holy One, blessed be He, avenges his insult.
Source: Religious Leaders of America, 2nd ed. Gale
Group, 1999.
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach Partying
Shlomo Carlebach, the popular Neo-Hassidic rabbi and
singer, is the son of Rabbi Nephtali Hartwig and Paula Cohn Carlebach. He
is the descendent of a family of rabbis, most of whom had aligned themselves
with Hassidism, the mystical form of Judaism which emerged in central and
eastern Europe in the eighteenth century. Carlebach was but 13 when in 1939
his family left Germany to escape the ever-increasing Nazi persecution of
Jews. They emigrated to America, and on the West Side of Manhattan his father
founded a synagogue, Kehillath Yaakov. Meanwhile Carlebach began his training
at the Lakewood Yeshiva (academy) and Columbia University. As he pursued
his rabbinical training, Carlebach began to assist his father with the services
at Kehillath Yaakov.
Carlebach's real talent began to manifest itself in
other directions, however, when he emerged as a talented singer and guitarist.
His modernized Hassidic songs, which he performed accompanying himself on
the guitar, struck a responsive cord among contemporary Jewish young people
during the 1960s. He began to develop a unique combination of traditional
Hassidic mysticism and orthodox Jewish practice that seemed to many to resonate
with basic themes in the youthful, "hippie" counter-culture. His form of
Judaism included a place for health foods, communalism, and the search for
self-fulfillment.
Among the most committed of the respondents to his
music and message, in 1969 Carlebach organized the House of Love and Prayer,
a havurot or commune, in San Francisco. (Havurots had emerged among Jewish
youth earlier in the 1960s. Possibly the most famous commune was the Havurot
Shalom in Boston.) During the 1970s as many as 40 people lived with the group.
Through them Carlebach was responsible for initiating two periodicals--Holy
Beggers' Gazette and Tree Journal. A similar community, Or Chadash, emerged
among his followers in Los Angeles.
Since the early 1970s Carlebach has spent a significant
part of the years traveling both across America and to Jewish communities
abroad. He developed a following in Israel and it was there that a third
communal group, Mishav Meot Midin, a communal farm, was formed. Its founding
occurred about the same time the House of Love and Prayer disbanded in San
Francisco, and several former members of the house moved to Israel.
Through the 1980s, the synagogue, the community, and
Israel gave organizational focus to Carlebach's roving ministry. He has adapted
his message to the New Age Movement, and feels a new age is coming as humanity
recognizes the limitations of scientific knowledge. As a new higher heavenly
knowledge spreads among people, Carlebach believes Jews will have a special
role to play, reminding the world that there is only one God. To further
his work, he recorded approximately 25 albums and several songbooks.
Carlebach centered his activity on Israel and the Moshao
or Modin congregation which he had founded in Tel Aviv. He lived in Israel
and New York where he and his brother shared duties for Kehillath
Yaakov.
FURTHER READINGS
American Jewish Biographies. New York: Facts on File,
1982. 493 pp.
Jacobs, Susan. "A New Age Jew Revisits Her Roots."
Yoga Journal (March/April, 1985), 32-34, 59.
"Of God & Blintzes." The New Sun 1, 2 (January
1977), 18-22. Shir, Leo.
"Shlomo Carlebach and the House of Love and Prayer."
Midstream (February 1970), 27-42. Weintraub, Michael, and Michele Weintraub.
"Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach: Half a Story, Half a Prayer." New Directions 27
(1977), 9-15.
SOURCE CITATION
"Shlomo Carlebach." Religious Leaders of America, 2nd
ed. Gale Group, 1999. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington
Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2003.
Testmonials
http://www.carlebachfamily.com/neila.html
"Rebbitzen Neila is the most extraordinary teacher.
Hashem has blessed her with an unusual ability to convey complex and deep
hashkafah (concepts) and kabbalah in a way that makes them understandable
and relevant to the general public."
Rabbi
Mordecai Tendler,
Kehilath New Hempstead, NY _________________________________________________________________________________
Shlomo Carlebach's Obituary
By ARI L. GOLDMAN New York Times - October 22, 1994
Rabbi
Shlomo Carlebach, the foremost songwriter in contemporary Judaism, who
used his music to inspire and unite Jews around the world, died on
Thursday at Western Queens Community Hospital. He was 69 and lived in
Manhattan, Toronto and Moshav Or Modiin, Israel.
The cause of death was a heart attack, according to his sister-in-law, Hadassa Carlebach.
Rabbi
Carlebach put the words of Jewish prayer and ceremony to music that is
heard at virtually every Jewish wedding and bar mitzvah, from Hasidic to
Reform.
In a recording career that stretched over 30 years, the
rabbi sang his songs on more than 25 albums. His most famous song was
"Am Yisroel Chai" ("The People of Israel Live"), which was an anthem of
Jews behind the Iron Curtain before the fall of Communism. It continues
to be sung at Jewish rallies and celebrations today.
One of Rabbi
Carlebach's few English songs, about the beauty of the Jewish Sabbath,
begins, "The whole world is waiting to sing the song of Shabbos."
Rabbi
Carlebach was constantly on tour, rushing from one capital to another.
He appeared in large concert halls, like Carnegie Hall in New York and
the Opera Palace in St. Petersburg, as well as synagogue basements and
college coffeehouses.
In the last year, Rabbi Carlebach gave concerts in Morocco, Australia, France, Germany, Austria and Israel.
Rabbi
Carlebach, who was Orthodox, had a full head of white curls and a white
beard that he pinned back rather than cut, and wore a trademark white
shirt and vest. He operated outside traditional Jewish structures in
style and substance, and spoke about God and His love in a way that
could make other rabbis uncomfortable. "Holy brothers and sisters, I
have something really deep to tell you," was his way of addressing a
crowd.
At the end of Yom Kippur, what most rabbis call the most
solemn day of the year, Rabbi Carlebach would joyously sing and dance
late into the night.
Most of his songs seemed to have no ending,
but would keep going and going until the crowd was exhausted. The rabbi
would rise and tell an elaborate Hasidic tale or bit of Torah wisdom
until he began another song.
Shlomo Carlebach was born in 1925 in
Berlin, where his father, Naftali, was an Orthodox leader. The family,
which fled the Nazis in 1933, lived in Switzerland before coming to New
York in 1939. His father became the rabbi of a small synagogue on West
79th Street, Congregation Kehlilath Jacob; Shlomo Carlebach and his twin
brother, Eli Chaim, took over the synagogue after their father's death
in 1967.
He studied at the Yeshiva Torah Vodaath in Brooklyn and
at the Bais Medrash Gavoah in Lakewood, N.J. From 1951 to 1954, he
worked as a traveling emissary of the Grand Rabbi of Lubavitch, Rabbi
Menachem Mendel Schneerson.
Sexual Predator, Shlomo Carlebach talking with Bob Dylan
During that period, he also picked up a
guitar and began writing songs and visiting coffeehouses and clubs in
Greenwich Village, where he met Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and other folk
singers. They encouraged his singing career and helped the rabbi get a
spot at the Berkeley Folk Festival in 1966. After his appearance, he
decided to remain in the Bay Area to reach out to what he called "lost
Jewish souls," runaways and drug addicted youths. He founded a
communelike synagogue called The House of Love and Prayer.
"If I
would have called it Temple Israel, nobody would have come," he said. "I
had the privilege of reaching thousands of kids. Hopefully I put a
little seed in their hearts."
Eleven years later, he closed the
House of Love and Prayer and took the remnants of the congregation to
Israel, where he established the small settlement of Moshav Or Modiin,
in Lod, near Ben Gurion Airport. The settlement now has about 35
families.
Rabbi Carlebach is survived by his wife, Neila
Carlebach, and two daughters, Neshama and Nadara, all of Toronto, and a
sister, Shulamith Levovitz of Monsey, N.Y.
The funeral will be on Sunday at 9 A.M. at Congregation Kehilath Jacob, 305 West 79th Street, in Manhattan.
A Paradoxical Legacy: Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach's Shadow Side
Lilith
Magazine Volume 23, No. 1/Spring 1998
By Sarah Blustain
An orthodox rabbi by training, Rabbi Carlebach took
down the separation between women and men in his own synagogue, encouraged
women to study and to teach Jewish texts, and gave private ordination to
women before most mainstream Jewish institutions would. Described as a musical
genius, Rabbi Carlebach's melodies, including Adir Hu, AmYisroel Chai, and
Esa Ena, are sung throughout the world in Hasidic shteibels and Reform temples
alike; have sunk so deeply into Jewish consciousness that many don't realize
these are not age-old tunes. And Rabbi Carlebach encouraged women, tossing
out loudly a challenge to the orthodox teaching that women's voices should
not be heard publicly lest they arouse men.
Shlomo
Carlebach also abandoned the Orthodox injunction that men and women not touch
publicly. Indeed, he was known for his frequent hugs of men and women alike,
and often said his hope was to hug every Jew, perhaps every person, on
earth.
It is an alarming paradox, then, that the man who did
so much on behalf of women may also have done some of them harm. In the three
years since Rabbi Carlebach's death, at age 69, ceremonies honoring his life
and work have been interrupted by women who claim the Rabbi sexually harassed
or abused them. In dozens of recent interviews, Lilith has attempted to untangle
and to explain Rabbi Carlebach's legacy.
"He was the first person to ordain women, to take down
the mechitza
and I think he thought all boundaries were off," says Abigail Grafton, a
psychotherapist whose Jewish Renewal congregation in Berkeley, California
has spent the last six months trying to cope with the allegations.
While Rabbi Carlebach was never formally connected
with the Jewish Renewal movement, which encourages spiritual and mystical
expressions of Judaism, his teachings and music have had a deep impact on
many Renewal congregations, and on institutions of other streams of Judaism
as well. For this reason, he was a frequent guest at synagogues, youth
conventions, Jewish summer camps and other gatherings.
Among the many people
Lilith spoke with, nearly all had heard
stories of Rabbi Carlebach's sexual indiscretions during his more than
four-decade rabbinic career. Spiritual leaders, psychotherapists, and others
report numerous incidents, from playful propositions to actual sexual contact.
Most of the allegations include middle-of-the-night, sexually charged phone
calls and unwanted attention or propositions. Others, which have been slower
to emerge, relate to sexual molestation.
The story appears to date back to the 60's when Rabbi
Carlebach had moved away from his Lubavitch Hasidic practice and was exploring
ways to bring aspects of Judaism to a mixed-gender, secular Jewish community.
But it begins for our purposes in the days after his death, in 1994, when
a memorial service on Manhattan's Upper West Side was attended by a multitude,
and the blocks in front of his synagogue, the Carlebach Shul, had to be closed
off to accommodate the gathered crowds. In pouring rain, men and women wailed
as their religious leaders articulated their grief. "The air around here
is sanctified, "one passionate speaker told the crowd. "If I were you, I
would breathe the air&It will fix something."
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach at one of his cult like gatherings
Such idealization was only the beginning of a process
of canonizing Rabbi Carlebach, a process that has continued over the three
years since his death. A number of his followers have reminded us that Rabbi
Carlebach, when alive, "walked with the humblest of the humble" and "never
said he was a holy man." But with his death came an outpouring of love, and
a degree of idolization that did not easily allow followers to recognize
what others gently call his "shadow side."
"I hear people say or imply it over and over again,
'He was bigger than life,'" remarks Patricia Cohn, a member of the Berkeley
Jewish Renewal community and a women's rights activist who has been centrally
involved in her community's effort to grapple with the allegations that women
both in Berkeley and elsewhere were injured by Rabbi Carlebach. "He touched
many people on a level that they have rarely been touched in their
lives."
Zalman Schacter-Shalomi with Shlomo Carlebach
It was at one ceremony, at an ALEPH gathering in Colorado,
that an assembly of more than 800 honored his life with songs and stories
on the first anniversary of his death. ALEPH is the central institution for
the Jewish Renewal movement; its preeminent rebbe, Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi,
had been a friend of Rabbi Carlebach since the 1950's when both were sent
by the Lubavitcher Rebbe to do outreach to the secular world.
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, a pioneer Jewish feminist who
was at that ALEPH Kallah, says that she "first became aware of his glorification
at the gathering, when it was announced that this [memorial] was going to
happen." Right after the announcement, three or four people "jumped me",
she says, and told their stories: "'Shlomo molested me, Shlomo was abusive
to me,'" is how she summarizes their words.
It was going "overboard to not acknowledge the problematic
side of the man when there members of the community there were hurt by him,"
says Rivkah Walton, an ALEPH program director, who reports that she walked
out of the memorial.
In 1997, through the Internet and in public forums,
the stories of inappropriate behavior began to be more widely discussed.
The messenger was Rabbi Gottlieb, who since the ALEPH gathering had been
distressed by the continued murmuring about Rabbi Carlebach. Understanding
the pain and confusion here revelations might stir up, but concerned with
what she saw as the "deification of Shlomo Carlebach"; Rabbi Gottlieb wrote
a tell-all essay.
"These are difficult words to write," she began, in
an essay sent to Lilith and presented by Rabbi Gottlieb at Chochmat HaLev,
a Berkeley Jewish center for meditation and spirituality, in late 1997. "I
have a responsibility to the women who have confided in me. They deserve
a place on the page of the collective memories about Shlomo Carlebach."
She wrote of Rabbi Carlebach's molestation of one of
her congregants, Rachel, as a young woman. As Rachel (name changed on her
request to prevent further trauma) told Lilith in a subsequent telephone
interview, she was in high school in the late '60's when she attended a Jewish
camp where, for the first time in her life she felt 'safe and
uncriticized&Every talent I had was encouraged." Music was everywhere,
and it was to this "safe" environment that Rabbi Carlebach, who spent much
of his life traveling to bring his music and prayer to communities, worldwide,
was invited as a guest singer. "We had heard that someone fabulous was coming,
a star," she recalls of the visit. 'The rabbis [at the camp] really seemed
to honor him, like a god." Rabbi Carlebach, with his warmth and charisma,
was like the Pied Piper, she remembers, and his singing was wonderful; Rachel
recalls it as "the first time in a Jewish context that I could feel that
I was having a spiritual experience."
When he asked her to show him around the camp, Rachel
says she felt, "what an honor [it was] to be alone with this great man."
They walked and talked of philosophy and Israel, of stars and poems, and
she remembers being "just enchanted." He asked her for a hug, and when she
agreed, "he wouldn't let go. I thought the hug was over and I tried to squirm
out of it. He started to rub and rock against me." So unsuspecting was she,
she says, "that at first I thought, 'was this some sort of davening?'" She
says she tried to push him away while he was "dry humping me until he came."
And although she doesn't remember the words he spoke, she remembers him
communicating to her that it was something special in her that had caused
this to happen. "It felt cheap, but he had said thank you." The next day
he didn't even acknowledge her presence.
Rachel's responses, she reports, were varied in the
days after this incident. At first she wondered, "Was I his special friend?"
Then, when he ignored her, she wondered, "Did I displease him? Was he considering
me a whore?" She also blamed herself for causing the event, was there something
special in her that made this happen? And "for not having the chutzpah to
kick him in the shins."
However, he was a special rabbi, and those she had
looked up to, looked up to him. Rachel, today and artist and a martial arts
teacher in New Mexico, told almost no one what had happened. Those she did
tell said he was "just a dirty old man." Thirty-five years later she was
jogging with Rabbi Gottlieb, both her friend and her congregational rabbi,
when they were talking about Rabbi Carlebach. Hearing that others were claiming
experiences similar to hers, Rachel broke down in tears. Only then, she recalls,
did she get very angry. I felt acknowledged. It wasn't a dream, it really
happened."
Other stories have begun to emerge, suggesting that
Rachel's experience was not unique. Robin Goldberg, today a teacher of women's
studies and a research psychoanalyst on women's issues in California, was
12 years old when Shlomo visited her Orthodox Harrisburg, Pennsylvania community
to lead a singing and dancing concert. He invited all the young people for
a pre-concert preparation. And it was during the dancing that he started
touching her. He kept coming back to her, she reports, whispering in her
ear, saying "holy maidele," and fondling her breast. Twelve years old and
Orthodox, she says she didn't know what to think. Her mother, that afternoon,
told her she must have been mistaken, and that she must not have understood
what was going on. But when she was taken to a dance event led by Rabbi Carlebach
years later, while she was in college, she reports that the same thing, dancing,
whispering, fondling, happened to her again.
Another story comes from Rabbi Goldie Milgram, 43,
today a teacher and an associate dean at the Academy for Jewish Religion
in New York City. Rabbi Milgrom was 14 when Rabbi Carlebach was a guest at
her United Synagogue Youth convention in New Jersey, and was invited by her
parents to stay at their home. Late that night they passed in the hallway.
