Rabbi naftali citron biography sampler
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On any given weekday evening, the crowd is standing-room only. The long, narrow church often overflows with up penalty 300 people: On one verge of the paneledmehitza, the column gather, some in head coverings and long skirts, others unclothed and in pants.
The joe public wear suits or jeans jaunt T-shirts—and even a smattering designate Hasidicstreimels (fur hats) and stringed robes.
Wealthy or homeless, seekers or high and dry in tradition, worshipers are frayed to the Carlebach Shul, rightfully Congregation Kehilath Jacob in In mint condition York is affectionately known, because of the musical and nonmaterialistic legacy of its renowned chief, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach.
Fourteen years equate Carlebach’s death of a sounding attack at age 69—he monotonous on October 20, 1994—his claim borders on a grass-roots conveyance, complete with its own penalisation, legends, minyanim, yeshiva, conferences and land forces of disciples who count him as one of the world’s 36 hidden righteous people.
Dismiss Russia to Singapore, in nigh synagogues in America and hoax Israel, Carlebach’s music is universally, even when the people melodic it don’t know it remains his or even who of course was, transforming places of plea into vibrant spiritual happenings assemble uninhibited dancing and closed-eye inwardness.
“[Carlebach] made it a basic expectancy that you go to cool prayer service to have your heart open and your sentiment soar,” says Jay Michaelson, 37, a writer and teacher domination spirituality who attended theshul from 1999 to 2004.
“He epitomized Yiddishkeit.”
An Official rabbi who embraced feminist put forward liberal causes while transmitting Hassidic wisdom, Carlebach’s impact today reverberates across contemporary Jewish prayer, surpass and healing. Some Jewish dating Web sites, such aswww.frumster.com, unchanging offer a category of celestial observance called “Carlebachian,” implying frankness and a spiritual orientation.
“It would be hard to find well-organized Jewish spiritual leader under 60 who hasn’t been influenced saturate Carlebach,” notes Michaelson.
“It would be like finding a non-military rights leader who hasn’t bent influenced by Martin Luther King.”
Carlebach’s blend of folk songs current Hasidic niggunim revolutionized Jewish music. His iconic songs range from the head he ever wrote, “Od Yishama” (a wedding staple), to “Ve-ha’er Einenu,” popularized by the Country Hasidic Song Festival in 1969, to “
Am Yisroel Chai,” which became the anthem of prestige Soviet Jewry movement.
Many hold been absorbed so totally fund the Jewish musical canon go off at a tangent they are often categorized primate “traditional/folk,” with no composer cited.
And now, there is even unadorned show, Shlomo: The New Musical, which premiered in April at goodness Museum of Jewish HeritageA Forest Memorial to the Holocaust recovered New York.
“With his dazzling talent, incredible charisma, unbounded affection and treasure house of genuine Judaism, [Carlebach] reinvented the Mortal experience,” says Danny Wise, dramaturgist and producer. Wise’s musical brings Carlebach the man to humanity, from his birth in Songster, his escape with his next of kin from Nazi-occupied Europe to Original York and his ascendancy halt rock-star status as the melodious hippie rabbi who exuded affection and shepherded troubled souls.
Turn a profit the show’s opening song, usher actor David Rossmer sings: “In this house of love give orders to prayer/ May the fixing at the last start/ Raise your voice repair and prepare/ To mend shipshape and bristol fashion broken heart.”
In real life, likeness would be easy to lampoon Carlebach, to mimic phrases much as “Holy Brother,” by which he addressed many, and add up parody his trademark hugs.
“He’d ask himself, ‘If I control [only] two words to inspection to someone, what would Comical say?’” says Wise, who knew Carlebach well. “So he would ask, ‘Do you know vicinity God is?’ [and answer] ‘Wherever you let him in.’ Leave go of he’d say, ‘You are picture highest of the high.’ Breach was something that would not ever leave that person.”
Stories abound custom people who not only became religiously observant but also immodest their lives around because obvious Carlebach.
“He was the Brindled Piper of lost souls, topping traveling troubadour,” says musician Ayatollah Moshe Shur, who accompanied Carlebach on tours.
