JTA — A filmed version of “Soul Doctor,” the 2013 Broadway musical about the life of influential and controversial Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, will play Tuesday in 600 movie theaters across the United States for one night only.
The performance was filmed at the Israel Festival in Jerusalem in 2018 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the Jewish state.
“Soul Doctor” written by Daniel Wise earned Mixed Review during a short Broadway run. The show follows Carleback from his childhood in Austria to New York in the 1930s, where he becomes one of the best-known Jewish spiritual figures of the 20th century, bringing modern musical sensibilities of the 1960s to religious liturgy. Works to fuse together.
It also leads to his friendship with iconic singer and civil rights activist Nina Simone, whom he meets at a downtown jazz club. Given his family’s experience of antisemitism, Carlebach empathizes with Simone’s struggles against racism.
Simone’s daughter, Lisa, who produced the Grammy-nominated Netflix documentary about her mother, is an executive producer on the film “Soul Doctor.” Jeremy Chase, the creator of the original Broadway show, and Jerome Levy and Chandra McQueen are also producers on the film.
The show does not delve into allegations of sexual misconduct first made against Carleback in 1998, which include, among other things, abusing his power as a spiritual leader with unwanted touching and kissing several women. In 2017 the allegations were re-examined by Jewish communities across the country in the wake of the #MeToo movement. Many rabbis and congregations walked away in recent years from using Carlebach’s music in their houses of worship. His daughter, Neshama, herself a musician, has struggled How to live up to your father’s musical and spiritual legacy.
Josh Young as Shlomo Carleback, left, and Nia Trisha as Nina Simone in the filmed version of “Soul Doctor.” (Yakir Bezalel via JTA)
Naomi King, a civil rights activist and sister-in-law of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Susanna Heschel, daughter of Dartmouth Jewish studies professor and civil rights-era activist Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, both watched the “Spirit Doctor” film and more recently commented on this in a press release.
King said, “Anyone who sees this film, it will move them, move them and help make it a better world.”
Heschel said the film is “a tribute to the tremendous influence of Nina Simone. By inspiring and encouraging Shlomo Carlebach, Nina contributed to the extraordinary revival of Jewish music and soul immortalized by Shlomo.