"He pulled me up against him, rubbed his hands up my body and under my cloths
and pulled me up against him. He rubbed up against me; I presume he had an
orgasm. He called me mammele.
Rabbi Milgram says she didn't tell her parents at the
time and wasn't able to work through the incident until three years later,
when she was 17 and on her first trip to Israel. Approaching the Kotel, she
saw Rabbi Carlebach leading singing there and she fled. Her companion saw
her distress and suggested that she "'pretend I'm him,'" recalls Rabbi Milgram.
"All I remember is screaming 'Who are you? Why did you do that? I was so
excited that you came to my house and then...'" (Today, Rabbi Milgram says,
she has come to terms with this event and feels very connected to Rabbi
Carlebach's positive work, though she had been alienated by her early experience
with him.)
For the past 15 years, Marcia Cohn Spiegel of Los Angeles,
has studied addiction and sexual abuse in the Jewish community and has spoken
to some 60 groups through Brandeis University, the University of Judaism,
the Havurah Institute, along with many Jewish women's organizations, synagogues
and Jewish community centers. She doesn't mention Rabbi Carlebach at all
in her talks, she told Lilith. Following such talks, women come up to her,
even in the women's bathroom, to pour out their own stories, she says, "not
seeking publicity or revenge, but coming from a place of shame and isolation."
Consistently through the years women have come forward to share their stories
explicitly about Rabbi Carlebach, Speigel says.
In a letter, which Spiegel made available to Lilith,
she states that in the last few years, a number of women in their 40s have
approached her "in private and often with deep-seated pain" about experiences
they had when they were in their teens. "Shlomo came to their camp, their
center, their synagogue," she wrote, "He singled them out with some
excuse...[G]etting them alone, he fondled their breasts and vagina, sometimes
thrusting himself against them muttering something, which they now believe
was Yiddish."
The other typical story, she says, is recounted by
women who had gone to Rabbi Carlebach, "for help with problems, or who met
him when they studied with him. They were in their 20s or 30s when it happened.
He would call them late at night (two or three o'clock in the morning) and
tell them that he couldn't sleep. He had been thinking of them. He asked,
Where were they? What were they wearing?"
A woman who attended services conducted by Rabbi Carlebach
in California in the 1970's, and who asked not to be identified in this article,
recalls precisely this second scenario. After meeting her once or twice,
she says, Rabbi Carlebach called her in the middle of the night several times.
"It was very creepy. I seem to remember him breathing heavily on the phone
and panting." Though at first she was confused, once she realized that "something
surreptitious" was going on, she told him not to call her in the middle of
the night anymore. He did not.
Rabbi Carlebach's sexual advances to adult women were
apparently well known. Rabbi Gottlieb herself recounts Rabbi Carlebach's
request that she pick him up at his hotel when he was visiting her Albuquerque
community. When she got there, "he refused to come down," asking instead
that she come up to his room. Rabbi Gottlieb "went up and stood outside the
threshold and said, "I am not coming into your room and you are not going
to touch me.'" Another woman recalls, "His manner was 'God loves you, I love
you,' and then he'd come on to you out of 'love.'"
If these allegations were so widely known, why were
so many people, in so many communities in the United States, Canada, Israel
and elsewhere, able to ignore or squelch such serious concerns to preserve
the myth of a wholly holy man?
The ideal time to confront Rabbi Carlebach about these
allegations would have been during his life. Though that opportunity has
passed, there are a number of reasons why these allegations need to be
acknowledged in public, even after his death.
First, silence. A silence protective of the man and
damaging to the women has been maintained for years, sometimes decades since
the alleged events. Perhaps these women were cowed by Rabbi Carlebach's living
presence, but his posthumous increase in stature cannot have made the speaking
easier. Those who have encouraged the women to come forward say they hope
that breaking these silences will help other women to speak as well, and
that such speaking will allow them all to begin to heal.
Second, power. It is important to understand just how
powerful and intimate an impact any spiritual leader, but particularly a
charismatic and revered Rabbi like Rabbi Carlebach, may have on followers.
Unfortunately, according to experts on clergy abuse, it is not uncommon for
extremely charismatic leaders to take advantage of this power in order to
make sexual contact with congregants. It is the rabbi's responsibility, these
women's stories suggest, to recognize his power, and to use it only to his
congregant's benefit and not to their detriment.
Finally, communal responsibility. In cases where a
rabbi's self-restraint fails, perhaps the Jewish community needs to look
at its own responsibility for protecting its members, and for helping its
rabbis as well. If Rabbi Carlebach's sexual advances indeed spanned decades
and continents, as has been alleged, and were indeed as well known as it
now appears, then we must ask: What might have been done on behalf of the
women who may have been hurt by him? What can be done for them today? And
why did the legions who revered him not do more to help him, since there
appears to be some evidence that Rabbi Carlebach was himself troubled by
aspects of his own behavior.
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach singing
Rabbi Carlebach's approach to Jewish learning and spirituality
developed in an era when social boundaries were being broken. Born in Germany
the son of a rabbi, Shlomo Carlebach moved with his family to the United
States in 1938 and began his schooling in strictly Orthodox institutions
in New Jersey. In 1949, as an emissary of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, he was sent
out by the Rebbe to reach out to lapsed Jews, but he objected to Orthodoxy's
strict separation of men and women, and he left the Lubavitch fold, according
to a recent article in Moment magazine.
By the 1960's, Rabbi Carlebach was maintaining the
musical style and spiritual fervency of Hasidism, but had rejected constraints
and the gender segregation it demands. Among the ultra-Orthodox, wrote Robert
Cohen in a recent, generally positive memoir in Moment, "embracing women
was enough to make Shlomo a dubious, if not disreputable, figure in many
Orthodox circles." Instead, he established his base of spiritual operations
from the mid 60's to mid 70's at San Francisco's House of Love and Prayer,
a commune-style synagogue that catered to a young hippie community.
"Shlomo joined the counter-culture," notes Reuven Goldfarb
of a Berkeley Jewish Renewal congregation the Aquarian Minyan, defending
"Shlomo" (as the rabbi asked people to call him) from opprobrium. "The norms
in that sub-group were very different, and he was subject to all sorts of
temptation."
In addition to an increasing sexual openness in American
culture generally, Rabbi Carlebach had developed his own belief that the
healing of the world would come through unconditional love. He was known
for calling friends "holy brother," "holy sister," "holy cousin." "His life
goal," Cohen writing in Moment, recalled his saying, "was to 'hug every Jew
[sometimes it was every human being] in the world.'" One woman telephoning
Lilith from Jerusalem in horror that any negative story about Rabbi Carlebach
might appear, recalled, "he hugged many many people and he also saved so
many people with those hugs." Another told us, "He hugged into each man,
woman, child what each of us needed." Another man remembers a synagogue concert
in the late 60's when Rabbi Carlebach kissed every person who greeted him
there on the mouth.
Despite their support of some of Rabbi Carlebach's
spirituality and egalitarianism, there were even those in the forefront of
challenging Judaism's traditional hierarchies who viewed Rabbi Carlebach's
alleged sexual behavior as wrong. In the early 80's, a group of women in
the Berkeley area decided to express to him their concerns about his behavior
toward women. Among them was Sara Shendelman, a cantor who holds a joint
ordination from Rabbis Carlebach and Schachter-Shalomi and who sang with
Rabbi Carlebach for 15 years before his death. Specifically, says Shendelman,
her Rosh Hodesh group of 15 to 20 women was concerned that Shlomo Carlebach
did not observe proper boundaries with woman that he called them in the middle
of the night, and sometime invited them to his hotel.
"We were going to study Judith, supposedly, but what
we were really going to do was confront him," she recalls of the planned
meeting. The day came, and members of the group began to get cold feet. They
felt he just had "too much light" to be confronted, Shendelman recalls.
(Shendelman told Lilith she heard later that someone had told Rabbi Carlebach
the purpose of the meeting in advance. He came nonetheless.) The group, along
with Rabbi Carlebach, began to study. Rabbi Carlebach, according to Shendelman,
sat wrapped in his tallit and spoke of teshuva.
Not one of the women spoke up, until Shendelman announced,
"Shlomo, we came here because we need to talk to you about how you've been
behaving toward the women in the community And the whole room
froze. Nobody was willing to back me up."
The dialogue between Shendelman and Rabbi Carlebach
continued in a private room, where Rabbi Carlebach at first denied any problem,
says Shendelman. Then she reports, he said over and over, "Oy, this needs
such a fixing."
We cannot know what Rabbi Carlebach did toward "such
a fixing." Certainly the reluctance of the women of the Berkeley community
to approach him en masse, and the reluctance of others in the wider Jewish
community, must have made it easier for him to avoid addressing the problem.
Perhaps if he had received greater guidance in seeing that his behavior needed
repair, Rabbi Carlebach might have welcomed an opportunity to do teshuva,
repentance.
We do know that certain segments of the progressive
Jewish world, until the day Rabbi Carlebach died, distanced themselves from
him because they were aware of reports of his sexual behavior. Leaders at
ALEPH, and its sister organization, a retreat center called Elat Chayyim,
told Lilith that during Rabbi Carlebach's life they refused to invite him
to teach under their auspices or sit on their boards.
"It was definitely and issue for me," said Rabbi Jeffrey
Roth, director of Elat Chayyim, who says that he had hoped to invite Rabbi
Carlebach to teach before his sudden death. "My intent was&that I was
going to have a serious discussion about [the] innuendoes&In retrospect,
when I heard of the [seriousness] of the stories, I think that even my thinking
that maybe I would invite him and lay down the law would have been a cop
out."
"He didn't have a relationship with ALEPH, and that
[his sexual advances towards women] was a serious impediment," Susan Saxe,
chief operating officer of ALEPH, told Lilith, emphasizing that Rabbi Carlebach
was "one of several distinguished teachers with whom we might have wished
to be closer, but could not, in keeping with our Code of Ethics." ALEPH's
Code of Ethics proscribes the abuse of power in interpersonal relationships
as well as discrimination in other forms.
Rabbi Daniel Siegel, executive director of ALEPH, was
the first rabbi ordained by Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. He was introduced to
Rabbi Carlebach by his wife, Hanna Tiferet Siegel, to whom Rabbi Carlebach
"had been very kind during a difficult year in her life," Rabbi Siegel recalls.
"She always loved him for his support and encouragement."
"Shlomo was never my rebbe," Rabbi Siegel says, "though
I have a love both for his music and many of his teachings. In spite of the
disagreements I had with his politics and his very ethnocentric view of reality,
I brought or helped bring him for concerts several times. I was also aware
of his reputation for indiscretions with women, though what I heard was vague
and filtered through other people. However, it did happen that women I knew
began to tell me of conversations they had with him, after concerts I organized,
in which he said things which had disturbed or confused them. As a result,
I stopped inviting Shlomo, though I never told him why."
Now, however, the dam of silence has begun to break.
Some members of the Jewish Renewal community of Berkeley, California,
particularly those active in the Aquarian Minyan and the Jewish learning
center Chochmat HaLev, where Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb first presented her account
of Rachel's abuse last Fall, have taken upon themselves the burden of giving
voice to the allegations.
"He so deeply wounded many women," says Nan Fink,
co-director of Chochmat HaLev and co-founder of Tikkun magazine. "Communities
knew that this was happening, and women were hardly ever protected...I think
it is really important for the community to make a gesture of apology to
the women."
Rabbi Gottlieb's presentation came just eight weeks
before a scheduled Shabbat program entitled, "Celebrating Shlomo." According
to Reuven Goldfarb, a leader of the Aquarian Minyan, Rabbi Gottlieb's words
so disturbed some members of his community that the event was postponed until
after the community could begin a "healing process" and hold a series of
events to that end.
A Healing Committee has now been formed by the Aquarian
Minyan. On December 7, according to Goldfarb, a confidential meeting dubbed
Mishkan Tikkun; "a sanctuary for fixing" took place "to provide a listening
space for those who felt they had been injured by boundary violations that
occurred within a spiritual context." According to a source who attended
that meeting, three people came forward with claims against Rabbi Carlebach:
one woman spoke about herself, two spoke about their daughters.
Committee member Patricia Cohn, an interim director
of the now-closed Bay Area Sexual Harassment Clinic, told Lilith that the
Jewish Renewal community is attempting to address the concerns raised by
the allegations that have surfaced "by promoting opportunities for members
to talk with one another, gain support for dealing with their feelings and
reactions, re-establish, or establish, a deeper sense of safety, define
appropriate boundary-setting, and educate themselves about the way sexual
harassment functions and affects people." In addition, the committee hopes
to offer forums to "explore ethical and moral guidelines for rabbis and people
in positions of lay spiritual leadership to bring into focus the power imbalances
between someone in a position of spiritual leadership and the person he or
she is serving."
The Jewish world has not really dealt with rabbinic
[sexual] abuse," says Fink. "The Christian world has, the Buddhist world
has. The Jewish community needs to say, 'We don't sanction this.' The main
thing is to have it really be known that every infraction of this kind will
not be tolerated."
Nonetheless, for the many who knew Rabbi Carlebach
as a holy guide, hearing allegations may raise a conundrum: "How it is possible
that a person who can affect us so powerfully&can at the same time be
imperfect and do things we find very, very hard to countenance," asks Rodger
Kamenetz, author of The Jew in the Lotus and, most recently, of Stalking
Elijah: Adventures with Today's Mystical Masters.
This cognitive dissonance echoes through Jewish tradition,
which is filled with flawed leaders, Moses and David come to mind, who are
appreciated for their greatness and forgiven for their human failings. "It
is important for us to be reminded that even our spiritual teachers are flawed
human beings," notes Rabbi Siegel of ALEPH. "I hope that somehow, as time
goes on, we will learn how to honor Reb Shlomo's gifts and, at the same time,
to acknowledge those for whom his presence was difficult and even painful.
While I cannot predict how this will happen, I know that honest and open
discussion of the totality of Reb Shlomo's life can only help."
Indeed, the holding of both parts of Shlomo Carlebach
in mind have come into relief as these allegations against him have collided
full force with the reverence many still feel for him. Some of his followers
have jumped to his defense in the face of claims such as these. Lilith has
received both the outrage and prayers of those trying to stop the publication
of this article. Coming from as far as Israel, England, and Switzerland,
comments have ranged from denial that such actions could have taken place
to testimonials to his greatness. More than anything, these calls, emails,
and faxes have demanded in various ways that we perpetuate the silence.
"Whatever negative there is to say there [are] a million
positives you could choose," one protester wrote. Another told us, "He alone
gave me the sense of beauty of being a Jewish woman." A third, even more
adamant, suggested hat "there is no way you can even think of publishing
a negative article about a man like Rabbi Carlebach, if you even begin to
know the unending acts of kindness he devoted his life to performing." Finally,
some protested against these allegations coming to light, "regardless of
truth or right," "How dare you sully the memory of such a soul, such a tzaddik?"
one correspondent asked.
Kamenetz suggests that this need to see only the positive
sides of Rabbi Carlebach should be expected. "We want to be moved, we want
to be touched, and we project that onto certain individuals," he said, explaining
how such an idealized perspective develops.
Explains Rabbi Julie Spitzer, "It is not uncommon when
women come forward with their stories of inappropriate sexual contact with
a rabbi or clergy member hat the members of the congregation or community
so much want to disbelieve those shocking allegations that they vilify the
complainant and glorify the abuser." Rabbi Spitzer is director of the Greater
New York Council of Reform Synagogues and for 14 years has served on the
National Advisory Board for the Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic
Violence.
In the cacophony of voices expressing doubt, fear,
fury and grief, Rabbi Gottlieb asserts, "This is about our relationship to
power, rabbinics, patriarchy. This is not about him. It is about the women
he hurt."
The voice of Rachel, speaking of her summer camp experience
more than 35 years ago rings clear for any who wonders why, in the end, her
story had to be spoken aloud. "I think in the name of a higher good than
one man's reputation, we must talk about this. It's about truth, and
if we keep saying that he was a great man and if we don't name the behavior
and don't hold him and his spirit and memory accountable, we are colluding
in perpetuating that behavior and violence in our most spiritual
center."
Sex, the Spirit, Leadership
and the Dangers of Abuse
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow - editor of New Menorah
Shalom Center
Two events in Jewish life raise serious questions about
the relationships among sexuality, spirituality, and religious leadership
-- questions of what it means to sharply separate sex from the Spirit,
and of what it means to confuse them without any boundaries.
