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Film Version of ‘Soul Doctor,’ the Shlomo Carlebach-Nina Simone Musical, Hit
US Theaters for One Night
A filmed version of “Soul Doctor,” the 2013
Broadway musical about the life of the influential
and controversial Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, played
in 600 movie theaters nationwide for one night only
on June 13.

The performance was filmed at the Israel Festival
in Jerusalem in 2018 as part of celebrations marking
the 70th anniversary of Israel’s founding.

“Soul Doctor,” written by Daniel Wise, earned
mixed reviews during a short Broadway run. The
show follows Carlebach from his childhood in Austria
in the 1930s to New York, where he becomes one of
the most well-known Jewish spiritual figures of the
20th century, working to fuse the modern musical
sensibilities of the 1960s with religious liturgy. It also
chronicles his friendship with Nina Simone, the iconic
singer and civil rights activist, 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 a Grammy-
nominated Netflix documentary about her mother,
is an executive producer on the “Soul Doctor”
film. Jeremy Chess, the original Broadway show’s
producer, along with Jerome Levy and Chandra
McQueen, are also producers of the film.

The show does not reckon with the allegations of
sexual misconduct first raised against Carlebach in
1998, which include abusing his power as a spiritual
leader with, among other things, unwanted touching
and kissing of several women. The allegations were
scrutinized again by Jewish communities across the
country in the wake of the #MeToo movement in
2017. Several rabbis and congregations have moved
away from using Carlebach’s music in their houses
of worship in recent years. His daughter, Neshama,
herself a musician, has struggled with how to uphold
her father’s musical and spiritual legacy.

Both Naomi King, the civil rights activist and
sister-in-law of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Susannah
Heschel, the Dartmouth Jewish studies professor and
daughter of civil rights-era activist Rabbi Abraham
Joshua Heschel, watched the “Soul Doctor” film and
commented on it in a recent press release.

“Any person watching this movie, it’ll shake ’em,
move ’em and change ‘em to help make this a better
world,” King said.

Heschel said the film “is a tribute to Nina Simone’s
enormous influence. By inspiring and encouraging
Shlomo Carlebach, Nina contributed to the
extraordinary revival of Jewish music and spirit
immortalized by Shlomo.”
— Gabe Friedman | JTA
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