CRYING FOR THE PAST BUT FIXING THE FUTURE 
  

"If you have the power to destroy, don't you suppose you have the power 
to rebuild?  I came here to shake hands with everyone in Poland." With 
this nationally televised response to reporters asking, "Why would you 
even want to come here?  It was the worst place.", Rabbi Shlomo 
Carlebach began his electrifying music tour to Poland in 1988, a land 
filled with many rich memories for the Jewish people and yet so many 
difficult and tragic memories for us. 

Within hours Shlomo's first concert sold out as people wondered, "Who is 
this guy?" The audience of 500, mostly non-Jews, was made up of people 
at every level including diplomats, government officials,children of 
people who committed atrocities and  children of Holocaust victims. At 
one point, Shlomo stopped the concert and said to the stonefaced 
audience , "You're sitting here like you're in an old folk's home.  If 
you want to get anger out of your heart, it's the hardest thing to do. 
The only antidote to hatred is to fill your heart with so much joy  you 
cannot possibly hate.  For this you need two hands and two feet. Let's 
go!" With that, the chevra traveling with Shlomo went into the audience. 
And they danced!!  As he once said, "Sometimes when the door is closed, 
you have to go through the walls." 

The story above was told to me by a member of that chevra as I prepared 
to travel to Poland with Shlomo two years later in 1990. His long 
-awaited return came at the invitation of Rabbi Michael Shudrich, 
Director of the Ronald C. Lauder  Foundation youth programs in Poland 
and our music tour guide for nine unforgettable days.  His invitation 
was on behalf  of the Crakow Jewish Music Festival organizers... 
non-Jews who established this festival every two years to express their 
appreciation for the Jewish contribution to Poland.  Seventeen of us 
from Holland, Austria, Germany, Israel and the United States joined 
Shlomo voluntarily for outreach in Cracow, Wroclow, Lodz, Warsaw and 
Lublin. Through  Shlomo's eyes,  I found the answer to a challenge fired 
at me during my preparations. "It's not appropriate to sing and dance in 
a graveyard.  Music in Poland? There are no Jews left.  Why bother?" 

At a reception in his shul just before we embarked, Shlomo told  the 
Polish ambassador to the United States that he prayed for peace with 
young people all over the world but "no one prays for peace like the 
young people in Poland." Across the old Iron Curtain countries there is 
a new generation of  Jews and non-Jews just learning what it is to be 
free in thought, action and faith. The ambassador, in turn, assured him 
that there are "friends of friendship in Poland".  In Warsaw, Second 
Secretary Scott Edelman of  the American Embassy commented during a 
concert intermission, "Everyone who comes to Poland comes either 
grieving or mourning or they come angry.  Shlomo is the first to come 
with a message of peace and just to share being Jewish." 

For all of its horror, Poland was also a source of strength for Shlomo. 
At the very first concert, Shlomo began with a slow, heartfelt niggun. 
"I was just singing a prayer for new eyes,"  he told the audience. 
"We're living in a time when G-d is giving us new eyes if only we want 
to.  Tonight when I saw all your beautiful eyes, it was SO good for me, 
and I'll never forget you. I wish I could take all of you with me to 
Yerushalayim, but I'm taking all your beautiful eyes."  The response 
from the audience was a thrilling oneness as they joined their dreams of 
peace to Shlomo's.   He taught us the prophetic truth:  PEACE IS ONLY 
FOR THE WHOLE WORLD. "When some people say that G-d is one, they mean 
there is one G-d.  If you really understand  it,  you know the whole 
world is one." 

 The concerts were messianic as the non-Jewish world saw that a Jew who 
is for real is someone who warms up the world and makes it beautiful 
again. "When the Six Million went up to heaven, they had only one 
prayer, 'Please, G-d, it just can't be like this any more.  You have to 
open the gates of love between people.' "  "The Talmud says,  'Some 
people sleep until the morning; some people know they have to bring the 
morning.' Every night when King David went to sleep there was a harp 
over his bed and at midnight a wind blew through the harp and King David 
heard the song of the next morning. The real enemies of G-d are people 
who don't believe that things can change.  They never heard the song of 
the next morning." 

After a 1989 visit to Germany, Shlomo declared at a concert just before 
Purim, "I bring you greetings from the children of Haman , and they are 
ready to teach the deepest Torah in the world.  What do you think will 
happen to the children and grandchildren of those who committed 
atrocities?  They went to B'nai Brak and were teaching Torah.  Like the 
grandchildren of  Haman, they're coming back to us because they KNOW--it 
was so wrong. The question is-how will we receive them?" At Majdanek, a 
group of non-Jewish German high school students traveling with their 
teacher fell apart when they viewed the mass collection of shoes taken 
from Jews in the concentration camp.  "This is so horrible," said a 
seventeen year old girl,"but I don't want to feel guilty.  I didn't do 
it." Sobbing, they ended up in the arms of members of our tour, who 
invited them to a small concert at a Jewish restaurant on our last night 
in Poland.  They didn't even know who Shlomo was,  but they changed 
their itinerary and bravely entered the restaurant just to be brothers 
and sisters.  We all experienced the holiness of new beginnings, of 
tikkun.  Shlomo was overjoyed to see them. "In a world with so few 
friends, every friend counts two million times." 