One of these events is a letter that went in October
1997 from the dean of the rabbinical school of the Jewish Theological Seminary
to its students, and the other is the uncovering and publication by Lilith
magazine of some deeply disturbing reports describing abusive behavior of
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, alav hashalom, z'l, toward some women.
The danger that religious and spiritual leadership
may slop over into sexual harassment and abuse seems to cut across all the
boundaries of different religions and different forms of religious expression
within each tradition. In Jewish life, for example, whether we look
at the most halakhically bound or the most free-spirit leadership, we find
some who draw on the deep energies of Spirit and the honor due teachers of
Torah, but cannot distinguish those energies and honor from an invitation
to become sexual harassers and abusers.
There are great dangers in totally sundering spirituality
and spiritual leadership from sexual energy, and there are great dangers
in treating the two as if they were simply and totally identical. The sacred
dance is to treat the two as intimately related but not identical.
***************************************
For many of us -- not only in our own era and society,
but for example among the Rabbis of the Talmud too -- the energies
of Spirit and of sexuality are in truth intertwined, and need to flow together
for either to be rich and full.
Look at the Song of Songs, which is clearly erotic
and has been seen by many generations, using many different frameworks,
as deeply spiritual. Look at the Rabbis who said that Torah study was like
delicious love-making with a Partner whose sexual attractiveness never
lessened.
I would not want to lose this intertwining. Indeed,
I think that even in the aspects I have just named, some vitality was drained
from Judaism when the rabbis utterly separated the Song of Songs from its
erotic roots — forbidding it to be sung in wine-halls at the same moment
they approved its canonization as a voicing of the Holy Spirit and a book
of the Bible. And I think the Rabbis also drained some life-juice from Judaism,
as they themselves ruefully acknowledged, when they treated Torah-study as
so erotically fulfilling that they would forget to go home to make
love to their wives.
Just recently, the Dean of the Rabbinical School
of the Jewish Theological Seminary has warned its unmarried rabbinical students:
"Living together, which is the derech eretz of so many today, is unacceptable
for one seeking the rabbinate. . . . I want to make it clear that it is my
opinion that a rabbinical student 'living together' before marriage, even
with a future spouse, should not continue in the Rabbinical School." This
may or may not be a direct threat to dismiss any unmarried student who does
live with someone -- i.e., is publicly known to be in a sexual relationship.
Either way, I think it leads to deep spiritual and ethical problems.
Shlomo Carlebach
For
I worry that it is trying to treat Spirit as if it had no intertwine with
sexuality — and thus is once again squeezing the life-juice out of
Judaism.
It was one thing to assume that sexual relationships
came only with marriage when people married in their teens. It is another
when our lives are so complex and our identities so fluid that many people
who are in rabbinical school are wise not yet to marry -- but also ought
not be forced to be celibate. The notion of forcing such students
into either long and complex lies about their sexual lives or into an undesired
celibacy means training future rabbis to be either liars or sexually warped,
narrowed, dwellers in Mitzraiim -- the "Narrow Straits."
Some might argue that the Dean's letter is not aimed
at the sexual ethics of Jews in general but at rabbinical students alone.
This is not factually correct; the letter makes clear that the Dean is concerned
about rabbinical students precisely because their behavior will affect the
behavior of all Jews, and it is the behavior of all Jews he hopes to shape
so that all sexual relationships are kept within marriage. For me the focus
on those who will become role models does not ease the problem, but may make
it worse. Who wants "role models" who have learned to choose between lying
and drying up?
Indeed, some believe that one way of creating sexually
uncontrollable people is to dam up their sexual energies when they are young
and should be learning how to channel them in decent, loving ways. Do the
demands of celibacy in some Christian denominations have any share in shaping
priests who abuse children or parishioners? Do Hassidic yeshivas that
forbid the bochers to masturbate, on pain of long fasts and punishment have
any responsibility when some of them never learn how to make loving love,
and become abusers when they grow older?
Taking all these issues into account, we need to explore
down-to-earth, practical steps toward shaping and celebrating sacred sexual
relationships other than marriage.
***********************
Is there any way to affirm and celebrate non-marital
sexual relationships, and to establish ethical and liturgical standards
for them, without violating halakha -- and indeed by drawing on some positive
strands of Jewish tradition?
From biblical tradition on, there has been a category
for legitimate non-marital sexual relationships that could be initiated and
ended by either party without elaborate legalities. It was frowned on by
most but not all guardians of rabbinic tradition. It was called "pilegesh,"
usually translated "concubine," though it meant something more open, free,
and egalitarian than "concubine" connotes in English.
I refer people to the recently published volume
by Rabbi Gershon Winkler, Sacred Secrets: The Sanctity of Sex in Jewish Law
and Lore (Jason Aronson, Northvale NJ). In it is an Appendix (pp. 101-142)
with the complete text of an 18th-century Tshuvah (Responsum) of Rabbi Yaakov
(Jacob) of Emden to a shylah (question) concerning the pilegesh relationship.
In it Rabbi Yaakov writes:
"[A single woman living with a man] ought to feel no
more ashamed of immersing herself in a communal mikveh at the proper times
than her married sisters.
"Those who prefer the pilagshut relationship may certainly
do so. . . . For perhaps the woman wishes to be able to leave immediately
without any divorce proceedings in the event she is mistreated, or perhaps
either party is unprepared for the burdensome responsibilities of marital
obligations. . ."
Winkler shows that Ramban (Moshe ben Nachman, Nachmanides)
in the 13th century and a host of other authorities also ruled that legitimate
sexual relationships are not limited to marriage.
It is true that some authorities, including Rambam
(Maimonides) did rule in favor of such limits, but many did not.
What are the uses of the pilegesh relationship? It
can give equality and self-determination to those women and men who use it.
Either person can end the relationship simply by leaving. It is true that
it does not automatically include the "protections" for women that apply
in Jewish marriages, but please note that the very notion of such "protections"
assumes that women are not only economically and politically but also legally
and spiritually disempowered, and need special protections. These
protections are an act of grace from the real ruler of a marriage -- the
husband -- to a subordinate woman.
But in our society, women are legally equal,
and often and increasingly economically and politically equal -- and
most of us want it that way. And our society is so complex that most people
defer marriage for many years, even decades, after puberty --
and most of us want it that way. So the value of the protective noblesse
oblige that the old path offered women must be weighed against the limits
on women's and men's freedom and emotional health and growth that are involved
in prohibiting sexual relationships between unmarried people, on the one
hand, and the limits on women's freedom and growth involved in traditional
Jewish marriage (e.g. the agunah problem) on the other hand.
To put it sharply --- do we really wish to forbid all
sexual relationships between unmarried people -- to insist on celibacy for
an enormous proportion of Jews in their 20s and 30s, and for divorced Jews?
If not, why not draw on the pilegesh relationship to establish a sacred grounding
for sexual relationships that are not marriages, and create patterns of honesty,
health, contraception, intimacy, and holiness for such relationships?
For us to draw on the pilegesh tradition in this way
does not require us to take it exactly as those before us saw it, or as others
might apply it today. For example, some Orthodox rabbis seem to be
using it today to help men who have become separated from their
wives but are refusing to give their wives a gettt, or Jewish divorce. If
there is no gett, neither spouse can marry again. But the pilegesh
practice lets the men find sexual partners and so reduce the pressure on
themselves to finish the divorce process. The "women in chains" who result
from this process cannot make a pilegesh relationship -- for under Jewish
law they would become adulterers, although their estranged husbands do not.
So in these cases pilegesh is used to disadvantage women even more.
But in communities that either do not require a gett
or recognize that either spouse can initiate a gett, and that would also
see pilegesh as a relationship that either women or men could initiate and
either could end, pilegesh could increase the free choices available
to women and become a way of celebrating sexual relationships that the parties
are not willing to describe as permanent -- especially relationships not
aimed at birthing or rearing children.
And the initial pilegesh agreement could specify what
to do in cases where a woman partner became pregnant, and how to establish
as much equal responsibility as possible between the pregnant and
non-pregnant partner.
If we both celebrate sexuality and do not believe that
"anything goes" in sexual relationships, then we are obligated to create
ethical, spiritual, and celebratory patterns for what does and doesn't go
in several different forms of sexual relationship. That is because
most joyfulness is enhanced by communal celebration, and most ethical behavior
requires not only individual intention but also communal commitment, embodied
and crystallized in moments of intense communal ceremony. This would mean
that we begin filling the pilegesh category with some ethical, ceremonial,
and spiritual content -- all quite different from the traditional patterns
for marriage, but also able to convey ethical and spiritual dimensions of
a different kind of sexual relationship.
And if the word "pilegesh," or its conventional translation
into "concubine," threatens to poison the idea, then let us honor the seichel
of those of our forebears who held this pathway open, and let us simply name
it something else. (For example, Israelis call the partners in an unmarried
couple a "ben zug" or "bat zug.")
In my book Down-to-Earth Judaism: Food, Money, Sex,
and the Rest of Life I draw on these alternative strands of traditional Rabbinic
law about which Rabbi Winkler has reminded us, to develop some new approaches
to a sacred Jewish sexual ethic for our generation. I had access to
Rabbi Winkler's research before his new book appeared, and want to urge people
to read it. I think he has done deep and great service to the possibility
of a Judaism that can speak to our generations.
***********
We have been addressing the danger of severing sexuality
from spirituality, and the possibility of celebrating this sacred intertwining
when it is best manifested in relationships other than marriage. On
the other hand, we must also address the dangers of treating spiritual
and sexual energy as if they were simply and exactly the same, so that spiritual
leadership might be taken as a warrant for sexual acting-out -- and in that
light we may explore ways of celebrating this sacred intertwining while
minimizing the chances of abuse.
The danger -- and the need for correctives -- became
most poignantly clear to many of us when Lilith magazine published an
investigative account of a series of molestations of adolescent girls by
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. Reb Shlomo has been for many Jews of a wide
variety of backgrounds an extraordinary treasure. His songs, his stories,
his generosity in money and spirit have opened up not only Judaism but a
sense of spiritual growth to tens or hundreds of thousands of people.
For me, Reb Shlomo was an important door-opener into
my own Jewish life. When I was profoundly discouraged by bitter attacks from
some Jewish institutions on The Freedom Seder and others of my early
efforts toward an ethically and politically renewed and revivified Judaism,
Reb Shlomo welcomed me as a chaver on his own journey into the wilderness.
He leaped and danced and sang at a Freedom Seder "against the Pharaohs
of Wall Street." He came to sing at a Tu B'Shvat celebration of "Trees for
Vietnam." He invited me to say one of the sheva brochas at his wedding when
I still knew too little Hebrew to do that celebratory task. He sat with me
for a television interview of "Hassidim Old and New" when the Lubavitcher
Hassidim (his old comrades) refused to be televised sitting at the same table
with either one of us -- him a "renegade," me a "revolutionary."
In a major break from the Hassidic past, he treated the women and men who
came to learn from him as spiritual equals -- even ultimately ordaining as
rabbis a few women, as well as men.
His love for Jews knew no bounds. So much so
that he could not believe that Jews could be oppressing Palestinians,
let alone criticize the oppression. As my own sense of an ethical and spiritual
Judaism came to include the need for a profoundly different relationship
between the two families of Abraham, and as his views crystallized into strong
support for the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, it became much harder
for me to work with him.
And as my own sense of self-confidence grew in pursuing
my own path toward the "new paradigm" of Judaism alongside the work of
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and of a growing community of Jewish feminists,
my need for Reb Shlomo's reassurances vanished. My admiration of his
loving neshama remained, but I more and more felt that he was no longer pursuing
the deepest implications of Jewish renewal; that he was still too committed
to the old Hassidism to go forward in creating a new one.
And then I, and my friends, began to hear rumors,
a story here and there, more and more of them, about unsettling behavior
toward some of the women whom he was teaching. An unexpected touch
here, an inappropriate late-night phone call there. No stories that I would
quite call "horrifying," but stories troubling enough to make ALEPH: Alliance
for Jewish Renewal decide not to invite Reb Shlomo to teach at our gatherings,
When we heard that he and his staff were upset at this absence, we decided
to offer to meet with him face-to-face to say what was troubling us, and
hear his response.
But before we could go forward with such a meeting,
he died.
And then, after several years of grieving memory and
even, among some people, growing adulation, stories surfaced that were indeed
horrifying. Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, herself a "rebbe" as well as a feminist
and a creator of Jewish renewal, brought some of the stories from secret
separate undergrounds into a public view: stories of physical molestation
of young adolescent girls, though not of what would be legally defined as
rape. An investigative reporter for Lilith found corroboration. Although
some people refused to believe the stories, and although it is a serious
problem that Reb Shlomo cannot himself respond to them, nevertheless it seems
to me that Lilith did a responsible job of checking on them.
How to square these stories with the Shlomo whom I
had loved and admired? With the Shlomo whose love of Jews had known no bounds?
Oh. "Whose love of Jews had known no bounds." No
boundaries.
From this clue -- no bounds, no boundaries -- I began
to try to think through what went wrong with Shlomo alongside what was so
wonderful about him, and why some who had loved him refused to believe what
by now seemed well-attested stories, and -- above all, since Shlomo-in-the-flesh
could no longer change his behavior -- what all that meant we should be thinking
and doing in the future.
For the "unbounded/ unboundaried" metaphor echoed for
me some of the teachings of Kabbalah and Hassidism, especially the ways in
which Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi had transformed those thought-patterns
toward a new Judaism. The ways in which he had reconfigured the Sphirot,
long understood as emanations and manifestations of God, as a framework for
human psychology as well. Truly the tzelem elohim -- the Image of God --
implanted in the human psyche.
What was the echo that I heard? It was the teaching
of the sphirah Chesed -- usually understood as "loving-kindness," but
in Kabbalah also understood as overflowing, unbounded, unboundaried
energy.
For me, then the question was and is, how to draw on
this echo, this insight, this "click," to celebrate the sacred intertwining
of sexuality and Spirit -- neither sundering one from the other nor confounding
their truths into a boundaryless mess.
How can we encourage this artful dance? We might learn
to shape and encourage a balanced embodiment of the Sphirot as the basic
character pattern of a spiritual leader — since one character-pattern
or another can prevent, or ease, or disguise a leaning toward sexual exploitation
of spiritual strength.
Kabbalah warns that the different Sphirot can become
distorted and destructive. We are most used to manipulation and abuse that
can flow from an overbearing overdose of the sphirah of Gevurah, Power and
Strictness, Of course Gevurah can inspire and teach. It may communicate
clarity and focus to those whose feelings, minds, and spirits are scattered
and dispersed. Yet there is danger in a teacher overmastered by Gevurah run
amok: one who teaches through raging fear and anger.
And a teacher overmastered by Gevurah may turn students
into submissive servants of his sexual will (far more rarely, hers).
We are less likely to notice the dangers
of Gevurah's partner Chesed, precisely because we are warmed by
loving-kindness. But --A spiritual leader may pour unceasing love into the
world. May pour out unboundaried his money, his time, his attention, his
love. For many of the community around them, this feels wonderful.
It releases new hope, energy, freedom.
But it may also threaten and endanger. Even Chesed
can run amok. A Chesed-freak may come late everywhere because he has
promised to attend too many people. He may leave himself and
his family penniless because he gave their money to everyone else. He may
give to everyone the signals of a special love, and so make ordinary the
special love he owes to some beloveds. And he may use Chesed to overwhelm
the self-hood of those who love and follow him, and abuse them sexually.
Indeed, this misuse of Loving-kindness may lead to
even deeper scars than naked Gevurah-dik coercion. For it leaves behind in
its victims not only confusion between Spirit and Sexuality, but confusion
between love and manipulation. That may make the regrowth of a healthy
sexuality, a healthy spirituality, and a healthy sense of self more difficult.
When we learn that a revered, creative, and beloved
teacher has let Chesed run away with him, and so has hurt and damaged other
people, what can we do? First of all, what do we do about the fruits
of Chesed that are indeed wonderful -- in Reb Shlomo's case, his music and
his stories? Some, particularly those directly hurt, may find it emotionally
impossible to keep drawing on them. I hope, however, that most of us
will keep growing and delighting in these gifts that did flow through Reb
Shlomo from a ecstatic dancing God. We do not reject the gifts that flowed
through an Abraham who was willing to kill or let die one wife and two sons;
we do not reject the gifts that flowed through an earlier Shlomo who was
a tyrannical king.
Certainly whoever among us have turned love and
admiration of Reb Shlomo into adulation and idolatry need to learn
to make their own boundaries, their own Gevurah. And we need to teach
the teachers who might fall into this danger of Chesed-run-amok, challenging
and guiding them, insisting and demanding that they achieve a healthier
balance.
