Thursday, January 17, 2008
An Overview of the Baal Teshuva Movement – Part Two

As a preface to this article I need to explain something. Rabbi Carlebach was a central figure in my youth. I found out about him from Ben Yishai and met him when I was 25. I was going to his concerts at the same time I was in Ben Yishai and he was the reason that I left the cult. He cheered me up and he made me feel better as his music used to put me in a very good head space.
It seems that I just did the best I could given my problems and Shlomo was there to help me out on my life’s journey. He was a critical personality in many people’s lives both for better or worse (or mixed).
At this point in time, I have given away most of my extensive collection of his recordings. I felt that I needed a break from him. I wanted my freedom.
It is a common belief that the talmidim (“students and followers”) of noted Rebbes have visitations of the souls of their soul masters after they have passed away. I am addending this missive as per the 18th of January. This morning, after I wrote the bulk of this piece on the 17th, I had a dream that Shlomo’s neshama (“soul” which is his eldest daughter’s name and the title of her first solo recording) came to me and was looking for some good feedback. I had a very difficult time this morning on the 18th as I woke up late and the dream went like this:
I was in the Penn Train Station in Manhattan. I was in a particularly bad mood and I couldn’t shake the mood. All of a sudden, I saw the late Rabbi -- who I was thinking about and was missing him after his petirah (“passing”), very much. Shlomo came near me and started to make me feel better. Then I woke up.
I had a similar dream some years ago, right before one of my ucnels died who was a inspiration to me to become Orthodox . I dreampt that his soul came to me asking for permission to live and I denied it because of the bad results I had with the BT movement. He actually passed on soon after.
You have to remember that in life things tend to be a mixed bag. Nothing is ever purely good or purely evil and the document about Shlomo on the Groups Database is called “The Paradoxical Legacy of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach.” He was a very hard to understand person.
It seems to me that the soul of the Rabbi came to me looking for something good to say and to purify his legacy. At his levaya (“funeral”), someone noted that Shlomo Carlebach the man was much greater than Shlomo Carlebach the legend. I have found this to be the case.
I certainly needed Shlomo’s help after the Ben Yishai cult practically killed me. I found a shoulder to cry on and a helper in the person who I really don’t want to peg as the worst person let alone the worst rabbi to ever have existed. So I am writing this to help sort things out.
************************************************************************
As a person whose whole family has suffered over the issue of the BT movement, I have to add to the comments on the original piece on the Rick A. Ross database. Let’s take it from the top.
As far as I know, the first organization to form a BT outreach and a yeshiva for BT’s was Chabad Lubavitch. The Chabad website for Hadar Hatorah, their BT Yeshiva, makes this claim.
When the Freidiger Rebbe, Rabbi JJ Schneerson who was the father in law of Rabbi MM Schneerson, wanted to start his BT division, he didn’t enlist just anyone. Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach (he wasn’t a composer yet and he wasn’t a hippie either as this was in the ‘50’s see [www.xlubi.com]) and Rabbi Zalman Schachter were the first two Shluchim or “emissaries.”
I don’t really know much about Zalman although I am friendly with one of his son in laws and I have spoken in brief to his daughter. But maybe I am risking a lot by calling the son in law because he keeps trying to turn me into a frumie or an Orthodox Jew.
From what I know Zalman took LSD and both Shlomo and Zalman were friendly with the High Priest of LSD – Timothy Leary.
Zalman runs the Aleph Institute and from what I have heard he melds Judaism with other religions like Buddhism and Hinduism. That’s all I know except that he is a very old man now.
Shlomo stated on a video tape I used to have that Leary told him one time that he listens to Shlomo’s music while high on LSD and Shlomo considered this to be the greatest honor because, “You can’t listen to straight music while you’re on LSD.
Shlomo was one of the luminaries of that generation as per his knowledge of Judaism and his original spiritual grooming. He was a very young person (15) when he gained entrance into Lakewood Yeshiva and he was a very well loved talmid (“student”) of Rabbi Aharon Kotler. Shlomo was at Lakewood for about 10 years. Lakewood Yeshiva was considered to be the “Harvard” of the Torah education system. (See the book, Holy Brother which was about Shlomo’s history.)
Shlomo left Lakewood to go to Chabad because the latter was doing outreach. So when Rick Ross asked me years ago if Shlomo was a Lubavitcher he hit the nail right on the head. Not to mention how Chabad and Shlomo were critical in my own life.
Shlomo had already talked to some rabbis about starting BT seminaries before he went to Chabad because he claimed that thousands of Jews were making their way back to the Orthodoxy but there were no infrastructures to handle them. A lot of people blew him off. One rabbi said, “I have never seen a clown like you!” Shlomo said he didn’t talk to the Torah giants or gedolei hador, he spoke to the “little half giants” who didn’t understand what he was all about. Shlomo persisted.