Shlomo wasn't naive;  he came to Poland "for my children, for your 
children, for all of  G-d's children. Maybe my father and your father 
weren't such good friends but our children will be the best brothers and 
sisters in the world."   He once said, "An Israeli  Embassy in Poland is 
okay but what we really need is to fix the relationship between people. 
When Shlomo urged the audience to "clap and sing with me", he was fixing 
the world.  "The world doesn't know what to do with their hands.  They 
think hands are only for counting money.  We're here to show that with 
your hands, you can bring so much love to the world." 

To effect change, Shlomo always spoke to the inside of the inside of 
the inside.  He begged and implored us passionately, with compelling 
urgency, not to hate.    "There is a time when you say, "I'm Jewish, 
you're Catholic, he's Hindu.  And there is a time when we are one.  In a 
hospital you don't ask.  The whole world is a hospital The whole world 
is sick.  Hatred is a sickness.  Do you think I help the world by 
getting sick myself?  We cannot afford to be sick anymore!", he shouted. 
"We cannot afford to be sick!  So I'm inviting all the doctors to pray 
so hard, so hard for peace."  The following day we davened together, 
Jews and non-Jews, at the Ramah Shul in Crakow.  Fixing the future. 

Just outside is a cemetery, centuries old, where many of the greatest 
rebbes are buried , including the Bach from whom Shlomo is descended. 
When it was reclaimed from the Nazis, broken headstones used to pave the 
streets were re-assembled into a wall surrounding the cemetery.  It was 
here at the Ramah Shul that Shlomo composed the Crakow Niggun  It 
begins as a  slow, heavy march with the feel of agony and futility. 
Midway through , the melody  is transformed  into a messianically joyous 
song of the next morning. "As this sad melody was coming into my head, I 
saw them, the six million, looking back at us and saying, "Is this the 
way to go to Yerusahlayim? Why don't you dance!"  They were walking 
backwards," Shlomo said, "the way one backs away from The  Holy Wall, 
paving the way for us." 

To Jews Poland feels like a graveyard.  Yet it is a very Jewish place 
rich in sacred remains.  There is buried treasure in people, too.  We 
were heartened by individual non-Jews who created and supported the 
Festival concerts  who, though normally shy, came READY to dance with 
warm eyes and open arms  "The deepest connection between people is when 
they hold hands. Have you ever noticed there are no barriers between 
people when they dance?"  On one very holy night, everyone came on stage 
and encircled Shlomo as he often urged the audience to do. "Come close, 
come close. Don't stand so far." In a place where there had been such 
horror, no one was afraid of anyone,  no one hated any one.  I didn't 
want the dancing ever to  end. How long must G-d be waiting, too, for us 
to bring the morning!  "Your feet will take you where your head won't 
go!" We went from bliss to ecstasy to something beyond time and space. 
It was so heavenly - was G-d "dancing" with us?  Shlomo's face was 
shining as he basked  in the revelation of G-d's oneness coming into the 
world through our connectedness.  I'm sure it was one of the highest 
nights of his life. 

When the music  finally ended,  he said, "Do you know how much light we 
just brought into the world?..and light travels very fast."  Then I 
knew what Shlomo never doubted for a moment-one day it will really 
happen.  I'm sure I heard dancing feet on the streets of Jerusalem. We 
don't have to be sad , broken until then.  He told the audiences that 
"Some people wait until everything is good before they rejoice, but King 
David said, "I'm rejoicing now because I know, because I know, G-d will 
answer my prayer!" 

Elie Wiesel writes in "We Are Here",  a collection of Holocaust songs 
and their stories , that they sang- to escape their suffering and 
through melody could then experience ecstasy.  Our leaders and martyrs 
throughout  Jewish history have defiantly sung and danced in the face of 
persecution and to worship with joy.  Their songs and stories 
strengthened me during our visits to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek, to 
the Warsaw Ghetto, and to the cemeteries in Cracow, Warsaw and Lodz.  In 
the camps, the shuls and at the graves of so many precious people, we 
became committed to living.  We cried and davened and took them with us, 
In their memory, we promised to keep singing and dancing.  At his 
concerts in Russia in 1989 Shlomo told all the young people , "Do you 
think you were the only ones on the stage who were dancing?  Every Jew 
since Abraham was dancing with you.  Can you imagine how proud all of 
our holy fathers and mothers are of you!" 

