Carlebach

By Michael Kress

Some 35 graduate students and young professionals packed into the living room of a Cambridge, Massachusetts apartment on a Friday night this spring for Shabbat services, despite the presence of two active synagogues within about a mile of the apartment.

Squeezing into the space, some latecomers sitting or standing in adjoining rooms, their voices soon filled the building with the sometimes joyous, sometimes mournful tunes more common to Hasidic services than to those organized by members of a modern, academically minded community dominated by students from Harvard and MIT. Those tunes, though, had a common root: Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, who died in 1994 from a sudden heart attack.

On Manhattan's heavily Jewish Upper West Side, there is no need to squeeze into a living room. Several young Orthodox Jews, interested in creating services centered on Carlebach's melodies, convinced the dwindling membership at Congregation Ramath Orah on West 110 Street to allow them to lead Carlebach services in the synagogue basement. Within a month, they outnumbered the established minyan (service) upstairs, and soon took over as the only services held in the synagogue. Today, three years later, Friday-night services attract about 250 people, mostly twenty-something Jews, despite no lack of local synagogues-including Carlebach's own synagogue on West 79 Street.

Services like these are part of a growing trend giving new life to the legacy of the late Hasidic singer and storyteller. While Carlebach - Reb Shlomo to his followers - attracted an eclectic crowd of often-alienated Jews to his concerts and synagogues, services like the Cambridge and Ramath Orah minyanim often are not organized by die-hard Carlebach followers, but by mainstream observant Jews who have little or nothing to do with Carlebach's followers, his movement, or his style of Judaism, even with Reb Shlomo himself.

Carlebach, described upon his death by the New York Times as an "ultra-orthodox hippie rabbi, known to the Jewish world as the Singing Rabbi," was not from the mainstream rabbinate, certainly not the modern Orthodox one. But those organizing the occasional Carlebach service in Cambridge and Ramat Orah in New York are observant members of established Orthodox and Conservative communities - people who do not fit the profile of the average Carlebach follower. Although they express respect and even an affinity for Carlebach's followers, a "Carlebach Judaism" is not their goal. Instead, organizers of these services have found in Reb Shlomo's music a means for a prayer experience they say is more meaningful and spiritual than those they are accustomed to in mainstream synagogues.

"It instantly opened my eyes to what, for the first time ever, I perceived as genuine prayer," said Mark Baker, an organizer of the Cambridge minyan, of his first Carlebach-service experience. Like many organizers of Carlebach services, Baker was first introduced to the phenomenon in Israel and now organizes and leads services here in the U.S.

Carlebach services are part of the growing trend toward a more spiritual, experiential Judaism, a trend that is somehow reflected in virtually every religion in America, and which has taken off in the years since Carlebach's passing. In the American Jewish community, this trend has led to the popularity of Renewal Judaism, Kabbalah centers, Chabad-Lubavitch-and, in various forms, Carlebach's synagogues, recordings, stories and music.

The services also represent a certain dissatisfaction with what is considered the rote nature of prayer in many mainstream Orthodox and Conservative synagogues, where only small parts of the service are sung aloud, usually to the same melodies every week and at the same pace. At Carlebach services, participants sway, clap, and even dance. "There's a certain accessibility there [in Carlebach minyanim]," said Barry Wimpfheimer, a Yeshiva University rabbinical student who organized the Ramath Orah Carelebach minyan. "Sometimes there's a simplicity. Sometimes there's a modern take on it. Some of them appeal to emotions more than the standard nusach [melody]."

Baker said it is purely the music that attracted him to Carlebach services, not Reb Shlomo's storytelling nor his offer of a wholly different Jewish experience. "This isn't putting a tune to words. It's putting words to music," he said. "Reb Shlomo wrote tunes. He wrote music that lifted the spirit."

Breaking Barriers

Carlebach was known as a breaker of barriers, on gender issues and others as well, and in the services that have become the newest addition to his legacy, carrying the message that spirit is alive and well.

While men and women sit separately in the Cambridge service, there is no actual mechitza, or partition, between them. And while only men may lead the ma'ariv, or evening, service, women are permitted to lead Kabbalat Shabbat, the service welcoming the Sabbath. According to many interpreters, Jewish law permits women to lead Kabbalat Shabbat, but most Orthodox communities forbid it.

At Ramath Orah, which adheres to more traditionally Orthodox gender roles, Wimpfheimer still said, "One of the most important things we did was make the environment as egalitarian as possible," which in this case takes the form of setting the mechitza down the center aisle, rather than relegating women to the balcony, which Ramath Orah had previously done. In addition, Wimpfheimer said, the very nature of a Carlebach service creates a more egalitarian environment, since the focus is on communal prayer rather than individual prayer led by a (male) cantor. With the emphasis on the pews and not the podium, he said, "The women's section is as important as the men¹s section."

While Carlbeach himself may not be a towering presence in the sort of minyanim that bear his name and borrow his tunes, there is little doubt that Reb Shlomo would smile approvingly if he knew of the latest addition to the vast spiritual legacy he left behind. Despite posthumous accusations of sexual harassment, abuse and even molestation -- documented in a Lillith magazine article -- Carlebach was known during his lifetime as a pioneer of gender equalizing in the synagogue and in Jewish life.

Michael Kress is a Cambridge, MA-based freelance writer who covers religion and spirituality.