And it all adds up to nothing for me as my current mental health problems that I am still trying to recover from as I got sick in Israel in ’95 when I was living with Rabbi Yeshua Witt who was considered to be Shlomo’s #1 man who used to live in Jerusalem.
I was routinely bounced around by the Rabbi’s family and his eldest son, Yachad, thought he had the ability to turn me into a golem (a Jewish Frankenstein monster used to fight anti-Semites). Yachad studied in Tomchie Temimin in Jerusalem which is Chabad organization. All of Yeshua’s children went to different yeshivahs and he had 15 kids.
Shlomo left Chabad because he couldn’t do outreach the way they, as an inflexible, haredi group, wanted it done – woman can’t sing with men and they couldn’t stand next to men. So the Lubavitcher Rebbe at the time told him, “I can’t tell you what to do, and I can’t tell you what not to do. Go and G-d be with you.” So he left Chabad.
After Shlomo left Chabad, he was sort of rootless for a while. He gave an interview that was published in Tikkun magazine back in ’97 where he said that he managed. He started to write music and he couldn’t notate music so he went to people who could and they really loved his compositions.
The rabbis of the late ‘50’s and sixties told Shlomo to use his “power of nigun” (the ability that his music has to stir people up and feel the Jewish power in them or to ignite the so-called Pintle Yid or “Jewish spark” in every Jew’s soul.) So Shlomo
started to establish himself as the “Father of Modern Jewish Music.” And his career as a musical luminary took off.
As a side note, Rabbi Carlebach inspired Rebbetzin Ester Jungreis to rent out Nassau Colloseum on LI to do outreach. So Shlomo also networked through other outreach wokers.
The 1960’s made a deep impact on Shlomo. It was high times for this person who believed in the Messianic redemption – the long awaited geulah when the Moshiach would come and bring peace to the world and also heal illnesses and all forms of disability.
One day, I went to one of his concerts in NY and I was in a really bad mood. It was the basis for my dream last night. Shlomo saw my visage and said, “Don’t worry brother, the moshiach is coming to redeem you!” Whether or not he believed in his own messiahship is to me unknown. But I know some people who believed in it.
Shlomo’s charisma to some people was mind bending. Once I was in Haifa with him when a secular Jew stopped his car on Shabbat to get out and hug and kiss the rabbi. So some people did like him even if D’var’s bochrim (“students”) didn’t.
Shlomo became an outcast in the Jewish world in many circles because of his hugging and touching women let alone his abusing women and girls. When I was at Yeshivat D’var Yerushalayim in the late ‘70’s, some people really dumped on me over following him.
I went from the fire into the frying pan as my leaving the Hebrew Christian cult, Ben Yishai, and then hooking up with “the Singing Rabbi” or HaRebbe Hashir. He was also called HaRebbe Harikud or “the Dancing Rabbi.”
One person told me that he hoped that Shlomo was dead and a second told me that he was subject to having his smicha (“ordination”) revoked. Another person told me that he wrote one of his songs (“L-rd Get Me High” which is on his Live in Vienna recording – it’s one of his few English songs) while he was on LSD. Shlomo actually asked me once if I thought he used drugs and I didn’t know what to answer. I never smelled marijuana on him but who knows about anything he could inhale or inject.
The legend has it that he died penniless or close to it. I was a member of the Carlebach Shul in ’94 – ’95 right before I went to Israel. It was discussed that he left a modest nest egg for his family. Neshama’s singing career has taken off but I don’t know how successful Nedara is (she is a photographer) or Neila.
Some of the Celebrating Reb Shlomo recordings seem to have some really wild stories on them and I don’t know how well they are selling. And a lot of people claim that Neila isn’t his widow but his ex-wife.
You see, the whole problem my family has been having is essentially over religious intolerance and intransigence. My grandparents got divorced over that and probably over more issues but I know my family didn’t consider my grandparents to be a suitable match. When I left Chabad, my family on my late Uncle’s side gave me death threats and threats of bodily harm. It really left a bad taste on my mouth.
I went to a Chabad run Hebrew school program when I was living in Canarsie, Brooklyn, NY. I was there when I was somewhere between 6 to 8 years old. It was there that my earliest religious ideas were formed and I sort of did a “Global Noahide” campaign on my own trying to convert non-Jews to Judaism. It really caused me a lot of problems when I moved to LI.
I also drove my father crazy like his mother did over why he wasn’t leading the life of an observant Jew. He simply couldn’t and it wasn’t until my repeated failures trying to become a BT that I realized what the truth is about all of this.
