I was a child, my hand held in my father's. We were walking in the "Ohel Moshe" neighborhood in Nachlaot, recounting the weekly parsha. Suddenly, from one of the alleys, a group of men and women in colorful clothes emerged towards us, walking and singing. I did not huddle in my father's lap as requested. On the contrary, I looked into their kind eyes and their endearing smiles. If I am not mistaken, one of them, who was wearing a vest, a children's kippah on his head and a short, curly beard, looked at me with his big, bright eyes and caressed my cheeks. When they finished passing us, I turned my head back toward the moving convoy. One of the members of the moving group waved at me as he sang and walked with dancing leaps. Closing the distance between himself and his friends. I stood in my place. Father pulled me with one hand and with the other he made a gesture of rejection and said, "Hippy." I get it, hippies mean crazy.
Father, who is a scholar of Torah and a man of Halacha, cannot stand people singing on the streets of a city.
Want more news, videos and stories? Join the Haredim 10 WhatsApp channel >>
Later, my mother took me shopping at the supermarket next to the consumer. Next to the cashier, among mini-sodakit and sugar-free candies, a picture of the man in a vest peeked out from a cassette box, his gaze directed upwards and a long guitar neck crossing his chest, and above it was written: "The soul is yours." I recognized these words from the selichot I heard from my father in the month of Elul at the "Ezra the Writer" synagogue. I wondered, who is the owner of the souls?
On Marchashvan 1955, I saw the hippies I met as a child walking at the entrance to Jerusalem after the bed of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. Their clothes were colorful. Some were holding guitars, some were jumping in circles, and all were smiling and crying, singing and walking: "The soul is yours and the body is your work, rest on your labor.".
I was torn between myself and my opinion, which was beginning to mature, and I decided: Indeed, the soul is yours. Go, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach!
Rabbi David Menachem is the rabbi of the Mishkan Yosef community in Jerusalem and a professional bard.