To name one version of sexual abuse an outgrowth
of the perversion of Lovingkindness does not excuse the behavior. Like a
diagnosis, it distinguishes this particular disease from others that may
also become manifest as sexual abuse. Dealing with Chesed-run-amok is different
from dealing with Gevurah-run-amok.
Chesed needs to be balanced by Gevurah's Rigorous
Boundary-making, and the two must reach not just toward balance but toward
the synthesis of Tipheret or Rachamim, the sphirah of focused compassion
-- traditionally connected with the heart-space.
Why there? The heart is a tough enclosing muscle that
pours life-energy into the bloodstream. If the muscle were to go soft and
sloppy, or be perforated by holes, it could no longer squeeze the blood into
the arteries. If the blood were to harden and become Rigid, it could not
flow where it is needed. In the same way, Rechem -- the womb
-- is a tough enclosed space that pours a new life into the world.
Chesed alone, Gevurah alone, bear special dangers.
Even so, each of them remains part of the truth, the need, and the value
of God and human beings. Perhaps the character orientation most likely
to encourage a teacher's ability to pour out spiritual, intellectual, and
emotional warmth without turning that into sexual manipulation is a character
centered on Tipheret/ Rachamim.
**********************
Finally, we must deal with the danger that a
teacher's "shaping-power" may turn into domination. When either
Chesed or Gevurah gets channeled into the notion that a teacher owns this
power -- is not, one might say, one of God's "temporary tenants" of
this loving or awesome property but is its Owner -- then the submissiveness
this invites, creates, and enforces becomes idolatry. The teacher who
invites this idolatry is an idol-maker -- far more responsible for it than
the student who may thus be tricked into idol worship.
There are two ways to prevent this kind of idolatry,
this transmutation of spiritual energy into abusive behavior. One way is
to limit the power-holder's actions. The other way is to empower the one
who feels weak. Both are necessary.
One of the most powerful practices for both reminding
the powerful of their limits and empowering those who begin by thinking they
are powerless is one I have seen Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi carry out many
times.
On Erev Shabbat or Erev Yomtov, he might begin what
looks at first like a classic Chassidic "Tisch" or "table":
The Rebbe sits in a special chair, and for hour after
hour teaches Torah to the assembled multitude, who sing and sway and chant
with great intensity. Consumers, all of them, of his great wisdom.
So Reb Zalman would sit in a special chair at the head
of the dinner table, and teach Torah -- but only for 20 or 30 minutes. Then
he would stand, say "Everyone move one seat to the left" -- and he would
move. He would nod to the member of the chevra who now sat in the Rebbe's
Chair, saying: "Now you are the Rebbe. Look deep inside yourself for the
Rebbe-spark. When you have found it, teach us. And all us others -- we must
create a field of Rebbetude, an opening and beckoning to affirm that you
too can draw on Rebbehood."
It worked! Over and over, people would find the most
unexpected wisdom inside them, and would teach it.
The real point of this powerful but momentary practice
was to embody its teaching in all the other moments of our lives.
To be a "rebbe" is to live in the vertical as well as horizontal dimension
-- to draw not only on the strength of friends, community, but also on the
strength that is both deep within and high above. No one is a rebbe all the
time, and everyone should be a rebbe some of the time.
This is not at all the same as simply saying that all
of us are Rebbes, stamm -- even just part of the time. All of us are potential
"part-time" Rebbes -- if we choose to reflect on our highest, deepest selves.
And that means we are less likely to surrender our souls and bodies to someone
else. A true Rebbe, it seems to me, is one who encourages everyone to find
this inner spark and nurse it into flame. But we have all bumped into people
who act as if they are the flame, while others are but dead kindling-wood.
To say that any one of us is empty of the Spark is
to deny God's presence in the world. To arrogate the Spark to one's own self
alone is to make an idol of one's ego. Reb Zalman's practice
teaches another path -- and I believe that if we were to develop a number
of similar ways to walk it, there would be far less danger of spiritual/
sexual abuse.
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach
More institutionally, what this means is that we must explicitly
say to teachers, davvening leaders, healers -- that they not use the power
of their position to overawe their congregants or students into entering
sexual relationships. That they not -- like one congregational rabbi
-- turn the spiritual and emotional comfort due the shattered mourner of
a just-dead spouse into sexual seduction. That they not turn the excitement
of profound Torah or deep davvening into the incitement of sexual need.
And that we also counsel congregants, students, clients
to strengthen the aspect of their Self that is one flame of God; that they
not try to gain confidence by subjugating their own sense of self to someone
else; that they choose a sexual relationship out of strength, not weakness.
ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal chose five years
ago to make this clear through an ethical code that prohibits any teacher
or other spiritual leader from using that position during a class or a Kallah
or similar event to initiate a sexual relationship with a student or learner.
Even more important, ALEPH made sure that this ethical code was publicly
announced to and discussed by all teachers, leaders, and other participants
-- so the discussion taught a deeper lesson, one that could last beyond the
immediate situation into the longer future.
In this way we can embody the hope that two people
have in truth a deep connection with a holy root -- for if so, it will last
long enough to be pursued when the two stand much more nearly on a firm and
equal footing. And we can also embody the wisdom that true spiritual leaders
and true spiritual learners can approach each other not bound in a knot of
manipulation with obeisance, but with mutual respect.
Indeed, if we intend to require our teachers to refrain
from sexual abuse, then we must also encourage the balanced expression of
a sexuality that is ethically, spiritually rooted. We must seek new ways
of making sure that our teachers find others of the same depth and intensity
to become their partners.
This would be sexuality filled with Kavod: the kind
of honor that radiates from each partner because it is God's radiance
within.
*************
To summarize:
Clarifying the dance of sexuality and Spirit without
sundering them;
Giving content to old and little-used aspects of halakha
and/ or shaping new aspects of halakha so as to give down-to-earth shape,
ethics, liturgical focus, and spiritual meaning to more than one form of
sacred sexual relationship;
Encouraging in spiritual leaders (and in us all) the
balance between Chesed and Gevurah and even more their synthesis in Tipheret/
Rachamin;
Empowering students and congregants while limiting
the power of leaders;
---- These are the four steps we need to take if our
teachers and our students are to fulfill God's vision for us all in soul,
mind, heart — and body.
*****************
Finally, I want to examine self-reflectively the method
and the underlying theory with which I have approached these questions.
Clearly, my process began with a real-life question:
How am I, how are other Jews, to respond to specific events like the Dean's
letter to rabbinical students and Lilith's article on Rabbi Shlomo
Carlebach? My own response was to draw on, renew, and transform aspects
of Jewish tradition that I believe have been "minority voices" -- to some
extent subversive voices -- in the tradition: the strands of pilegesh sexuality,
the rebbe model of direct access to God, and the Kabbalistic pattern of the
Sphirot.
I recognize that these strands, even though they challenged
many aspects of "official" Judaism, had themselves been corrupted by the
atmosphere of male domination in which they, like almost all recorded human
thought before the last century, emerged. Corrupted -- but I believe not
wholly ruined. So I understand that these strands cannot be woven unchanged
into the fabric of a new Judaism, but need to be reworked in the light of
new Torah values that I believe are unfoldings of the Will of God.
What are these new values?
To understand them and to understand how deeply they
affect sexual ethics most intensely and the whole of Judaism as well, I want
to make explicit what I think have been the underlying "rules" of Biblical
and Rabbinic Jewish sexual ethics:
Legitimate sexual relationships involve a dominant
male and a subordinate female.
Legitimate sexual relationships have the procreation
and rearing of children as their very strong (not absolutely total)
intention and justification.
Sexuality is also intended to be a joyful and pleasurable
celebration of God.
I believe that the evolving God whose Name is Ehyeh
Asher Ehyeh ("I Will Be Who I Will be") has abrogated and replaced the first
of these rules with a rule that --
Legitimate sexual relationships seek to be expressed
through as much equality as possible in power, responsibility, and rights
of the partners who are covenanting (who may be male, or female, or male
and female).
And I believe that this evolving God has reversed the
second and third "rules" so that the main purpose of sexuality is the joyful
and pleasurable celebration of God, while procreation and rearing of children
is an important but not overarching intention and goal of sexual
relationships. Though I have not focused on it here, I believe that
the Song of Songs is our best guide from the ancient tradition to how sexuality
could express the joyful and pleasurable celebration of God.
These profound changes have been mediated through the
emergence of Modernity as a partial expression of the God Who unfolds through
human history without abandoning the previous wisdom of the previous spiral
of Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh. Our evolving God calls on us to join in this
spiral of growth, never abandoning the past but never getting stuck in it:
instead, doing midrash on the received wisdom of Torah in order to respond
to the great life-cycles of the human race and of Planet Earth.
In particular, for reasons that I explore in much more
detail in Down-to-Earth Judaism and Godwrestling -- Round 2, I believe that
the evolving God calls us now not to continue multiplying humankind but --
because the earth is already "full" -- to limit our procreation; and
calls us to make sure that women and men contribute equally to the reshaping
of Judaism, human civilization, and the community of all life. I believe
that God calls us to these new mitzvot because we have come to a new place
in our collective life-cycle, as individuals enter into new mitzvot when
they come to crucial turning-points in their own individual life-cycles.
In that great life-cycle, ever spiraling toward
greater self-awareness, greater self-reflectiveness, we both live through
the spiral turnings and reflect upon them. Out of that, for me, comes the
effort to renew and transform the meaning of pilegesh, of rebbetude, and
of the Sphirot in such a way as to reshape and renew the holiness of sexual
relationships.
The Case Against Carlebach: Though the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach
was Orthodox, he was committed to the spiritual rights of women, abandoning
the injunction that the sexes not touch publicly. "It is an alarming paradox
then," Sarah Blustain writes in the spring Lilith, "that the man who did
so much on behalf of women may have also done some of them harm."
In the three years since the rabbi's death at age 69,
Ms. Blustain writes, "ceremonies honoring his life and work have been interrupted
by women who claim the rabbi sexually harassed or abused them....Spiritual
leaders, psychotherapists and others report numerous incidents, from playful
propositions to actual sexual contact." Several of the women Ms. Blustain
spoke with reported incidents at summer camps, youth conventions and other
Jewish events; others reported late-night phone calls when the rabbi asked
where they were and what they were wearing.
Several segments of the progressive Jewish world, Ms.
Blustain writes, distanced themselves from the rabbi because they were aware
of reports of his sexual behavior. Leaders at Aleph and its sister organization,
a retreat center called Elat Chayyim, said that during Rabbi Carlebach's
life they refused to invite him to teach or sit on their boards. "He so deeply
wounded many women," said Nan Fink, co-director of the Berkeley learning
center Chochmat HaLev and co-founder of Tikkun magazine. "Communities knew
that this was happening, and women were hardly ever protected...I think it
is really important for the community to make a gesture of apology to the
women."
Reached by the Forward, Neila Carlebach, the rabbi's
widow, described the Lilith article as "sensationalist." While Ms. Carlebach
stresses that she has "total sympathy for women who have been abused and
total sympathy for people who have a need for healing," she adds that "I
have no sympathy under these circumstances" because the women who have accused
the rabbi "are not interested in healing. They're interested in making statements
that are hurtful."
The rabbi's accusers waited 30 years to make their
case, she notes. "Shlomo was around for 27 of those 30 years," she says.
"For them to come out with something against Shlomo when he's not around
to defend himself, I think it's loshon hara. If somebody has a legitimate
case against someone you take it to their face.
"Jewish law absolutely forbids negative talk about
someone who's left the world, especially someone who was a rebbe," she adds.
"Shlomo was most certainly a rebbe. So not only are they being sensationalist,
they're also going against Jewish ethics."
* * *
Out of Africa: "As the American Jewish community continues
on its journey of self-definition, away from the vale of tears of Holocaust
identity and, equally, away from the triumphalism of identification with
Israel, we must remember Africa," writes Rabbi Burton L. Visotzky in the
winter issue of CommonQuest, a magazine published by the American Jewish
Committee and Howard University. "Our years there formed us as a people.
There were our beginnings as a nation.
"Throughout rabbinic literature the Song of Songs is
taken as an allegory of God's love for Israel. If God is the male lover,
then Israel, the Jews, are the female beloved. We Jews must remember, then,
to say with pride the words of Song of Songs (1.5), 'I am black and beautiful.'"
* * *
Race Matters: Members of the Jewish community aren't
the only ones opposed to intermarriage. According to a March 15 report from
the Spanish wire service, EFE, 30.6% of Spanish youths questioned in a recent
poll conducted by an anthropologist, Tomás Calvo Buezas, said they
would not marry a Jew. In Latin America, the figure was 38.1%. Spanish youths
were not interested in marrying into other groups either: 61% said they wouldn't
marry a gypsy; 50%, a Moslem; 38.5%, a black African; and 13.1%, a Latin
American.
Questioned on the expulsion of Jews from their lands,
27% of Latin American teens responded in the affirmative. In Portugal the
figure was 23% and in Spain, 13%.
"According to Calvo Buezas, except regarding Moslems
and gypsies, Spain seems a more tolerant country than Portugal," the article
says. He believes that racism in Spain is equal or less than racism in Latin
America.
When questioned as to what country discriminates the
most, however, 52% of both Spanish and Latin American youths said the United
States. But the United States also came in at the top of of the list of ideal
countries to live in, chosen by 38% of Latin Americans and 28% of Spaniards.
Rabbi Yaakov Aryeh Milikowsky supporter of Shlomo Carlebach
Amshinover Rebbe speaking with Shlomo Carlebach
Rabbi Yaakov Aryeh Milikowsky who is also known as "The Amshinov Rebbe" has been quoted as believing that Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach was the
"Pillar of Prayer", even though there was a rabbinic decree created by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein banning Carlebach's music as a way of disciplining him for his sexual assaults against women. Milikowsky chose to ignore the ruling that it was believed that his friend, Shlomo Carlebach was a serial sexual predator.
Yaakov Milikowsky was born in the United States. He is the present Amshinover Rebbe in the Bayit Vegansection of Jerusalem. He is the grandson and successor of Rabbi Yerachmiel Yehudah Meir Kalish of Amshinov.
Rabbi Milikowsky currently one of the Rabbinic Advisors of the Refuah Institute in Israel. Other known enablers of sexual predators who serve as rabbinic advisors of this "life coaching and counselorcertificationprogram includes the late Rabbi Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg,
Can New Agers Channel the Old Rebbes' Spirit? - Our
Scribe Visits a Neo-Chasidic Confab, Looking for 'Awakening' and
'Renewal'
By Allan Nadler
Forward - April 13, 2003
'We are the heirs of the chasidism that would have
been created by all the rebbes who were killed in the Holocaust," Daniel
Siegel told the 200 Jewish spiritual seekers who gathered last month for
the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan's "Awakening, Yearning and Renewal:
A Conference on the Hasidic Roots of Contemporary Jewish Spiritual Expression
and Neo-Hasidic Shabbat Festival."
A dizzying array of speakers and performers —
from respected scholars of chasidism, Jewish mysticism and Jewish musicology
to fringe practitioners of many varieties of "Jewish spirituality" —
participated in this unprecedented event that combined features of an academic
conference with concerts and a Shabbaton, complete with Sabbath services,
meals and lots of hugging and communal singing.
Siegel is the rabbinic director of Aleph: Alliance
for Jewish Renewal, an organization that offers a variety of spiritual services,
ranging from weekend retreats to a program leading to smikha, or rabbinical
ordination. Siegel described smikha in his presentation as the "world's only
serious program of rabbinic study with no campus."
Siegel's claim to be an heir of pre-war chasidic masters
notwithstanding, the New Age neo-chasidism that was the central topic of
this conference should not be confused with classical, or Beshtian, chasidism,
which originated in late-18th-century Poland and Ukraine and is still practiced
today by hundreds of thousands of chasidim in thriving and rapidly growing
communities around the world.
In fact, the handful of chasidic rebbes who did survive
the Holocaust re-established postwar chasidic communities that continued,
unchanged, the Orthodox traditions of their forebears and does not in any
way resemble the amorphous hodge-podge of spirituality that was on display
at this conference. Nor should the new neo-chasidism be confused with the
romantic neo-chasidism of early 20th-century Jewish writers like I.L. Peretz,
Micha Yosef Berdichevsky and Martin Buber, who found inspiration in chasidic
sources but neither proposed them as the basis for a new mystical Judaism
nor presented themselves as latter-day chasidic saints, unlike Aleph's faculty
members, who actually call themselves rebbes.