As I have written elsewhere, it isn’t just about chicken soup on Shabbos. And there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch (TANSTAAFL) as we say in the world of powerlifting. Politics and religion are a very volatile cocktail. They are a mix that can be deadly. I almost lost my life over it and Chabad was selling a book - Confessions of a Jewish Cultbuster- with my story in it – “Hank and the Hebrew Christians - at the time all of this went down.
I’m fed up with how Chabad manages to scam people over their concern for people. When I was in Crown Heights they had the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty with 2 offices right in the heart of the neighborhood. I wasn’t directed there. And my ex-wife ran out on me yelling, “We set you up to fall flat on your face!!!” So why do they have all the money to run their programs and why do they have access to all the book publishing houses?
In the last several months, I myself have been a subject of anti-Semitism and had to call up the police over it. I am quite fed up. Being Jewish can be more of a liability than anything else.
And last week, in New Brunswick, NJ (I lived there for 6 years) they desecrated a Jewish cemetery overturning over 500 head stones and breaking about 80 of them. My father always claimed that the USA could become worse than Germany and he also claims that there’s no place to run anymore.
Actually, as far as I could tell, India might be a good place. A lot of work is being farmed out over there and it’s a vast country.
Some years back, I was in NYC near the Carlebach Shul in a Jewish gift shop called “The Jewish Experience.” The salesman there told me, “It’s no good in Israel, and it’s not good anywhere right now.” Quite simply put, I fear for the future.
As the economy worsens and the US is no longer “the land of opportunity” it once was, who knows what the future will bring? My family survived the Holocaust because they stopped listening to the rabbis who were telling them that G-d was with the Jews and the non-Jews would not hate or kill us. My family was right but little did they know what would transpire for me in public school on LI, etc. I am really between a rock and a hard place. And so are we all.
The assimilation rate in this country, for Reform and Conservative Jews, is at the 50% mark and in France, it’s 80%. Quite simply put, the majority of the Jewish people are simply going out of business.
In the book Joseph Carlebach and his Generations by Shlomo’s father, Rabbi Naftali Hartwig Carlebach, Shlomo’s father said that there was a Carlebach in the office of the rabbanut all over Germany (and probably all over Europe). From what I know only Joseph died in the gas chambers the rest of the family fled. My father always told me that the big guys got away.
(At Shlomo’s funeral the people there were commenting on how bleak the future seemed. I think it might be worse for the Orthodox than for any other types of Jews.)
In fact while in was in Israel between May of ‘78 and October of ’79 over 200 members of that family showed up for a meeting. The Carlebach family claims to be descended from King David himself, the warrior king (he also composed music and wrote many of the Psalms) who slew Goliath and was the father of Solomon who built the Bet Hamikdash or Temple.
I would like to know what kind of religious life and culture that family was breeding as they seem to have been THE leadership in Europe among the Jews. And Rabbi Shea Hecht’s chevrusa partner was a Carlebach.
As descendants of King David, they are all in line to become the messiah among the Jews, and trying to reform the world as to the belief in Jesus Christ who was never accepted by the mainstream Jewish leadership of any kind to this day.
A lot of rabbis claim to be descended from David Hamelech especially the ones who trace their ancestry to Rabbi Yehuda Loew, the Maharal of Prague – a mystic who allegedly constructed Yosseleh the golem.
When I got my master’s degree, Shlomo wanted me to be his manager and I turned down the offer for a number of reasons like how he shows up late to every concert and the way Israeli’s treat me as per my broken Hebrew. It’s a long story.
I stopped hanging around Shlomo some time after I came back from Israel in ’79. But I had a rabbi that Shlomo introduced me to who move to LI about 6 miles from where my family lived and I used to spend time with him and stay over for Shabbat. Over the long haul I left the Orthodoxy discouraged and never really able to integrate into it.
I felt burned out by around ’81 or ‘2 and at that point in time, I was focused on my college studies and my preparation to get a career together. Nevertheless I went back to Israel in ’85 when my family moved there and I finished my studies in Israel. Readers of this site know that I got caught in the conflict between the chilonim or secular Jews and the datim (“knowledgeable”) Jews as the Orthodox are called in Israel.
Times a turbulent from where I sit and I hope I can weather the storm. I hope we all can.

One small correction: I met Rabbi Carlebach when I was 15 not when I was 25.

Saturday, January 19, 2008
This posting will deal with my arrival in Brooklyn in ’87 around the time I got married and also with what transpired later on in Israel in ’95. Essentially, I will discuss my extended family and their wanting to retrain me to become an Orthodox Jew.
As a child, my family used to make a lot of visits to my late Uncle’s house. We were sort of playing a role of being people who needed to be made “kosher” by my Uncle’s modern orthodox family. It was also believed that one day, I would free myself from my father’s “unholy” grasp and would become a BT.
No one seemed to understand my father and mother’s limitations as per keeping all the laws of the Torah according to a Jewish viewpoint. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I almost got killed in ’88 over my beliefs.
