Jews for Allah

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Case of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach






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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."

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."



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 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."

Sex, the Spirit, Leadership and the Dangers of Abuse

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

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.

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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.

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 *BadWord*, 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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:

1. Legitimate sexual relationships involve a dominant male and a subordinate female.

2. Legitimate sexual relationships have the procreation and rearing of children as their very strong (not absolutely total) intention and justification.

3. 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.

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FEATHERMAN FILE
By ROBIN CEMBALEST
FORWARD STAFF

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."