So Far, So Near

“I feel closer to my own Judaism through the collaboration [with Green Pastures Baptist Church Choir] more than I have in a long time,” Carlebach says.

“I feel closer to my own Judaism through the collaboration [with Green Pastures Baptist Church Choir] more than I have in a long time,” Carlebach says.

by Joseph Leichman
Special To The Jewish Week

There’s not a single song of her father’s or a single word of Hebrew on Neshama Carlebach’s new CD. Yet Reb Shlomo Carlebach’s enveloping spirit, both personal and musical, infuses her breakout project, wrapping it in the kind of warm embrace he was famous for. In fact, the album’s most striking feature — her collaboration with the Bronx-based Green Pastures Baptist Church Choir — is a nod to her father’s philosophy of reaching out to people of all religious and ethnic stripes.

The new record, “One and One,” is a “big departure from my father’s stuff. It’s a huge creative step for me, to be able to express my music in that way,” said Carlebach, a soulful singer who has gained a strong following of

her own over five previous records. Rev. Roger Hambrick, the choir’s director, and 40 choir members joined Carlebach this week at Manhattan’s Congregation B’nai Jeshurun for a CD release concert. Her sixth recording, “One and One” features the choir on two songs.

“The choir had been singing my father’s song, ‘Lemaan Achay’ [For My Brothers’ Sake], for years at their church,” said Carlebach. “I was very blessed to become connected with them at a Martin Luther King event [a few years ago], when I was asked to sing with them.”

Rev. Hambrick, for his part, first heard “Lemaan Achay” at a rally following the 1999 shooting death of Amadou Diallo, where Rabbi Avi Weiss, senior rabbi of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, performed the song.

“I was impressed with the song, but I didn’t know who wrote it,” said Rev. Hambrick, whose choir has performed many times at the Riverdale shul. “But Rabbi [Shmuel] Herzfeld [associate rabbi of the Hebrew Institute at the time] gave me a CD of Shlomo Carlebach. I listened to it and taught it to my choir.”

Once Carlebach and the choir began collaborating, they “started getting calls for gigs,” Carlebach said. “We did a big street fair in September, and a Conservative shul in November with 500 Jews swaying and ‘hallelujah’-ing.”

Carlebach and the choir cover an array of material.

“When we perform with Neshama, we do some of our stuff, some stuff that we wrote by ourselves, and then Shlomo stuff with Neshama or some of Neshama’s material,” said Rev. Hambrick, who took over the Green Pastures Church, in the Soundview section of the Bronx, from his late father. “We also do gospel and maybe a Negro spiritual.”

However, not everyone is comfortable with the Carlebach-choir crossover. “One and One” seems in part tangled up with the controversy surrounding Shlomo Carlebach’s life and the aftermath of his death in 1994. Just as people once criticized her father for his outreach to all kinds of people and his habit of hugging and kissing women (charges of sexual abuse surfaced shortly after his death), Neshama herself is now the target of some criticism on the blogosphere.

“There’s a blog going around saying ... God forbid she sings with black people,” Carlebach said.

“I’ve been dealing with sexist and religious fanatics,” she continued. “I find something [the collaboration with Green Pastures] that’s so in the vein of what my father was all about, so open and so inclusive, and people are saying I must be Jews for Jesus. We need to be more evolved than that.”

The criticism of Neshama seems somewhat unexpected because since her father’s death many communities that once were uncomfortable with Reb Shlomo now praise him. His teachings and music live on in every denomination, incorporated into concerts, prayer services and ceremonies.

Said Carlebach, “Now that he’s dead, people say, ‘Shlomo was my friend.’”

For her part, the collaboration with the Green Pastures choir has brought spiritual as well as musical benefits.

“I feel closer to my own Judaism through the collaboration more than I have in a long time,” Carlebach said. “I’m feeling so spiritual and uplifted and feeling so disappointed at the same time with the closed-mindedness” of her critics.

Indeed, the spat surrounding Rev. Hambrick’s appearance obscures the more significant themes of “One and One.” The lyrics to the title song “are in honor of the World Trade Center,” said Carlebach. “We [Carlebach and producer/pianist David Morgan] wrote the chorus within days of the World Trade Center falling.”

“One and One” also conveys a classic Carlebach teaching.

“My father said that we separate ourselves from everyone else in the world, and we’ve somehow forgotten that one and one is one,” said Carlebach. “The message makes a lot of sense, and it’s become my mantra to a certain degree. We can’t be angry, we have to be open and we have to be loving.”

Carlebach’s last album, 2004’s “Journey,” was an acoustic rendering, all in Hebrew, with two original compositions and 11 Reb Shlomo classics, including “Return Again” and “Adon Olam.”

About the shift from her father’s tunes, Carlebach said, “I don’t feel any pressure at all, internally or from him. I was able to move beyond those voices [urging me not to perform original material] and focus on my own truth.

“I don’t want anyone to buy my records because they think they have to. I’ve never, ever wanted to be a knock-off.”

After a tour of Israel in July, Carlebach will return to New York to record a live album with Hambrick’s choir. Though the date and location are as yet undetermined, Carlebach said the catalogue of songs was decided long ago: they will sing her father’s music.

“As someone who studied my father — and I’m really not talking about my father from the standpoint of being his child — I’m around his business, and I respect him more than any human being in the world,” Carlebach said.

Though Carlebach does not hesitate to argue away criticism — on her father’s behalf and her own — she isn’t singing with the Green Pastures choir to prove a point. She just likes the way it sounds when dozens of voices get behind her songs.

Of the choir, she said, “Their voices are like in the winter when you take a sweater out of the dryer. It’s so warm. It’s just such a spiritual thing.” n

“One and One” is available through Neshama Carlebach’s Web site. The CD release concert is May 22, 7:30 p.m. at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, 257 W. 88th St. $15 at door. (212) 787-7600.