The goal of the conference, co-sponsored by the
Spirituality Institute, the JCC in Manhattan and Bard College, was —
in the words of Nancy Flam, director of the Spirituality Institute —
"to stimulate thinking about the ways in which the richness of chasidic texts,
ideas and practices is finding expression in contemporary, non-Orthodox Jewish
religious communities."
The Spirituality Institute, based in western Massachusetts,
provides a two-year program of periodic weeklong retreats for rabbis and
cantors from the non-Orthodox congregations intended to deepen the spiritual
dimension of their professional work. The conference that it organized brought
together a diverse group of other Jewish Renewal organizations, such as Aleph,
all of which have turned in some way to the chasidic tradition for spiritual
enlightenment. The Jewish Renewal phenomenon, inspired by such charismatic
masters as the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach (known as the "singing rabbi")
and Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, markets an eclectic blend of popularized
kabbala and Buddhist practices directed at young Jews alienated from the
more established forms of Judaism and who might otherwise be attracted to
Eastern mystical religions.
One of the prominent leaders of the neo-chasidic movement
and a major presence at the conference,
Rabbi Mordechai
Gafni (Marc Gafni) , is the director of Bayit Chadash, which means New Home, an Israeli
version of the Spirituality Institute, whose program of study centers on
the Zohar, an esoteric 13th-century work that is widely considered the central
text of medieval kabbala. Among Bayit Chadash's offerings is a two-year,
four-retreat seminar called "Training To Become a Maggid, a Holy Teacher,"
led by Gafni.
Responding to my doubts about the pedagogic soundness
of teaching Zohar to students who are not yet familiar with the Hebrew Bible,
to say nothing of the rabbinic literature, Gafni (described on the jacket
of his latest book as "a profound thinker, philosopher and spiritual guide
[who] is the author of the national best-seller 'Soul-Prints' and... a premier
voice in Israeli and international religion and spirituality") insisted that
"devekut [mystical union with God] can be reached in a number of ways and
only one of them is Halacha [Jewish law]."
This search for Jewish spirituality in all but the
most basic, normative and important sources of Judaism is evident in Aleph's
statement of principles, where we learn that "Among our guides to interpretation
of Torah are the Prophetic, Kabbalistic and Hasidic traditions as they are
now being transformed in light of contemporary feminist spirituality, process
theology and our own direct experience of the Divine."
It is not at all clear to me how much of Judaism is
left when one sidesteps its historically central texts like the Mishna, Talmud
and Shulkhan Arukh — i.e. the entire rabbinic tradition — and goes
directly to esoteric mystical sources that were never intended for popular
consumption, especially not by their authors. This approach seems to me to
be far closer to the heretical antinomism of Shabbetai Zevi, the notorious
17th-century false messiah of Izmir who ended his career as a Muslim. In
fact, one of the participants at the conference, Shaul Magid, a professor
Jewish mysticism and chasidism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America,
seemed to suggest in his presentation that the Jewish Renewal movement is,
in many respects, closer to Shabbateanism than to chasidism.
An even more serious problem, to my misnagdic and
Yiddishist lights, was made manifest by the linguistic and cultural illiteracy
of many of the conference's participants that was so evident at every session
I attended. These sincere, well-intended people come to such events to deepen
their understanding of Judaism — a noble purpose, to be sure. Yet many
of the "holy teachers" they find in the Jewish Renewal movement have little
patience to teach the basics, i.e., the Jewish languages, the Bible and Mishna,
to say nothing of serious and structured instruction in rabbinic and halachic
texts. Being a "maggid" and a "rebbe" is after all a lot sexier than being
a language instructor. The consequences of this impatience with imparting
the very basic languages, texts and practices of Judaism was made painfully
evident in the fascinating presentation on chasidic and neo-chasidic liturgical
music by Mark Kligman, a professor of Jewish musicology at the Hebrew Union
College in Manhattan. Citing a study of the Bnai Or worship community in
Boston, Kligman quoted one of the women participants:
I'm a much more intuitive person than an intellectual
person, so I find that music sound gets me to a spiritual plane more than
words. I have a hard time with word prayers, and I don't speak or read Hebrew.
And in English... when you put things into words sometimes it minimizes,
whereas sound has a sort of infiniteness. I have to say, there are certain
melodies that take me "out there."
Inspired by the early masters of 18th-century chasidism
who did indeed subvert the hierarchy of traditional rabbinic values by placing
prayer and mystical experience above Torah scholarship, the neo-chasidim
are confident that their form of spirituality will spread and strike roots
among contemporary American Jews the way chasidism did across Eastern
Europe.
But the analogy is a false one: For unlike the chasidim
of Poland who were immersed in a mimetic yidishkayt that filled the air of
the European shtetls and saturated the pores of virtually every Jew, many
of today's spiritual seekers who are attracted to neo-chasidism are Jewishly
illiterate in every respect. Even the most ignorant, untutored chasid in
Belz, Vizhnitz, Satmar or Lubavitch spoke Yiddish, davened in Hebrew and
had an intuitive understanding of the norms of rabbinic Judaism. In a word,
they were steeped in yidishkayt. That certainly cannot be said of most of
the participants in the neo-chasidism conference.
This problem was evident to me even before the conference
formally began. A pre-conference concert on Wednesday evening featured the
wonderful trio the Singing Table, led by Michael Alpert, an erudite student
of East European Jewish music and gifted musician. Although Alpert went to
great lengths to explain what he was doing, he occasionally made Hebrew
references and told some untranslatable Yiddish jokes. When I was one of
the only people in the hall to respond, I began to suspect something was
amiss with the neo-chasidim. Sadly, that suspicion was deepened and confirmed
over the course of the next days.
To be fair, the spiritual founder of the neo-chasidic
Jewish Renewal, Schachter — himself a deeply learned rabbi of chasidic
origin — is acutely aware of these problems and addressed them directly
in a video presentation to the conference. Schachter called upon participants
to pay more attention to the study of rabbinical texts and insisted on the
need for some form of halachic structure to guide the neo-chasidim on their
spiritual path.
Another leading figure of the Jewish Renewal movement,
the respected scholar of chasidism Rabbi Arthur Green, is also aware of the
need for more study and structure. There is clearly a tension, if not a rift,
within the neo-chasidic community on this very issue.
Allan Nadler is director of the Jewish studies program
at Drew University and the senior adviser for academic affairs at the YIVO
Institute for Jewish Research. He is writing a book on Baruch Spinoza and
modern Jewish culture.
Last Saturday night's Ninth Annual Shlomo Carlebach
Yahrzeit Concert at Binyanei Ha'uma was packed to the rafters.
A large crowd of men danced at the right of the stage,
spilling over into the adjacent aisles. Still others stood alongside their
seats and danced. The crowds sang along with the performers; everybody knew
the words; everybody was smiling.
The 2,500 Jews in attendance were from all walks of
life and of all ages. They were gathered to celebrate the life and commemorate
the passing of the "singing rabbi" who inspired so many.
"This year's concert was the best ever," said Aura
Wolfe, 45. "The participants performed his music as opposed to their own
versions of his songs and melodies."
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach studying
In the previous eight years, says Michael Brand, 47, chairman
of the Shlomo Foundation, the members of the foundation organized the concert,
but this time they decided to hire professional producers Ariel Peli, 29,
and Jonty Zwebner, 46, in order to reach the "essence" of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach.
Feedback from the public indicated that more of a "yahrzeit" feeling was
desired, and less of a rock-concert atmosphere.
Zwebner is co-producer of the annual Beit Shemesh Jewish
Rock and Soul Festival that takes place during Succot. He also brings musical
acts to Club Tzora (at Kibbutz Tzora) on Thursday and Saturday nights.
"We were asked to make the [Carlebach] concert unplugged,
more acoustic, less electric, to give it a softer tone," says Zwebner. "We
asked the artists to play only original Shlomo material and we concentrated
on having a majority of artists who hadn't even known Shlomo but were undeniably
connected with his essence."
One of those performers was 23-year-old Shlomo Katz.
Katz also serves as hazan at dozens of Shlomo minyanim around the
country.
Today there are nine Shlomo Carlebach synagogues in
Israel, five of which are situated within the greater Jerusalem area: Efrat,
Ma'aleh Adumim, Mitzpe Yericho, Har Nof, and Beit Shemesh.
Jerusalem also houses Shlomo minyanim in the new Shir
Hadash synagogue in Baka, the old Shir Hadash in Nahlaot, at Yakar in the
German Colony, and at the Western Wall.
So why is the Carlebach phenomenon even more powerful
in the aftermath of Shlomo's passing?
Brand, who both founded and runs the Ma'aleh Adumim
Shlomo minyan says it's because, "When Shlomo was around there were no minyanim
because Shlomo was the vehicle, he was the one. The only places where his
nusah was used were the places where he himself was, which were his synagogues
on Manhattan's Upper West Side and on Moshav Mevo Modi'im."
However, The Happy Minyan in Efrat was started by Dovid
Zeller, a close follower of Shlomo's, a year before his death. Zeller says
he decided to establish the minyan because he became so steeped in Shlomo's
melodies and songs, that that was his own preferred way of praying.
"These minyans appeal to people who may be intimidated
or feel left out in larger, more traditional synagogues," explains Brand.
"The atmosphere that is created and the way people are welcomed reflects
the attitude of Carlebach himself. He never sat at the front of the synagogue
but rather at the center or the rear and got up to welcome new arrivals
personally."
When Shlomo was alive, Brand continues, he was not
accepted by mainstream Orthodox, "because he believed that Jews who are lost
to their roots are in a situation requiring intensive care, and that the
measures that must be taken to ensure their survival cannot always be ordinary
ones."
Carlebach was also well-known for going into discotheques
and ashrams, and pulling Jews out.
"Of course his very presence in these places was frowned
upon by the establishment, who questioned why he was there in the first place
and whether he didn't have a personal agenda which pushed him to frequent
these places," says Brand.
Carlebach was also generous in the dispensing of hugs
- to men and women.
"If he felt someone needed a hug he would give it to
them, and often they needed it very badly," says Brand.
Naturally, this was not acceptable halachic behavior
and many rabbis would not allow their students to attend Carlebach's concerts
or his learning sessions.
"Nevertheless," says Brand, "most religious people
recognized that whether or not it was their approach, what he was doing was
in fact beneficial to the Jewish people as a whole."
Brand also notes that many of those who were brought
back to their roots by Carlebach ended up becoming very Orthodox and even
criticizing [Shlomo] for his more liberal-seeming approach.
Yitzhak Attias, a frequent attendee at the Har Nof
minyan, says back in the '80s, he used to host Carlebach along with up to
70 of his followers at seuda shlishit meals on the roof of his Old City
apartment.
I just read the Jerusalem Post's article "The Carlebach
Phenomenon." It saddens me that you didn't mention the controversy surrounding
this man when it comes to allegations of childhood sexual abuse (teenage
girls), and sexual assault with young women (any female over the age of
18).
The closest you came was the following quote:
"Carlebach was also generous in the dispensing of
hugs - to men and women.
"If he felt someone needed a hug he would give it
to them, and often they needed it very badly," says Brand.
Naturally, this was not acceptable halachic behavior
and many rabbis would not allow their students to attend Carlebach's concerts
or his learning sessions.
"Nevertheless," says Brand, "most religious people
recognized that whether or not it was their approach, what he was doing was
in fact beneficial to the Jewish people as a whole."
Please go to The Awareness Centers web page on Rabbi
Carlebach:
http://www.theawarenesscenter.org/carlebach.
Do your homework, and help the "alleged" victims of
this man heal. Don't keep this secret any longer. It appears that Rabbi Carlebach
had some major boundary problems. If he was alive today he would have to
face these charges. Don't make him into a "Tzaddik." It appears he was an
"alleged" sex offender. His "alleged" Victims need to be heard.
The Awareness Center Daily Newsletter - July 15,
2004
Dear Friends,
The following email was forward to me. Please note
that The Awareness Center does NOT support a street being named after someone
who has had so many allegations of sexual misconduct made over the years
by both teenage and young adult women.
If you are thinking of signing your name to the following
petition, please go to The Awareness Center's web page on Rabbi Shlomo
Carlebach.
With your help, we will be naming West 79th Street
in New York City: "Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach Way" after our father of blessed
memory. Please click on the link below and sign your name. A future email
will be sent with the date and time when this ceremony will take
place.
Members of the Carlebach shul are attempting to get
the area of 79th and West End Ave. named after Shlomo Carlebach. A petition
is being circulated in the neighborhood for approval. There will be a hearing
but have no details on where or when.
For information about this contact the woman handling
this for the city: Penny Ryan, Community Board #7, 1865 Broadway, 4th floor,
New York 10023. phone 212-603-3080. If you or someone you know was a victim
of Shlomo you might want to send a letter to Penny Ryan with details.
URGENT CALL TO ACTION
Posted: September 7, 2004
Members of the Carlebach shul are attempting to get
the area of 79th and West End Ave. named after Shlomo Carlebach. A petition
is being circulated in the neighborhood for approval.
There will be a hearing on:
Date: Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Time: 7:00 PM
Place: Community Board, 1865 Broadway, NY,
NY
If you are a survivor of Shlomo Carlebach and feel
comfortable speaking out publicly, please attend this hearing. We want your
voice to be heard.
We need everyone to show support to all of the women
who are "alleged" victims of this man. We need you to be there to speak for
those who can't.
If you are unable to attend you can also send a letter
for public record. Please cc a copy of your letters to The Awareness Center.
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
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach singing
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.
Letters to the Community Board #7 (New York
City) regarding street naming
If you have written a letter protesting a street
being named after Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach in New York City, sent it to Community
Board #7, and would like it publicially posted here, please send the entire
letter to
vickipolin@theawarenesscenter.org.
You also MUST include a note giving permission to The Awareness Center
to post your letter on this web page.
From Victoria Polin, Executive
Director - The Awareness Center
Community Board #7
1865 Broadway, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10023
(212) 603-3080
email: office@cb7.org
RE: Official Statement - Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach
Street Naming Issue
Dear Ms. Ryan and members of Community Board #7,
I want to thank you for letting
The Awareness Center have
a voice in the matter of a street being named after Rabbi Shlomo
Carlebach.
The Awareness Center is the Jewish Coalition Against
Sexual Abuse and Assault. We are an international educational advocacy
group that focuses on issues pertaining to sexual victimization in Jewish
communities around the globe. Due to the nature of our work we have
no other option but to take a firm stand against a street being named
after Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach.
Over the last 2 years The Awareness Center
has received numerous phone calls from women stating they were sexually
victimized by Rabbi Carlebach in their childhood or as young
adults. One woman stated that she was 13 years old when she
was raped by Rabbi Shlomo Carlbach. The oldest woman who called the
Awareness Center is now in her 60's. This brave woman is reminded every
anniversary of her "alleged" assault with flashbacks of that night. Two other
women made claims they had become pregnant as a result of his alleged
assaults. We cannot prove or disprove any of these claims but the sheer
number should speak for themselves.
On average The Awareness Center receives at least one
call a month from another woman making allegations of sexual assault by Rabbi
Shlomo Carlebach. There are periods of time, usually around the anniversary
of his death, that we average about one or two calls a week.
To honor an "alleged" serial rapist/child molester,
by having a street named after him would be a dishonor to all of the women
and teenaged girls he "allegedly" victimized. I would hate to think that
New York would be known as the city that names streets after "alleged" sexual
predators.
Sincerely,
Victoria Polin, MA, ATR, LCPC
Executive Director - The Awareness Center
For more information regarding the Case of Rabbi Shlomo
Carlebach, please go to:
While I cannot speak to direct issues with Rabbi Shlomo
Carlebach, I can report that as a congregational rabbi in the later 1980s
I heard from a woman congregant who had come under Rabbi Carlebach's influence
that on several occasions he phoned both her and her teenage daughter in
the middle of the night with sexually charged calls.
This information was not solicited on my part and I
have no reason to doubt the accuracy of her statements.
Rabbi Carlebach did a lot of good, but he also had
a serious "shadow side" for which as I understand it, he never repented,
at least in any kind of formal or public way.
I urge the City of New York NOT to honor this man with
the change of street name.
Members of the Carlebach shul are attempting to get
the area of 79th and West End Ave. named after Shlomo Carlebach. A petition
is being circulated in the neighborhood for approval.
There will be a hearing on:
Date: Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Time: 7:00 PM (it's suggest you arrive an hour
early to insure you can get in)
Place: AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY BUILDING
1865 Broadway (and 61st Street)
New York City.
If you are a survivor of Shlomo Carlebach and feel
comfortable speaking out publicly, please attend this hearing. We want your
voice to be heard.
We need everyone to show support to all of the women
who are "alleged" victims of this man. We need you to be there to speak for
those who can't.
