Shlomo Carlebach was perhaps the greatest religious Jewish composer since King David. His compositions are sung in synagogues across the world – and across all denominations. He inspired tens of thousands of Jews to explore Judaism, often for the first time. Many became observant Jews as a result. He founded a Moshav in Israel and led an Orthodox synagogue in New York City. He was a friend of rock star musicians and the city's homeless, and was a man who saw the uniqueness and value in every person he met. But Shlomo Carlebach had a dark side, as well. Should it cause us to boycott the musical about his life and remove his music from synagogues?
Courtesy of The Awareness Center
Shlomo Carlebach was perhaps the greatest religious Jewish composer since King David.
His compositions are sung in synagogues across the world – and across all denominations. He inspired tens of thousands of Jews to explore Judaism, often for the first time. Many became observant Jews as a result. He founded a Moshav in Israel and led an Orthodox synagogue in New York City. He was a friend of rock star musicians and the city's homeless, and was a man who saw the uniqueness and value in every person he met.
But Shlomo Carlebach had a dark side, as well. Should that dark side cause us to boycott the musical about his life and remove his music from synagogues?
First, the facts.
Lilith Magazine published a long exposé on Carlebach in 1998, three years after he died. It contains multiple allegations of sexual assault against teens and young adult women.
In a letter, which [Dr. Marcia Cohn] 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?"
The Awareness Center quotes Rabbi Yosef Blau of Yeshiva University, who is also on The Awareness Center's board, explaining Carlebach's actions:
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).
The Awareness Center page on Carlebach also quotes Rabbi Mark Dratch, a Modern Orthodox who founded and heads J-Safe, which deals with sexual abuse in the Jewish community.
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?
So? What should be done about Carlebach's music and the musical about his life?
If Carlebach had been convicted for one of these assaults or if any of these women had publicly come forward during Carlebach's lifetime and pressed charges or sued for damages, the answer would be much clearer. But none of them did so and, to the best of our knowledge, Carlebach was never arrested or convicted for any of these alleged sexual assaults.
Worse yet, the vast majority of the women claiming that Carlebach assaulted them decades ago are anonymous, and anonymous allegations are weaker than allegations made by identifiable persons.
On the other hand, there certainly were and are raglayim l'davar with regard to these allegations, and if Carlebach were alive that would mandate a whole series of protective actions to be taken by comunities in which he lived or visited.
But should a person's legacy be permently damaged by anonymous allegations?
Probably not.
But the problem for Carlebach's legacy is that not all of these allegations are anonymous:
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.)…
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 – aAnd 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.
What would Carlebach had done if there had been a real intervention?
Who knows.
This whole story highlights the real problems with cases like this.
For decades, the Jewish community avoided dealing with Carlebach's alleged problem.
Victims were often too young to know what to do. Parents and rabbis seemed to turn a blind eye to the abuse – if they knew it took place at all.
Those women and girls old enough to file their own police reports did not do so because they were fearful of confronting Carlebach and the community that supported him, and because, like most abuse victims, they were ashamed and confused.
Perhaps if Carlebach had lived longer, a victim still within the statute of limitations would have filed charges. Perhaps.
In the end, few Carlebach fans or followers will stop singing Carlebach's music because of these allegations, and unless there are large nightly protests outside the theater, the Carlebach musical will continue to play.
The lesson here is for the women who were adults when they were allegedly assaulted by Carlebach and for the parents, rabbis and community leaders of the minors who knew of the assaults but who did not act.
Sometimes doing what is right is difficult. It can be uncomfortable, distasteful and frightening. But if you don't act, others will be victimized. And, in cases like Carlebach's, the alleged victimizer may even be honored.
I wouldn't produce a Shlomo Carlebach musical unless it dealt in part with Carlebach's alleged abuse. And i wouldn't lead or join a synagogue that sang Carlebach's songs while pretending the allegations against Carlebach didn't exist. And I don't think Jewish groups should go to see the musical unless they also include a discussion of these allegations in the itinerary.
As for Rabbi Moshe Feinstein allegedly knowing that Carlebach was sexually abusing women in 1959, it is important to keep the record straight and clear.
Feinstein had apparently been told that Carlebach was singing with women, had mixed seating at his concerts and synagogue events, and that he sometimes hugged (willing) women or kissed them on the cheek.
As Dratch himself wrote, "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."
Rabbi Feinstein may have been told about Carlebach's alleged acts of sexual abuse sometime later. But the teshuva Dratch cites does not deal with that issue at all.
Carlebach was never "kicked out of the Orthodox community." He led an Orthodox synagogue in Manhattan until his death and played occasional concerts at Orthodox venues for almost two decades after Rabbi Feinstein's teshuva was written.
After Carlebach left Chabad in the 1950s, Chabad strongly discouraged the use of his music – but that had much more to do with his break with the Rebbe than it did with anything Carlebach did wrong.
Other haredim never really took to Carlebach's music and were quick to follow Rabbi Feinstein's ruling – although there were – and still are – some exceptions.
Carlebach was an enormously talented but equally troubled man who played an outsized role in Jewish history. He will be studied decades from now and even centuries from now and, like it or not, some of his songs will be sung in synagogues when all of us are long forgotten.
Should the musical about his life be boycotted?
It's failure to deal at all with Carlebach's dark side should certainly be condemned and challenged, and again, I don't think Jewish groups should buy tickets unless the groups also teach their members about Carlebach's alleged sexual abuse.
But there is a price to pay for silence and for not filing police reports.
And in this case, that price may just include a successful Carlebach musical.