In Ben Yishai, some of Hickman’s people couldn’t believe that I actually thought that G-d wanted me to become and dress like a Chasidic Jew. I was wrong and that error, well, if you have been reading my posts you know the story.
I thought my Uncle had real concern not just for my spiritual welfare but also for my material welfare. He didn’t and that too was a problem.
My uncle always kept telling me to go back to Chabad all the time and when I left Crown Heights after I got married he called me up and told me, “There’s a LUBAVITCHER (he always talked in a very boisterous and emphatic tone when he talked about Chabad) yeshiva in Morristown, NJ”. After what happened to me with the marriage I cut my ties to Chabad for years.
My father gave up on Chabad. And I am trying to get a copy of the late Rabbi MM Schneerson’s transcripts from the Sorbonne University in Paris, France. The Rebbe was over billed in my opinion.
And just for the record, I am no intellectual slouch either. My Jr. High tested my verbal reasoning score at the 97th percentile level and my math level at 95th %. Combined I am all the way up there at the 99th percentile level. People should be listening to me not some rabbi who is groomed according to doctrines that are outdated and wrong.
I have a master’s degree that I completed in under a year with mostly A’s as per my 3.73 GPA (Boston U/Ben Gurion U of the Negev Joint MSM program – mentioned in my Uncle’s book Judaism on the Web) and I went to school with captains of industry in Israel. The truth is the world is much richer for having me in it, especially the people on this board.
I just hope that all my misery is helping others to help themselves. I think G-d put me through all of this to relay information.
So when I came back from Israel in ’87, my uncle met me in Crown Heights. He took me out to eat and bought a black hat for me to go with my black pin striped suit. I thought that everything was going to be peachy keen.
I told Rabbi Shea Hecht, the Executive Director of the National Committee for the Furtherance of Jewish Education (he was my mashpiah or mentor in Chabad) that I am going to do it right this time (unlike all the other failures I had with Chabad every time they intervened to help me out.)
Basically, it seemed hopeless after that. My marriage flopped and that story is on the board too. I couldn’t seem to be able to use my MSM degree in NY and I had to move to
NJ after AT&T had employed me.
Seven years passed and I went back to Israel after Shlomo Carlebach’s passing (petirah.) I tried to find work in Israel and couldn’t. Rabbi Yeshua Witt called my Uncle up and got him to agree to donate $300 a month towards my up keep, which my Uncle originally agreed to.
My father wouldn’t give a dime and he didn’t want me to go to Israel in the first place. But I didn’t know what else to do. My father got cursed at by Rabbi Sammy Intrator, the person who took over the Carlebach Shul after Shlomo’s petirah.
My Uncle claimed he sent one check (or did it via money transfer) and Yeshua claimed he never got the money. Yeshua’s claim is highly suspect to me. He lied about many things when I was living with him.
I have a friend who was brought up as an Orthodox Jew and rejected it. He’s in Israel now. He told me that the when the Torah said, “Come let us deal wisely with them!” it means “lets lie”.
Finally, my Uncle said he wasn’t going to help me anymore because I wasn’t his son. So push came to shove as my Dad says kesef m’daber which is Hebrew for “money talks”. My Uncles’ deep “love and concern” was really shallow.
Yeshua was problematic to me in the late ‘70’s too. I was in Tel Aviv in a TV station and Shlomo left it up to Yeshua to call whether I could go on the show or not. Yeshua is another guy who’s been giving me the “I could never be good enough for the movement” garbage. I was already seen on TV with Shlomo by some of my parent’s friends. I could have launched a career as a Jewish entertainer but I was blocked as usual.
By the way, I got Yeshua’s email address after I came back to the states in ’95. I asked him how he justifies his messing around with women. The way I phrased it was that there was a machloket (“argument”) between the Jews and the Romans as per the Romans engaging in orgies before they would go out into battle. The Jews wouldn’t do it and the Romans thought the Jews were crazy and vice-versa. Yeshua told me I was writing all these nasty letters to him and I was cutting my nose to spite my face.
Everywhere that I have been going, Chabadniks are filling up leadership positions and are blocking me out. Once I went to the Met Council in NY and the case-worker was a Lubavitcher and I couldn’t get a dime from her. She told me I was “out of their jurisdiction)
Later, I went to Jewish Family Services in Edison, NJ to get some food years ago and a young Orthodox Jewess looked at me and laughed in my face. It seems to me that the whole problem in have been having was triggered by these types of people.
I was in Jerusalem Pizza in Highland Park, NJ and an older Orthodox Jew saw me dressed slovenly and he was laughing in my face too. I am fed up and something has to be done. I think the world hasn’t seen the best of me yet. I will get up on my feet again.