If you are unable to attend you can also send a letter
for public record. Please cc a copy of your letters to The Awareness Center.
I spoke to Ms. Penny Ryan this afternoon who works
at Community Board #7. She told me that the Members of the Carlebach shul
withdrew their application to have a street named after Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach.
Needless to say there will be no hearing on the topic tonight. It is possible
that a new application could be submitted, and if that occurs we will notify
you at once.
I wanted to personally thank everyone who sent e-mails,
snail mail letters and/or made telephone calls on behalf of the of the women
who made allegations of sexual misconduct by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. You
helped them have a voice.
If you have any questions regarding this matter
contact:
As many of you may remember last month
Adam Dickter wrote an article for the Jewish Week regarding
the issue of a street in New York potentially being named after Rabbi Shlomo
Carlebach. In the article it mentioned that in honor of Shlomo's 10th anniversary
of his death, the Carlebach Shul was organizing a conference to honor his
memory. It has just come to my attention that
the Carlebach
conference is being cosponsored by the JCC of Manhattan, and will be
held in a few weeks (October 28-31, 2004).
As the executive director of The Awareness Center (which
is the international organization that addresses sexual violence in Jewish
communities around the world), I feel the need to speak out on behalf of
all of Shlomo's "alleged" victim/survivors.
We have a huge problem on our hands. How can we sit
back and ignore the fact that Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach had a "reputation with
women"? There have been allegations that this great outreach worker, who
was a master at Kiruv work -- was also an "alleged" serial child
molester/rapist.
During the years of Carlebach's reign of "alleged"
terror on teenage girls and young adult women, some of his victims attempted
to speak out. They were met with the standard statements of the times: "Boys
will be boys"; "Shlomo, he's a genius, this is what comes with his over
zealousness"; "He can't help himself with his own sexuality, he gets
excited".
The Awareness Center feel's it is important to point
out that the youngest survivor we are aware of, was only 13-years-old when
her "alleged" sexual assault occurred. When an adult has sexual relations
with a thirteen-year-old, it can never be considered consensual. It is called
statutory rape.
The Awareness Center desperately needs your help! Please
contact the JCC of Manhattan and let them know how you feel about them
cosponsoring the Carlebach Conference. You may also want to suggest that
all proceeds from the Carlebach conference be used to reimburse/fund all
of the alleged survivors of Carlebach for the pain and suffering they were
forced to endure, pay for therapy to help them heal.
The Awareness Center is looking for survivors of Rabbi
Shlomo Carlebach who would want to be interviewed by a journalist and have
their story published. If you are interested, please contact
Vicki Polin for more
information.
The Awareness Center asks each and everyone one of
you to send a letter to Gary
Rosenblatt, editor of the New York Jewish Week. Please let him know how
you feel about the following article. Please
cc the letter to The Awareness
Center. Also send us a note allowing us to publish your letter on our
web page.
Some of you may be aware of the fact that for the last
10 years there has been a movement to glorify the accomplishments of a man
named Shlomo Carlebach. The Awareness Center firmly believes there is a problem
in doing this. There have been numerous accusations that Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach
sexually harassed and assaulted many young women, and sexually assaulted/abused
a few teenage girls.
This week the Jewish week published an article that
barely mentioned these facts. In the article that was written by Jonathan
Mark he quoted his sister Naomi Mark and her colleague Michelle Friedman,
with the following:
"Dr. Michelle Friedman, who teaches pastoral counseling
at the rabbinical seminary Yeshiva Chovevei Torah and with Naomi Mark, a
psychotherapist in the Orthodox community, led a workshop at the conference
on rabbinical boundaries, said: "Where there is smoke there may not be fire,
but there's an issue. Shlomo was known to be very charismatic and seductive.
To the degree that these stories come up, I have to respect that something
happened to somebody. It's sad. But I think it's great that this next generation
of Carlebach people included this issue in the conference."
Mark said in the workshop that it wasn't fair to
view the allegations of events in the 1960s with the moral perspective of
2004. "
Rabbi Zalman Shachter-Shalomi states:
"Zalman advised the participants, "I beg of you,
in the name of [Shlomo] ... that you should keep your heart open" and be
as inviting and as generous as Shlomo was."
Rabbi Avi Weiss added, "I believe no Jew has met
more Jews in his or her lifetime than Shlomo Carlebach. And yes, I remember
the way he was shunned, the way he was maligned. Many people promised they
would pay him and didn't pay him."
Please note that Marks, Weiss and Shachter area
also very strong supporters of
Rabbi Mordechai
Gafni who confessed publically that he had sexual relations with a 13
year old girl.
`Really," Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach used to wonder aloud,
"what does anyone know?"
He'd be referring to God's mysteries, or to those
conventional Jews who didn't understand the mysteries that were all his
own.
Last week, on the 10th yahrtzeit of Reb Shlomo, a four-day
conference on and commemoration of the most towering Jewish composer, singer
and storyteller of modern rabbinic times reminded most of the participants
that they wished they could have known him better and longer, hoping that
even now he could know how much he is still loved.
If emotion was more in the fore than academic analysis,
well, this was a Carlebach event, after all, held at Manhattan's Jewish Community
Center and organized by the West 79th Street shul that bears his name.
The First International Carlebach Conference, as it
was billed, attracted hundreds from what have become known as "Carlebach
minyans" around the world, services that rely solely on his music and spirit
— perhaps the greatest phenomenon in the Jewish prayer service over
the decade of his absence.
Rabbi
Zalman Shachter-Shalomi, the spiritual leader of the Jewish Renewal movement,
said in his taped message from Colorado, "Heilege Reb Shloimoleh, I miss
you. With whom can I talk? ... You and I felt the pain of our people who
were separated from the Rabbano Shel Olam [the Master of the Universe]. So
we did what we could. You and I went with first names, people called you
Shlomo, they called me Zalman, never mind Rabbi Carlebach, because we wanted
to lower the threshold so that people could have easy access to us, so they
could come close."
"Everywhere I go, wherever people are davening, they're
using your niggunim [spiritual melodies]. They don't even know where they
came from," he said.
Zalman spoke of an ad he saw for a rabbi in a traditional
Orthodox shul.
"One of the requirements was that he should have to
do a Carlebach service from time to time," he said. "I think that should
give you nachas."
Jacob Birnbaum, the founder of the Student Struggle
for Soviet Jewry, recalled asking Shlomo to compose what became the great
anthem of Jewish activism, "Am Yisrael Chai."
Rabbi
Avi Weiss added, "I believe no Jew has met more Jews in his or her lifetime
than Shlomo Carlebach. And yes, I remember the way he was shunned, the way
he was maligned. Many people promised they would pay him and didn't pay
him."
Rabbi Weiss recalled that Shlomo was the musical voice
of the Soviet Jewry movement, "but when the movement reached its crescendo
in December of 1987, and 200,000 Jews came to Washington ... he wasn't
invited."
But a new generation only knows the joy.
Fran Kritz, a writer in Washington, came with her
9-year-old son, Matthew, a Carlebach fan. She wanted him to know that a davening,
a weekday davening in particular, could be as ethereal beyond what he had
ever been exposed to, a morning service performed with musical instruments
and Shlomo's touch.
It was "even a little disorganized," Kritz said, "which
was also good for him to see, but once the davening got started it was with
everyone's heart."
Zalman spoke of Shlomo's gift for teaching "chasidus,"
the teachings of the chasidic masters.
"When I think about the sea of books that are coming
out about chasidus and Izhbitz [19th century Rebbe Mordechai Yosef Leiner];
Izhbitz was unknown to many people," Zalman said in speaking to Shlomo. "I
didn't know about Izhbitz until you told me."
Referring to Shlomo's retelling of chasidic stories
and teachings, Zalman said that when he looked up the stories in their original
chasidic texts, they were so short, "as if in a telegram. But you, you looked
at them, you opened them up, you told them as if you could see all the details,
a movie unfolding. That's the reason I called you a genius in `virtuous reality,'
when you told of [such self-sacrifice and virtue], the longing you implanted
in our heart, that we could become like your heroes, like the poor shleppers,
you made us at least temporary citizens in a world of such goodness."
Itzik Aisenstadt, a friend of Shlomo's since the 1950s,
remembered in an introduction to his singing a Carlebach rarity a snowy February
night when the two of them took a subway, trudging to a small Canarsie shul
for an early performance.
Itzik — it was a conference of first names —
recalled Shlomo singing his nascent classics "Esa Eini" and "Hashmi'eni."
And in that Brooklyn shul, in an upstairs apartment, Shlomo sat down and
composed a melody.
In those days before tape recorders, Itzik and Shlomo
took a subway in the middle of the night to the recording engineer at Vanguard
Records, for whom Shlomo recorded "Live At The Village Gate" (1963) and "In
the Palace of The King" (1965). There Shlomo hooked up a tape recorder and
started singing. Then Itzik began to sing that same lilting, wordless melody
as free floating and as lonely as the snowflakes must have been on that long
ago night.
Rabbi
Nechemia Polen, professor of Jewish thought and director of the Hasidic
Text Institute at Hebrew College in Boston, offered a session on Shlomo's
philosophy of giving a rebbe's blessing, or bracha, "drawing on the beauty
of the past, and giving permission to project that into the future so that
you can be even more beautiful, more powerful and more radiant."
"Before any specificity of request or a grant," Polen
said, "a bracha means the acknowledgement of the humanity of the other, and
that was the essence of Shlomo."
The opposite of a bracha, Polen said, is to walk into
a place of Torah and no one is aware of your presence. He recalled that one
of his relatives moved to the Upper West Side about 15 years ago knowing
no one. He heard about a Torah study on Friday night in a particular home.
He goes to the apartment, and they look at him with puzzlement. They tell
him it was by invitation only.
"You can imagine how he felt," Polen said. "They didn't
curse him, but they did. So he goes walking on West End Avenue. It's a Friday
night, but now he doesn't feel Shabbosdik. And who is coming his way but
Shlomo."
Shlomo, said Polen, went "Ssssss," as if the moment
was sizzling, "saying, `Holy brother! How are you?' "
Shlomo acted like he'd been waiting for this man all
his life.
"My relative, who was really feeling down, had met
Shlomo only once, years before, and said, `Shlomo, would you cut out that
`holy brother' shtick? You don't even know who I am,' " Polen said. "And
Shlomo says, completely without anger, `What do you mean? I just met your
sister Laurie in Boston two weeks ago.'
"That was Shlomo," said Polen. "He might have had a
difficult time remembering when he had to be somewhere, but he never seemed
to forget a single person he had sung, danced or davened with."
But Shlomo's legacy has been posthumously tainted with
accusations by several women — none of whom were congregants —
of unwanted groping and sexual overtures.
Dr. Michelle Friedman, who teaches pastoral counseling
at the rabbinical seminary Yeshiva Chovevei Torah and with Naomi Mark, a
psychotherapist in the Orthodox community, led a workshop at the conference
on rabbinical boundaries, said: "Where there is smoke there may not be fire,
but there's an issue. Shlomo was known to be very charismatic and seductive.
To the degree that these stories come up, I have to respect that something
happened to somebody. It's sad. But I think it's great that this next generation
of Carlebach people included this issue in the conference."
Mark said in the workshop that it wasn't fair to view
the allegations of events in the 1960s with the moral perspective of
2004.
Zalman advised the participants, "I beg of you, in
the name of [Shlomo] ... that you should keep your heart open" and be as
inviting and as generous as Shlomo was.
He reminded the conference participants, "You are the
ones who make it possible for Reb Shlomo that [he] should shine all over
the world."
By Israel David Fishman (unpublished at this
time)
Novemeber 3, 2004
Dear Editor,
I was distressed to read Jonathan Mark's report of
the recent Carlebach conference which barely mentioned the many accusations
that Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, over a period of many, many years, sexually
harassed and assaulted many teenage girls and young women. The article was
not at all balanced but seemed instead to perpetuate the glorification of
this man's accomplishments.
I am very much concerned about the honoring of such
a man - - without doubt, a great man -- a man who has had such a major role
in influencing people from all walks of life, Jewish and non-Jewish, religious
and secular - a man who was a truly revolutionary spirit, a path breaker,
a unique soul. Yet this very man also had a very dark shadow side, whom many
women claimed conducted sexual misconduct and sexual molestation over a period
of many decades including child molestation and rape.
If Rabbi Shlomo was alive today he would have to face
these charges. He should not be made into a "Tzaddik." It appears he was
an sex offender. His victims need to be heard.
I am very distressed that such a highly regarded paper
such as The Jewish Week would write an article glorifying Rabbi Shlomo to
the extent that it did. What kind of a message does this send out to the
community? That victims should continue to remain silent and not tarnish
the memory of a saintly figure? That it is okay for a rabbi, a trusted leader,
a great and revered man to get away with sexual assault and abuse?
It is to say the least, unfortunate that Naomi Mark,
who participated in this conference, is quoted as having said that "that
it wasn't fair to view the allegations of events in the 1960s with the moral
perspective of 2004" The actions of Rabbi Shlomo in the 1960's is continuing
to cause suffering in his victims to this very day.
Israel David Fishman
Brooklyn, New York _________________________________________________________________________________
* Rabbi Yehoshua Witt, Moshav Meor Modiim in the Holy
Land
Avraham Aryeh Trugman, Director, Ohr Chadash!!
Yaakov Jake Rachmana, Zusya Frumin, House of Love
and Prayer
Elsewhere in the Holy Land
Elana Schachter, High Priestess of the House of Love
and Prayer
Joe Schoenwald, High Priest of the "Leader Minyan"
Dovidl Zeller, House of Love and Prayer and Yakar
Center.
* Elya Succot, House of Love and Prayer and
Breslov
* Mikha Odenheimer
Moshe Rothkopf, MD
* Joel Glick, Yeshivat Hachmat haLev.
* Shalom Brodt, Kolel Simchat Shlomo.
Simcha Hochbaum, Hevron and Beit Shemesh.
Yankele Shammes, House of Love and Prayer, the Moshav
and Kadita
Professor Yehoshua Haym Ritchie, MD. House of Love
and Prayer, Spiritual Director of Milev Center for Crisis Counseling
* Yitzhak Muller
USA
Northeast -- New York City
* Rabbi Shmuel Chaym (Brother Sam) Intrator, Kavana
Life Foundation
* Rabbi Naftali Citron, Cong Kehilat Jacob
Dovidl Staloff, high priest of cyberspace
* Rabbi Haym Wahrman, Millenery Synagogue
Mindy Ribner, Bet Miriam, the Jewish Meditation
Center
* Joel Dinnerstein of the House of Love and Prayer
and Rav of Ohr Ki Tov Carlebach Chassidim of Flatbush, NY
* Eliezer Garner, Rocking Rabbi, House of Love and
Prayer and Or Pnimi
* Steve Blumberg, Congregation Shalom Rav
* Yisroel Finman, House of Love and Prayer, NISHMAT
KOL CHAI and Rav of Long Island Chassidic Center, Rosedale, NY
Yitzhak Buxbaum, Maggid
* Yitzhak Fried, Rav of Cong Bnei Moses Joseph
Zwe Padeh, Rosh Yeshiva of Bayit Chadash of New York
City
Northeast -- Outside NYC
* Barukh HaKohen Melman
* Nossan and Chana Schafer of the House of Love and
Prayer, Sharon MA
* Shmuel Stauber of the House of Love and Prayer, Achdut
Group.
* Yaakov Kelman, Member Vaad HaRabbanim of Albany,
NY
Los Angeles
David Montag of the House of Love and Prayer
* Hillel Borera-Bensalem, Rav of Sephardic Congregation
of LA
* Shlomo "Schwartzy" Schwartz, House of Love
and Prayer and Chabad-Lubavitch Shaliach to UCLA
Mimi Feigelson
Dr. Simcha Sheldon, Phd, Member of Vaad HaRabbanim
of LA, DIRECTOR - Loving Heart Fellowship Commited to Creating Unity in the
Jewish Community, Venice, CA
Eugene, Oregon
Aryea Hirschfield, Shivti Shalom
Yitzhak Husbands-Hankin, Shivti Shalom
Colorado
Menashe Bovit, Jewish Life Center of Fort Collins,
CO, Country Rebbe Radio Show 1368 AM
Howard Hoffman, Torah Research Institute of
Denver
Joseph Cooper, House of Love and Prayer and
Boulder.
North America -- elsewhere
Itzchak Marmorstein, Director of Mercaz HaRayah -
Vancouver BC, CA
Eliyahu J. Klein, DIRECTOR - TiKRI-Traditional
Kabbalah Research Institute, Berkeley, Ca 94702
Call to Action: Accountability in the Portrayal
of Shlomo Carlebach --
Tzadduk (saint)? Serial Sexual
Predator?