For hundreds of young Jews born since the war throughout Eastern Europe, 
just coming to grips with their "Jewishness," the Lauder Foundation is 
providing summer camps, youth groups,  schools and sponsored Shlomo's 
1990 concerts and outreach events.  He was always looking for hidden 
Jews in the audiences. There was unbelievable excitement when German and 
Polish Jewish teenagers we'd met arrived  for an intimate Melaveh Malka 
concert in the hotel with us.  They are our seedlings, our remnant. 
They looked like polished apples when they entered the room.  "Glowing", 
they sat around Shlomo enthralled by his stories and fiery songs about 
Shabbos, King David, the Holy Temple and Jerusalem.  He was the zaydeh 
too many never knew.  "Why bother?" is not a Jewish question.  There is 
no future in it. 

Shlomo bothered.   He used every moment of  his life to make an impact 
on the world for G-d's sake and out of the greatest love for all of 
Israel.  We were cautioned by Rabbi Shudrich to respectfully expect that 
the ways of the rabbi and  25 men who attend the synagogue in Warsaw 
would not be Shlomo's way. The rabbi is sweet and quiet.  Having 
intermarried, the men are without their families at shul.  The few women 
who came went quietly to their place upstairs to be neither seen nor 
heard. The synagogue itself was used by the Nazis as a horse stable but 
had now been restored to its original beauty after a three-year 
reclamation. Following the services led by Shlomo with the rabbi 
standing behind him shaking his head softly "no" and using his finger in 
a gentle gesture to indicate that the women should not sing, one man 
asked, "Is  Shlomo reform?".  I said, "No, it's simcha."  "Ah, simcha, 
simcha!" 

Later there was a kidddush at which only Shlomo and the men sat around 
the table, the women standing several feet behind  them were offered no 
food.  Though respectful, Shlomo's voice was growing more intense, and I 
wondered what had aroused him so.  As we were leaving, I heard Shlomo 
remark to Rabbi Shudrich , "You're doing wonderful things for the boys. 
But what are you doing for the girls?  It's time to bring everyone back 
to shul. You'll have to start it yourself." 

 Shlomo's message to all of Israel, to every person, was that it takes 
strength to come back to life and that strength comes from joy. "The 
world is drowning.  Cities are drowning.  People are drowning.  Everyone 
needs something to hold on to.  You'll say, ' Shlomo. I'm not strong 
enough that the whole city of Warsaw should hold onto me, but when you 
want to do something very good, G-d gives you the strength to do it." 

"Being joyous is not a luxury.  It's a matter of life and death. You 
have to imagine that joy is a pillar and that you are tied to it." 
Shlomo spoke so often about how hard it is to cry with one side of your 
heart and to laugh with the other side. "Despite our tears, let's  make 
ourselves very strong...You are not permitted to stop doing what you 
have to do.  A Jew never stops!  Don't ever let anything keep you from 
doing what you know you were meant to do in this world.  We have to keep 
tragedy in our heart but keep it on the outside of your heart. The 
inside of your heart is so Divine, it's like G-d.  If you don't fill it 
with joy, you'll never make it." 

Shlomo was my deepest soul friend, my rebbe and is still my hero- G-d's 
Water Carrier, carrying G-d's water from one generation to another, from 
one place to another, one person to another. "It's my story. It's your 
story," he said. "I bless us to be holy water carriers." Shlomo deserves 
more than just to be remembered because he tried with every fiber of his 
being, with every ounce of energy, every smile, every hug , every 
melody, every prayer, every Torah to teach us how to LIVE. I believe he 
is no longer with us because now we have what we need to really bring 
the morning. 

 Are you only crying or are you also dancing, connecting, loving, 
learning, singing, praying, blessing, fixing? Are you a water-carrier? 
That's what it means to be like Shlomo, to be for real.  "Some people 
live their whole life, but they never taste it." Without him, if you are 
only broken and sad,  Shlomo would say, "OY! IS THAT  ALL YOU LEARNED 
FROM ME? You're already giving up our dreams, G-d's dreams. Instead, 
sweetest friends,  give me harmony.  Sing loud! Be strong! Be strong! 
Hold on! Connect yourself to the highest things in life. Let every 
minute and every second count." 

In Russia, Shlomo called out, "I don't know what I'm doing here, and you 
don't know what you're doing here but, gevalt, the world's getting 
better every second.  Come on , Yiddin!  Use your feet!" The Nazis were 
wrong.  What makes us Jews is not in our blood-it's in our spirit.  If 
you want  to bless Shlomo, be a foot Jew.  How about being FOR? Friends, 
we need a NEW BEGINNING!  While we cry for the past , we must fix the 
future...It's time for all of us to stop crawling around on the floor 
like a mouse. 
Soar a little bit! 
  
It's almost morning.  I know Shlomo will be there.  How could he not? 
How could we not? 