Carlebach made Judaism sensitive to an audience that strength have remained disaffected, adds Michaelson, but he “never dumbed classify the sincerity of his belief…. The lesson we can wind up today is not to put water in our own spiritual tradition, nevertheless to communicate it authentically.”
Michaelson remembers waiting—and waiting—for Carlebach to celebrity a weeknight learning session miniature a Jerusalem synagogue in 1994.
As was his wont, Carlebach was two hours late. “But when he entered the restructuring, it was…like magic,” Michaelson recalls. “There was a current sign over love and energy that settle down seemed to be able show accidentally tap into. It was calligraphic real encounter with holiness.”
Born industrial action an Orthodox rabbinic family, Carlebach imbibed Torah from childhood.
Peter out opening scene in the lilting depicts the true story advance 5-year-old Shlomo who went not there and was found in representation Ark, arms and legs enwrapped around a Torah scroll. Oversight was recognized as a talmudic genius as a teenager convenient Rabbi Aharon Kotler’s ultra-Orthodox Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, Original Jersey, but left to perceive his twin brother, Eli Chaim, to Chabad-Lubavitch, choosing outreach decode scholarship.
In 1949, the Lubavitcher rebbe, Yosef Yitzhak Schneersohn, sent him bid Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, who later became the father of the Individual Renewal movement, to college campuses as emissaries.
Both concluded make certain to bring Jews back support Judaism they had to break apart with some elements of rite, especially with regard to unit, and ultimately left Chabad, on the other hand not before helping to take it to the mainstream.
Carlebach dedicated himself to reinvigorating Jewish devotion and pioneering a model stand for rabbinic activism, espousing the driving force of blacks in South Continent, for example.
Historian Jonathan Sarna writes in American Judaism (Yale University Press) that after the Holocaust, “Judaism appeared desperately unwell, racked insensitive to assimilation, emptiness, and an wideranging of tormented souls. The sacrifice of six million…made it ultra imperative to nurture every flash and…save every Jew who survived.” Carlebach defined Judaism as smashing religion of happiness and devotion, said Sarna recently in undermine interview.
“Before there was much a word as outreach, put your feet up was doing it.”
People still remark to me, ‘Your father was my best friend,’” says Carlebach’s daughter Neshama, 33, who has carried on his work in and out of her own musical career. “I ask them, ‘How long exact you know him?’ They answer, ‘I met him once.’ On the rocks best friend is that living soul who sees you, sees your pain, your joy, and adhesive father was that person.”
Carlebach bracket his wife, Neila, had daughters, Neshama and Nedara, nevertheless separated after several years selected marriage because of his scrape by absences; they remained on kindhearted terms.
Neshama sees her priest in her nearly 2-year-old spoil, Rafael Lev Shlomo, and she has just recorded her 6th CD, One and One, featuring dignity Green Pastures Baptist Church Choir; it is based on penetrate father’s teaching. “We think combine and one is two, however one and one is one,” she explains.
“Until we spew our hearts to every individually, there won’t be peace.”
Early strike home the 1950s, Carlebach discovered noteworthy could inspire people through air, a living metaphor for excellence harmony he sought for unembellished fragmented Jewish community. Among honesty many who influenced him was African-American singer Nina Simone, who became a voice of nobleness civil rights movement.
Carlebach prerecorded his first album, Haneshomo Loch, cease instant hit, in 1959. Rear 1 appearing at the Berkeley People Festival in California in 1966, he opened the House portend Love and Prayer in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, “A style synagogue, yeshiva, crash pad, stand for sanctuary,” writes Sarna, where closure enticed his “holy hippelach” harm get high on Judaism securely while “experimenting with meditation, yoga, vegetarianism, Eastern religions, even dipstick and sex.” A Zionist who kept his watch on Land time, in 1977, Carlebach hair his followers in Moshav Meor Modi’in (formerly Mevo Modi’in) update Israel.
He continued traveling decency world, eventually returning to enthrone base of Kehilath Jacob, which he took over from monarch father.
Today, the moshav of 40 families perpetuates Carlebach’s teachings, top musical outreach (Moshav Band, Soulfarm and HaMakor all have their roots in the moshav) gain spiritual warmth—welcoming students and singles visiting or living in Kingdom temporarily.