November 12, 2004
Some of you may be aware of the fact that for the last
10 years there has been a movement to glorify the accomplishments of a man
named Shlomo Carlebach. The Awareness Center firmly believes there is a problem
in doing this. There have been numerous accusations that Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach
sexually harassed and assaulted many young women, and sexually assaulted/abused
a few teenage girls.
The Awareness Center is looking for survivors of Rabbi
Shlomo Carlebach who would want to be interviewed by a journalist and have
their story published. If you are interested, please contact
Vicki Polin for more
information.
The Awareness Center asks that when ever an article
comes out regarding Shlomo Carlebach you it to us, including a link on the
page it was found.
The Awareness Center asks that you write letters to
editors requesting accountability in the portrayl of Shlomo Carlebach. Please
forward your letters to The Awareness Center and send a note giving us permission
to publish your letter on our web page.
Yaacov Weintraub was a teenager in the 1980s when he
met Shlomo Carlebach at a weekend retreat.
Like many others, Weintraub was drawn to the singing,
guitar-playing rabbi who called himself just "Shlomo." He became a
devotee.
"He said, 'Take my card,' " Weintraub recalls. Weintraub
took the slip of paper, and a decade and a half later he's still holding
onto it.
He's hanging onto some of Carlebach's spiritual fervor
as well.
With a foot-long ponytail hanging down his back and
a Rastafarian-inspired kipah on his head, Weintraub sang, clapped his hands
and thumped on the tables with some 85 attendees at the First International
Carlebach Conference, which took place in New York City on Oct. 28-31.
The forum was held in honor of Carlebach's 10th yarzheit,
or anniversary of his death, which was Sunday.
True to Carlebach's most significant legacy —
his music — attendees danced to joyful niggunim, or tunes, and shook
tambourines and maracas.
But while Carlebach is most known for his music, in
the decade since his death a legion of healers, meditators, activists and
artists have relied on Carlebach's philosophy of open-minded, inclusive
spirituality to continue their leader's legacy.
"In broad words, it's an ode to Shlomo," said Hadassah
Carlebach, the late rabbi's sister-in-law.
"Everybody feels they own a piece of Shlomo, yet we
have to give it back to him somehow."
Carlebach's greatest legacy, his followers say, was
that he taught Chasidic lessons to a broad spectrum of Jews in an inclusive
and open-minded way through concerts and retreats.
Their activism is also a matter of making sure Carlebach's
legacy continues, since no spiritual leader has taken his place since his
death.
"For me the question is, now that he is no longer alive,
there are only so many times you can tell his stories without saying, 'Well,
how do we go forward in this new situation?' " said Naftali Citron, Carlebach's
great- nephew and the rabbi of the Carlebach Shul in New York City.
"We love Shlomo, but his name is best served by not
just stopping at what he did but continuing with his inspiration and doing
more," Citron said.
Carlebach was born in 1925 in Berlin. His family later
fled Nazi Germany, eventually landing in New York. There his father became
rabbi of the Upper West Side's Congregation Kehilath Jacob, now the Carlebach
Shul.
Carlebach was educated in the Chasidic tradition. As
one of the first emissaries of the Lubavitch movement on college campuses
— along with Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, leader of the Jewish Renewal
movement — Carlebach turned many Jews on to Chasidic spirituality.
Breaking away in the 1950s over his more progressive
attitudes toward women's role in spiritual life and over Judaism's laws that
prevent men and women from touching each other outside of marriage, Carlebach
founded the House of Love and Prayer in the San Francisco area and a moshav
in Israel called Me'or Modi'im. He then returned to his father's synagogue
in New York, which he made into the headquarters for his unique approach
to Judaism.
Accusations of impropriety with female followers decades
ago have cast a shadow on Carlebach's name in recent years, but for loyal
followers, the rabbi who insisted on being called by his first name, who
stood in the back of the synagogue and who called congregants brother and
sister, remains a heroic figure.
In the decade since Carlebach's death, the movement
has adapted to not having a leader who connected the dots among his disparate
followers by sheer force of charisma, Citron said
But to survive, Citron said, the movement will have
to organize Carlebach's followers.
"It's by and large a grass-roots movement, but, yeah,
we are trying to create" a more formal organization "for people in this kind
of movement to come together and have organizational support if they need
it," Citron said.
Rabbi Sholom Brodt, for example, came to New York from
Israel carrying news of Yeshivat Simchat Shlomo, a new school inspired by
Carlebach's teaching.
"He emphasized in teaching how to relate to people,
how to live your Judaism not with your head but also with your heart," Brodt
said. It's about "joy in the service of Hashem; to celebrate Judaism, not
see it as a yoke."
Ten years after his death, his headquarters and his
name are the ties that bind followers of his philosophy around the country.
His daughter, Neshama, has continued his musical legacy, and Citron is now
head of the Carlebach Shul.
Carlebach minyans, or prayer groups, use his tunes
during services, weddings and other celebrations. In fact, his tunes have
become so prevalent even in mainstream American Jewish life that many Jews
sing them in synagogue without being aware that Carlebach wrote them.
His teachings endure, propagated by those who were
inspired by Carlebach during his life. For example, hospital chaplain Rabbi
Nossen Schafer and his wife, Channah, a psychotherapist, use Carlebach's
approach to healing in their work.
Channah Schafer told a story about a young leukemia
patient who was unconscious until a group of friends danced and sang in prayer
at her sickbed.
"You need to heal the soul to heal a sick body," she
said.
"Shlomo taught a way of feeling God's presence and
helping others find God's presence in their lives. That's what healing is
all about," Nossen Schafer said.
Appropriating Carlebach's method of helping others
resonates for leaders of the movement today.
"I am not Shlomo and I know that and I am not trying
to be him, but he did awesome stuff, so what can I do to make awesome stuff
happen in this day?" Citron said.
The world has changed since Carlebach's passing, Citron
said, ticking off changes to the economy, the threat of terrorism and growing
anti-Semitism.
"How do I be in this new time with what Reb Shlomo
taught?" he asked.
For Melinda Ribner, a Carlebach disciple who teaches
Jewish meditation, it means being able to "connect upwards and bring down
an influx of light and healing" through meditation.
"Shlomo lived in this consciousness of meditation,
being aware of God's presence continually," she said. "I help people to be
able to have that experience more directly."
According to Citron, Carlebach's legacy is being
strengthened by new efforts. Under Citron's leadership, for example, the
Carlebach Shul has added a music program for children and teens and will
launch an anti-drug program.
"This derech," or path, "is not in the past. It wasn't
canonized as halachah," or Jewish law, said Citron. "Shlomo created a spiritual
trail."
This story reprinted courtesy of the Jewish Telegraphic
Agency.
Letter to the Editor regarding Rabbi Shlomo
Carlebach (Baltimore Jewish Times)
November 12, 2004
To: Phil Jacobs, Editor
Baltimore Jewish Times
pjacobs@jewishtimes.com
Dear Phil,
I need to admit that I am extremely disappointed with
the Baltimore Jewish Times decision in reprinting the current JTA article
on Shlomo Carlebach. It would NOT have been difficult to rewrite this article
or to have made additions in being more accurate in describing the allegations
that have surrounded Shlomo Carlebach since the beginning of his kiruv (outreach)
work.
I want to point out that article briefly mentions that
Carlebach was forced to leave the orthodox world after allegations of sexual
misconduct were made over and over again. I am also appauled at the choice
of words "progressive attitudes" used to describe his harassment, abuse and
assault of women.
Breaking away in the 1950s over his more progressive
attitudes toward women's role in spiritual life and over Judaism's laws that
prevent men and women from touching each other outside of marriage, Carlebach
founded the House of Love and Prayer in the San Francisco area and a moshav
in Israel called Me'or Modi'im. He then returned to his father's synagogue
in New York, which he made into the headquarters for his unique approach
to Judaism.
I wonder what most of Shlomo's survivors would have
to say about the quote of Hadassah Carlebach:
"Everybody feels they own a piece of Shlomo, yet
we have to give it back to him somehow."
Shlomo Carlebach took more from his alleged survivors
then he gave them. Many of them either no longer have a connection to Judaism
or a Jewish community, or left Judaism for other religions all together.
Where is this mentioned in the story?
I wonder what psychotherapist Channah Schafer and her
husband Nossen have to say about Shlomo Carlebach after spending a day with
a few dozen of Carlebach's alleged victims? Would they still feel "you could
feel God's presence" when singing his songs? Would they still say his songs
would have the "healing touch"?
Rabbi Naftali Citron, Carlebach's great- nephew and
the rabbi of the Carlebach Shul in New York City is quoted in saying:
"I am not Shlomo and I know that and I am not trying
to be him, but he did awesome stuff, so what can I do to make awesome stuff
happen in this day?".
"Carlebach's legacy is being strengthened by new
efforts. Under Citron's leadership, for example, the Carlebach Shul has added
a music program for children and teens and will launch an anti-drug
program".
The Awareness Center feels it would be wiser for those
connected to the Carlebach Shul and the foundation to be starting an anti-rape
campaign to raise funds to do what ever they can to help heal the women who
were allegedly sexually harassed, abused and assaulted by Shlomo Carlebach.
I believe that is exactly what they would need to do if they really want
to promote healing for the generations to come.
The next time you think about going to a "Carlebach
Minyon", or anything named after him, please remember this story. Please
forward it to every rabbi you know. Let's stop making this man into a tzaddik
(saint).
My ex was a Carlebach groupie. She had come from Boston
to New York in order to study Judaism, and especially to be near Carlebach.
I met her at a class, we dated and were married on May 31, 1976. Carlebach
co-officiated at the wedding with my rabbi. Having myself worked in "kiruv"
I had a very high opinion of the man, and chalked up his hugging and kissing
of women to his self sacrificing for the sake of others.
About a week and a half after our wedding, my wife
told me that Shlomo Carlebach was running a retreat before his departure
for Israel for the summer. She told me that she "must be there" and I accompanied
her. I was surprised to see violations of Halachah not connected to kiruv.
When I mentioned this to my wife, I was shocked to hear her say "I know all
about Shlomo's sins, and I pray every day that I may be a Kappara (atonement,
a surrogate receiver of punishment) for his sins! Please don't talk about
it, because words have power."
I asked her if there was anything romantic between
them, at which she replied with longing "We both know I'm not what he
needs."
Shlomo Carlebach went off to Israel, and the summer
passed happily. September came, Shlomo Carlebach returned, and she began
disappearing one night a week to attend his lecture-concerts which he held
at the B'nai Jeshurun synagogue in Manhattan (at the time, I was serving
as rabbi in "location removed").
In October, we learned that my wife was expecting.
She told Carlebach of my disapproval of his actions. He told her "Get out
fast." My wife left me a few days later. This was 5 days after finding out
that she was carrying our child.
I sought out Shlomo Carlebach and confronted him about
telling a married woman, and expectant mother, to "get out fast." His wife,
Ne'ila, began to berate me indignantly, saying "How dare you? My husband
is such a tzaddik, when he dies the angels will carry him to heaven!
Carlebach then smiled, and said to me "who are you?
You're a rabbi in a Conservative Synagogue!"
When my wife asked me for money, I asked her why she
didn't go to Carlebach for it. She said "He's never there when you need
him."
She often said "I'm 95% Shlomo, and when he looks into
my eyes I'm 100% Shlomo." This quote had the judge and court stenographer
in stitches at the divorce proceedings, but to me it was no joke: it spelled
out cult.
After the divorce she moved in with another Carlebach
groupie who was married with 4 children. He soon divorced his wife and married
my ex.
These events were well known in New York frum circles,
I began to get numerous calls of support from sympathetic strangers. Among
them, were many calls from people, both men and women, who had had similar
experiences.
A noteworthy point, among his groupies "holy" was
synonymous with "feels good." Unlike many others, my story has a happy ending.
I remarried about a year later. My second wife and I are very happy, and
have been blessed with seven wonderful children.
My daughter from my first marriage grew up being told
that her mother had to run away, since I "Hate kids, and wanted her to have
an abortion." Two and a half years ago she found my website, contacted me
to find out the truth (her step father was also taken in by the abortion
story).
We are now, thank G-d, very close. As a child, her
mother took her to see Shlomo Carlebach, where she was very turned off by
the things she saw. It pains me greatly that I was denied by this ego maniac
the basic right to live my life with my chosen wife and my firstborn child.
My children all grew up in the shadow of these events. Carlebach songs were
never allowed in our home.
Whenever I go to a wedding or other Simcha where his
songs are played, I am saddened. I am sad for my daughter who grew up without
her father, I am sad for my ex who was so used and abused by this man's mile
high ego, I am sad for all the unhappiness he left in his wake for so many
people. I am sad that this evil man is now considered a tzaddik by so
many.
P.S. Some of the people who called me at the
time told me that there were actually warrants out for Shlomo Carlebach's
arrest in several states for alienation of affection (not a crime in New
York, but a felony in many states). I never checked this out, but you may
want to.
It was a warm summer afternoon in 1974 and I was out in the back yard playing
baseball with my brother when my mom called out, "Phone call, Ariela Hurry!
It's a rabbi in New York!"
I raced inside, my heart pounding. A long distance call for me? A rabbi?
Wow! Maybe it's a response to my letter! When I heard a voice say, "Hello,
Ariela; this is Shlomo Carlebach," I was filled with immense joy. My letter
had not only reached him - a great rabbi, teacher, and musician - but he
had read it, and been motivated to pick up the phone and call me, a lonely
sixteen-year old searching for spiritual sustenance.
I had felt alone with my religious thoughts and feelings until the day a
few weeks before when I had read a full-page interview with Rabbi Carlebach
in our local Jewish weekly. I was thrilled to read what Shlomo said about
the spiritual hunger of young people. Deeply moved, I felt compelled to write
to Rabbi Carlebach and thank him for all he had said in his interview. I
told him that I was seeking, and that I had many questions. In my letter
I said that I imagined Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed and other great spiritual
teachers sharing a round-table in Heaven, discussing how best to help humanity.
I had felt a little nervous writing that, but since he seemed to have such
an open, loving heart I felt encouraged to be completely honest. And now
he was telling me how special and wise I was! He asked me to introduce myself
to him in person the next time he visited Vancouver. I looked forward to
that. Maybe he could be my teacher, and I could come to know the Jewish faith
deeply, and live it the way he did.
At this time, although I had been brought up in a Conservative Synagogue,
I was going by myself to the Orthodox synagogue because I hoped there I would
find people living Judaism with more `kevanah'. I told my peers at this synagogue
about Shlomo's call. The Orthodox shul was planning a concert with
Shlomo in the near future. "But be careful," my friends warned. "Shlomo is
renowned for having many special female `friends'."
When he came to Vancouver I felt torn. I wanted to go up to him after the
concert and tell him I was the `special and wise' person who had sent him
the letter; but I didn't want to be duped by a man who was actually looking
to satisfy his lust. So I stayed well back and observed him from afar. Yes,
he clearly was hugging and kissing a lot of young women, and it made me
uncomfortable. Disappointed, I chose not to say hello.
And so we didn't meet in person until 1991. After high school I attended
a Yeshiva for six months, and then married a non-Jew after my first year
of college. I continued my spiritual search but to please my father I tried
to raise my three children as Jews. My marriage was very unhappy, and at
twenty-five I became a single mother. The week after my oldest child celebrated
her Bat Mitzvah, Rabbi Carlebach gave a concert in the very same room in
which her Bat Mitzvah had taken place. Invited to attend, I went expecting
to enjoy his melodies, sing along, and share in the holy atmosphere he was
so gifted in creating. During Shlomo's concerts it seemed to me as if he
broke down the walls between Heaven and earth, and made me feel as if we
were singing at God's throne, together with other beloved souls who loved
God too.
Throughout the concert Rabbi Carlebach's eyes often looked over at me and
I knew he had noticed me. After the concert, as people filed past him on
their way home, and he hugged them good-bye, he stopped me and asked me if
we had met before. I explained that although we had never met, he had phoned
me after receiving a letter from me when I was sixteen. "And how is it that
we have not stayed in touch all these years?" he asked me.
He told me that we must keep in touch this time, that we needed to talk,
and he asked for my phone number. I had not heard any rumors about Shlomo
in the years since the last concert I attended. I was still hoping to feel
at home in the Jewish community, and still filled with questions. So, hopeful
that maybe now I had found my teacher, I gave him my number.
Very late that night, I was awakened by a call. I was stunned to hear
Shlomo's voice, "Could you meet me for breakfast at my hotel in the morning?"
he asked. I told him that I had heard rumors about him and women. I told
him that I was seeking a place for myself in Judaism, and that I would love
to learn from him. I asked him if he understood that I only wanted to meet
with him for those reasons, and he said he did.
I felt a lot like I had after my phone call from him seventeen years earlier,
and in many ways I was still the same person: lonely, hopeful, yearning for
God, eager to learn how best to serve Him, excited to have others to share
the journey Home with, and excited to have a spiritual community. So excited
I couldn't sleep
I remember the beautiful sunny morning and the long bus ride to his hotel.
When I got there he wasn't in the lobby, and upon calling his room to let
him know I was there, he asked me to come up to his room. Somewhat frightened,
but ever hopeful, I went up and he immediately took me in his arms and
french-kissed me. I felt disgusted and disappointed, but rather than simply
leaving, I begged him to go back down to the lobby restaurant so we could
talk over breakfast.
It is very hard in retrospect to admit to my foolish and incredibly naïve
behaviour. It seems that my capacity for hope overrode my ability to believe
what was happening. From my own past experiences I have learned to blot out
parts of the picture that are too painful, and focus on that which is good.
Life is so filled with pain that this is a common coping mechanism. I wanted
someone to help me feel close to God. I wanted this very badly. And Shlomo
was clearly close to God. His sexual impulses were, to my way of thinking,
immoral, but that didn't mean he didn't have his gifts. He had incredible
gifts: to make melodies, to sing, to touch hearts. But Shlomo needed help
to overcome his addictions. The real tragedy to my mind is that his world-wide
Jewish community didn't hold him accountable for his sex addictions.
Shlomo went down to the restaurant with me but all his sparkle was gone.
He had no words of encouragement or wisdom for me. He seemed tired and lonely;
remote. I left disappointed once again.
And then the phone calls started. They were about every few weeks, sometimes
more frequent and sometimes less. He called from all over the U.S.A, Israel,
and South America. The calls were always past midnight, and roused me from
deep sleep. He spoke about his sexual attraction to me, and asked me intimate
questions about what I was wearing. He spoke about the exotic places he visited
and how he'd like to be there with me. His breathing was heavy and labored.
The scenario he described which disturbed me the most was when he talked
about taking me naked into the mikvah in his community in Israel.
Why didn't I get angry or hang up? It was the middle of the night and I was
fuzzy-headed. I felt uncertain of my own clarity of mind. He kept telling
me how special and incredibly spiritual I was and I wanted to believe him.
He said he loved me, and he talked often about our getting married. I was
lonely and wanted to believe that it was true: that I was special and wise
and therefore able to help him mend his ways. Maybe we could be a wonderful,
spiritual couple, I thought. I sent him many long loving letters to New York
and to his Moshav in Israel. I always expected him to write back, but he
never did. I told him over and over again that I needed him to teach me about
Judaism. I told him that I needed to be in love with Judaism the way he was.
I told him that after years of searching I still felt that I didn't belong,
and I was on the verge of giving up. I told him I was getting attracted to
Christianity and that I was even considering being baptized. He said nothing
to dissuade me nor did he ever offer me a teaching about Judaism. In fact,
since he often spoke of marriage, we laughed about the idea of a rabbi marrying
a Christian woman.
I invited Shlomo to stay with me in my home when he next came to Vancouver
to give a concert. I told my children that we might have a rabbi staying
with us. But when he came to Vancouver he never called or tried to see me.
He avoided me, and didn't even catch my eye at his concert. Finally I knew
his love wasn't sincere, and something was very wrong. I met another Jewish
woman who had received similar calls to mine. I spoke to him about it the
next time he called. "You need to make amends before you die. It's not too
late to own up to your problems and get help," I told him. He said he agreed
with me; that I was right, he did need to do something before it was too
late.
I don't know if Shlomo made any amends to any of the people he hurt. I
don't know how it stands between him and God today. But I do know that the
Jewish community let him down, and let down all those whom he hurt. They
enabled his sickness to perpetuate itself because he was never called to
account. And because of the blind eye that the Jewish community chooses to
cast on Shlomo's sins they choose to ignore those who were hurt, undermine
their pain, and isolate them on the fringes.
I said earlier that because of my own suffering I had learned to blot out
the truth and focus only on the good. It is a coping mechanism, but it is
not living in the real world. The Jewish family has known tremendous suffering,
and maybe they have collectively learned to blot out a truth which hurts,
which is that Shlomo sexually exploited women. After much therapy I have
learned not to blot out the truth, but to see it and let it guide me to good,
healthy choices. If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have given Shlomo
my phone number, or gone to his hotel room, or taken his calls in the night.
I wouldn't have written him letters or believed him when he spoke of marriage.
I would have been safe from harm.
I made appointments to see two rabbis about what Shlomo did: one through
my sister because she wanted me to get some healing, and one through a friend
for the same reason. One rabbi thought it wasn't very significant. The other
was more sympathetic and told me he wouldn't attend a Carlebach concert anymore.
I wrote about what had happened to me and sent an article to the same local
Jewish paper in which I had first read his interview. They didn't want to
publicize my experience. Even a woman I shared with at the synagogue I sometimes
attended told me to let it go and concentrate on all the good Shlomo had
done.
To this day I am very sad that Shlomo wasn't compelled to offer me any
encouragement in my spiritual quest to find my niche within Judaism. It is
often said that he would do anything to save one Jewish soul, but he did
nothing to save mine. I have been a practising Christian for the past ten
years and one thing that comforts me in my church is that when a minister
or priest is caught being abusive, the abuse is brought to light and the
abuser is held responsible for what he has done.
Reconciliation is only available to those hurt by Shlomo if Shlomo's community:
the Jewish community, opens their ears to hear the truth. They must find
the courage to remove their blinders, and apologize for having needed to
believe in Shlomo more than they needed to stand in truth before
God.
_________________________________________________________________________________ Stop the Music?
Excerpt from: "What to do with Abusive Rabbis: Halachic Considerations"
In 5719 (1959), R. Moshe Feinstein was asked to rule
on the permissibility of playing the music of a certain song writer who
was rumored to engage in disreputable behavior. (Teshuvot Iggerot Moshe,
Even Ha-Ezer, I, no. 96.) R. Feinstein distinguished between this
composer’s early compositions and his later ones. Any music written in
his early years when this individual comported himself appropriately remained permissible; at that time he behaved properly and his later activities
can not retroactively taint his prior achievements. One of the proofs
that R. Feinstein brought is from the case of a Torah scroll that was
written by a heretic—Jewish law requires that such a scroll be destroyed
so as not to perpetuate his name, reputation or achievements. (Hil.
Sefer Torah 6:8) However, the law also asserts that a scroll written
while that person was a true believer remains valid, even if he later
became an apostate.(Pit’hei Teshuvah, Yoreh De’ah 281, no. 2.)
Concerning subsequent musical compositions, R. Feinstein stated that
even those songs that this person wrote after his “reputation became
objectionable” are permissible because music, unlike Torah scrolls, have
no intrinsic holiness. Furthermore, the questionable activities had
nothing to do with undermining the fundamentals of Jewish belief but
rather with casualness with regard to the intermingling of the sexes
that were not in keeping with Orthodox norms. Such a lapse would not
render a Torah Scroll he wrote invalid; it would certainly not
disqualify his music. R. Feinstein wrote nothing about learning Torah
from this individual. However, based on R. Feinstein’s discussion, one
might distinguish between the teachings and insights of a heretic before
and after his apostacy: the earlier Torah would remain kosher; the
latter Torah would be banned.
That was 1959. Since then the
allegations about this individual have become more serious and his music
has been widely integrated into the prayer services of many congregations.
His music, as well as his stories and teachings, have become a
meaningful source of religious inspiration to generations of Jews and
has perpetuated his legacy. Alleged victims of this man have expressed
hurt and disillusionment over the community’s embrace of his music
and his personality. What would R. Feinstein have said if he were
responding to this question today?
Carlebach's Days in Lubavitch
CoLive.com - Nov 8, 2009
In his last interview, Reb Shlomo Carlebach spoke about his times in Lubavitch and an encounter on the New York subway.
By COLlive reporter
In the last interview Reb Shlomo Carlebach A"H gave before his passing on October 20, 1994, he spoke about his times in Lubavitch.
On the grave of "The Singing Rabbi" is engraved his days as a Chossid of the sixth Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn and his work for the present Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson.
By the early 60's, Carlebach had already left Lubavitch after some of
his outreach tactics were seen to be too extreme and not in line with
Halacha.
In this interview with Arutz 7 and published this past weekend in the
Israeli Sha'ah Tova magazine, Carlebach speaks of that time:
"Trust me, nothing in the world would move me out of the Yeshiva. But
although I learned in Lakewood, I was very connected then to the
Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe - the Rayatz.
"The current Rebbe was also a great and awesome genius. The Rebbe is
also deep and well versed until the high heaven. Each and every word of
the Torah is shines before his eyes.
"Every time I came from Lakewood, I entered the Lubavitch Headquarters
and would talk with the Rebbe about learning. The Rebbe wanted to know
what their are studying there, how are the shiurim, what Rambam do they
discuss. In a way I was his Shliach.
"Once I went in, after he had become Rebbe. He told me: 'Listen, I must make a deal with you, I want you to be my Shliach.
"I told him: 'I learn everyday." The Rebbe then told me: 'Forget about
yourself a little.' He really infused me with a new energy, and suddenly
I felt responsible for every Jew."
Did the Rebbe speak about music?
"No."
So what happened from then?
"I used to walk in the street and when I met a Jew I started talking
with him. When I started Lubavitch was not like it was now - that all
its energy is focused on outreach.
"When I used to take the subway I did not leave until I found at least one Jew.
"Once, 2 AM on the eve of Shavous, I was in Lubavitch and returned to Manhattan. I sat there and saw a young man full of joy.
"He looked Jewish. I walked over and asked him why are you so happy. He
said, 'I'm Jewish and thank G-d I'm getting married on Saturday to a non
Jew in a Church.'
"I told him: 'That's very nice that a Jew is marrying a gentile - to bring peace to the world.'
"Obviously if I would tell him the it's not right, I would not be able
to speak to him at all. So I told him, 'Its so wonderful. You should get
a blessing from the Rebbe.'
"He asked where is the Rebbe, I told him, 'I'm sure you know tomorrow
night is Shavuos. But tonight it is possible.' I had access to the Rebbe
in those days.
"we arrived at Lubavitch Headquarters at 3:30 AM. I knocked on the
Rebbe's door and told him: 'Holy Rebbe, I brought you a present for
Shavuos. A Jew that needs repair.'
"They spoke in the room until 7 AM. I have no idea about what, but I
know one thing: the young man left the room with swollen eyes. He never
saw her again."
Only in NY: Broadway Musical About Sexual Predator - Shlomo Carlebach
By Vicki Polin
Examiner - August 15, 2012
Can you imagine the horror faced by the hundreds of alleged sex abuse survivors of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach as they learn the musical “Soul Doctor” is making its way to Broadway?
“Soul Doctor” has been around for a few years far off-Broadway but does nothing more then to glorify a known serial sexual predator, who raged a war against women while they were searching to connect with their Jewish identity.
Shlomo Carlebach
was known to have been active from back in the early 1960s when he
first moved away from the Lubavitch chasidic in which he was from, until
his death in 1994. Throughout the years there have also been some
mumblings that Carlebach left his Lubavitch roots under pressure, due to
his “inability to maintain healthy boundaries with women”.
In 2004, in honor of the 10th anniversary of Shlomo Carlebach’s
passing, Neshoma and Dari Carlebach, along with members of the Carlebach
Shul in Manhattan attempted to rename West 79th street in New York City
“Rabbi Shlomo Carelbach Way”. After several CALLS TO ACTION, members
of The Awareness Center (international
Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault), were able to stop this
from happening, by pointing out that New York did not want to be known
as the city that names their streets after alleged sexual predators.
It was the 1960s, Shlomo Carelbach was like a rock star.
Most rabbonim were very aware of the complaints, yet weren’t trained in
dealing with such issues. You have to understand how things were
handled back then. Shlomo liked his women -- you ask why so many women
have been coming forward over the years claiming abuse? . . . “Let’s
just say Carlebach had at least one woman a week, but knowing Shlomo it
was more likely he had a few women a day -- times that by 40 years of
doing kiruv (Jewish outreach).
Dr. Marcia Cohn Spiegel,
one of the original founders of the anti-rape movement within Jewish
communities; was quoted as saying in the Lilith Magazine article, that
during past presentations, she never mentioned Rabbi Carlebach name
during her lectures, yet following her workshops, women come up to her,
even in the women's bathroom, to pour out their own stories, she says:
"not seeking publicity or revenge, but coming from a
place of shame and isolation." Consistently through the years women have
come forward to share their stories explicitly about Rabbi Carlebach,
Speigel says.
In a letter, which Spiegel made available to Lilith, she states that a
number of women in their 40s have approached her "in private and often
with deep-seated pain" about experiences they had when they were in
their teens. "Shlomo came to their camp, their center, their synagogue,"
she wrote, "He singled them out with some excuse . . . letting them
alone, he fondled their breasts and vagina, sometimes thrusting himself
against them muttering something, which they now believe was Yiddish."
Dr. Michelle Friedman,
teaches pastoral counseling at the rabbinical seminary Yeshiva Chovevei
Torah. Back in 2004 whilespeaking at a conference she stated:
"Where there is smoke there may not be fire, but there's
an issue. Shlomo was known to be very charismatic and seductive. To the
degree that these stories come up, I have to respect that something
happened to somebody. It's sad. But I think it's great that this next
generation of Carlebach people included this issue in the conference."
Rabbi Goldie Milgram, is now a teacher and an associate dean at the
Academy for Jewish Religion in New York City. Back when Rabbi Milgrom
was only 14 years of age, Shlomo Carlebach was a guest at her United
Synagogue Youth convention in New Jersey. Her parents felt honored to
have him stay at their home for the weekend. Late one night as she
passed Rabbi Carlebach in the hallway of her home. She is quoted as
saying: "He pulled me up against him, rubbed his hands up my body
and under my cloths and pulled me up against him. He rubbed up against
me; I presume he had an orgasm. He called me mammele.
Rabbi Milgram says she didn't tell her parents at the time and wasn't
able to work through the incident until three years later, when she was
17 and on her first trip to Israel. Approaching the Kotel, she saw
Rabbi Carlebach leading singing there and she fled. Her companion saw
her distress and suggested that she "'pretend I'm him,'" recalls
Rabbi Milgram. "All I remember is screaming 'Who are you? Why did you do
that? I was so excited that you came to my house and then . . . '"
Rabbi Julie Spitzer, who was a long time leader in the anti-rape anti-domestic violence world stated back in 2004:
"It is not uncommon when women come forward with their
stories of inappropriate sexual contact with a rabbi or clergy member
that the members of the congregation or community so much want to
disbelieve those shocking allegations that they vilify the complainant
and glorify the abuser."
It is also well known that Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, a highly revered
spiritual leader made a declaration banning all of Carlebach’s music
created after he went “off the derech” (off the path). The truth is
that no one seems to know when Shlomo Carlebach was not manipulating or
threatening women for sexual favors. Instead of following the
declaration make created by Rav Feinstein, there has been a movement to
make this serial sexual predator into a sort of saint. All across the
globe in the orthodox world, special minyans (gatherings) are created to
honor a man who harmed so many.
The question remains why -- more so we all need to be asking where’s
the outrage that a musical about one of the most notorious sexual
predators is making it’s way to Broadway?
CALL TO ACTION: Stop Musical About Serial Sexual Predator - Shlomo Carlebach
The Awareness Center - August 20, 2012
Glorifying a man who sexually assaulted hundreds if not thousands of teenage girls and young adult women? Shlomo Carlebach was nothing more then a sexual deviant who knew how to manipulate the public, like any good sociopath could.
Watch
the video on the following link closely. You will hear how in this film
they whitewash why Carlebach was banned from the orthodox world. They
don't come out and say it directly, but indirectly they talk about him
assaulting women and teenage girls.
Please help heal the multitude of women who were sexually assaulted by this once revered rabbi. Stop the production of "Soul Doctor" on Broadway. There's no need to glorify a serial sexual predator.
Read more about the case of Shlomo Carlebach here: CLICK HERE _________________________________________________________________________________
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Shlomo
Carlebach also abandoned the Orthodox injunction that men and women not touch
publicly. Indeed, he was known for his frequent hugs of men and women alike,
and often said his hope was to hug every Jew, perhaps every person, on
earth. 