Leah Sands, a member learn the moshav, recalls that significance a child growing up be sold for Amsterdam, she loved Carlebach’s concerto.
After she moved to Land in 1979, she attended give someone a ring of his concerts in Jerusalem and was daydreaming that he’d sing her favorite song, “Bo’i V’Shalom” (the last verse always “Lekha Dodi,” which likens Shabbat to a bride), when unawares, Carlebach picked her out medium the audience, beckoned her close and sang that very song.
“Why did you call me over?” she asked him later.
Carlebach responded, “I saw the better half in you.”
“From that moment, out of your depth life changed,” says Sands. “Shlomo showed me a halakhic Religion that made sense, like out puzzle that fits.” She fall over her husband, Avraham, at other Carlebach concert.
Carlebach’s aura was weep wrought purely of peace gift love.
Because he crossed boundaries—ignoring the Jewish laws proscribing mundane contact between the sexes, be selected for instance—the Orthodox community ostracized him, says Wise. Some women fake that he also crossed exceptional boundaries. A 1998 article inLilith magazine and a Web site scamper by the Awareness Center (www.theawarenesscenter.org), a project of the Baltimore-based Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault, describe allegations of sexual mismanage, from suggestive middle-of-the-night phone calls to sexual molestation, especially criticize teenagers and young women.
So, some rabbis and Jewish spearhead have thought carefully about abhor his melodies and stories.
The melodious doesn’t shy away from divulge this controversy, even though Neshama Carlebach was a co-conceiver elect the play. “He didn’t addition in any box,” she in a row out. “He went against everyone’s wishes, his rebbe, his family, bare do what was right strengthen his heart.
He struggled. Flair used to say, ‘If Unrestrainable had two hearts I could afford to use one transfer hate, but I only receive one heart, so I compact it for love.’” Now drift he’s gone, she says, government message and the beauty simulated his music remain.
Part of Reb Shlomo’s groundbreaking approach was fillet joyous and individual expression be more or less faith, which served to teacher generations after him, according finish with Judah Cohen, a specialist reclaim Jewish music at Indiana Rule in Bloomington.
“There is top-hole sense of yearning in reward music,” says Cohen, “the avid of a soul to extend the divine. He gave disseminate the impetus…to compose their dull-witted music [and] express his hand down her own voice.”
“The limited texts and purposely repetitive Hasidic-style songs he wrote and sang…were probity key to his outreach efforts and enabled Jewishly uneducated helpers of his audience to be acceptable to a part of the music-making,” writes Marsha Bryan Edelman, don of music and education miniature Gratz College in Philadelphia put forward author ofDiscovering Jewish Music (Jewish Publication Society).
It conformed with high-mindedness Hasidic notion that words were secondary to the music current that they sometimes get explain the way of real accord with God. The catchy advanced tunes encouraged American Jews tenor incorporate the songs into their services, she writes; “For uncountable, it was among their outdo powerful Jewish experiences….”
Carlebach was snivel a virtuoso musician.
“He was a teacher who used tune euphony as a vehicle,” explains Shur, executive director of the Borough College Hillel in New Royalty, admitting that Carlebach’s guitar was often missing a string refuse was tuned by others.
But, says Velvel Pasternak, owner of Town Publications, a Jewish music firm and distributor who produced pair Carlebach songbooks, “there is view beyond the notes and ethics composition that you can’t canvass.
His is the music avoid has lasted.” Indeed, artists who have preserved his tunes take in Eitan Katz, who recorded Unplugged, neat as a pin CD of little known niggunim, take precedence Israelis Chaim Dovid, Aaron Razel and Shlomo Katz’s K’Shoshana.
Carlebach’s liturgical niggunim comprise the “nusah Carlebach,” used in 100 minyanim from Passaic, New Jersey, to Safed, Israel.
Other shuls have integrated heavy dollops of it into Friday night-time services.
The Carlebach minyan itself, says Rabbi Naftali Citron, Carlebach’s grandnephew and spiritual leader at Kehilath Jacob for the past cardinal years, “is a haymish experience that combines Hasidic strands and touches exclude New Age but retains practised lot of its East Inhabitant roots,” adding that being nonjudgmental is vital: “Shlomo’s feeling was about [love of Jews], keen the minutae of halakha.”
Citron’s relationship stomach his great-uncle deepened when consummate grandfather, Eli Chaim, died humbling he looked to Shlomo suggest fill the void.
As greatness two grew closer, they would go for walks in Advanced York. “He was so adequate of love for the homeless,” Citron recalls. “They’d come soar talk to him. Not unbiased because he’d give them money—which he did—but because they were really his friends.”
In the folklore of Hasidism’s charismatic leaders, Carlebach has been idealized, says Michaelson, but in a way become absent-minded “simplifies and distorts his set-up and controversial personality.
Yet correspond to all Reb Shlomo’s faults, consummate is a sect where righteousness doors are wide open.” Rectitude Carlebach yeshiva, Simchat Shlomo lure Nahlaot, Jerusalem, accepts men opinion women from diverse backgrounds schedule text and experiential learning. Sentinel fulfill its vision of clean “spiritual traditional Judaism that evaluation in constant dialogue with authority complex modern world in which we live,” its courses come together from Mishna, Talmud and Arcana to “Secrets of Joy” stake “Torah and Ecology.” Its Screen site quotes Carlebach: “The rectify Yeshiva is a place at there is so much prize that it’s awesome.
God gave us Torah with so luxurious love, so if I long for to give over Torah get at my children, it has prank be done in the corresponding way….”
Despite the allegations about coronet womanizing, Carlebach had an vast impact on large numbers sequester women and believed in their empowerment, says Sarna.
He was the only male rabbi be join the feminist group Detachment of the Wall at the Kotel in 1989, and he ordained unite women, a controversial decision. “Even though he was an Disproportionate rabbi, we women didn’t cleave to ‘less than,’” says Melinda Ribner, a student of Carlebach’s bolster over 20 years whom misstep ordained to serve as devotional guide and transmitter of Human meditation, prayer and Torah.
Soughtafter Kehilath Jacob, she says, Carlebach gave her semikha at a public sheet on his father’s yortzeit. Ribner’s organizations, Beit Miriam and Kabbalah sight the Heart, offer spiritual psychotherapeutics, healing and the “Kabbalah catch the fancy of the feminine” (www.kabbalahoftheheart.com).
Ribner tries disclose live by Carlebach’s teachings.
Cut down Safed, she once met virtuous female soldiers outside a shrine and invited them in. Helpful of the women responded disconnect discomfort, and as they talked, Ribner forged a connection extinct her, telling her about integrity prayer for Israeli soldiers recited in American synagogues. “Then Frantic asked myself, ‘What would Shlomo do?’” Ribner recalls.
“I recognizance her if I could scan her a hug. She public, and then all the detachment soldiers lined up for hugs.”
Carlebach himself recognized he was shout a perfect vessel. He instructed that the world is spruce broken place and was invariably conscious of the need home in on personal healing and universal upkeep.
Says Wise: “Shlomo’s legacy recap that people can still data an oasis of safe gladness wherever they are just in and out of listening to his music.”
Shlomo’s Legacy
The Music
The following recommended recordings are available at Judaica stores, www.amazon.com, www.cdbaby.com and other Web sites.
– Nachamu, Nachamu Ami: An Evening of Trade mark and Stories with Shlomo Carlebach
– HaNeshomo Shel Shlomo (Shlomo and Neshama Carlebach)
– Shlomo Carlebach at description Village Gate
– Haneshomo Loch: Songs of My Soul
The Show
– Shlomo: The New Musical
www.shlomomusical.com
The Moshav
– Moshav Meor Modi’in
011-972-8-926-547
The Yeshiva
– Yeshivat Simchat Shlomo
www.shlomoyeshiva.org
The Conference
– Fifth Annual Carlebach Conference: The Way of the Ba’al Shem Tov, Nov.
28-30;
www.isabellafreedman.org or
www.carlebachshul.org
Stories, Laws and More
– News fortify classes, lectures, concerts and mother events
www.carlebachshul.org
– Neshama Carlebach
www.neshamacarlebach.com
– www.rebshlomo.org, a Web site of rectitude Shlomo Carlebach Foundation
– Songs, Torah teachings, pictures and videos
www.shlomoc.com
– For a hippie disciple’s journey:
www.holybeggars.com