“Back in San Francisco I struck a deal with people who wanted to come to me for Shabbos that they had to go to the mikveh first. It was unbelievable – from noon to three it was men, and from three to six it was women. Then they started keeping the mitzvah of becoming clean before Shabbos. Suddenly, the mikveh was in full swing.”
As our interview came to a close, people began filtering in for a shiur on the philosophy of Reb Nachman of Breslov. Before I left, I asked Reb Shlomo to fill in a few gaps regarding his connection to his shul, which he was happy to do.
Congregation Kehilat Jacob was founded by a Rabbi Segolovich from Danzig. When Rabbi Segolovich died in 1944, Reb Shlomo’s father, who came to America from Germany in 1939, assumed the pulpit. Reb Shlomo became rabbi of the shul after his father died in 1967.
I came away from our time together thinking about the sheer experience of sitting in the living room of a man who had devoted his entire adult life to bringing others close to Torah. A man who also just happened to be acknowledged as the father of modern Jewish music.
His inspired sounds pervade our existence. Of deceptive simplicity, his music reaches to the very depths of one’s neshamah. His melodies have been integrated into the liturgy, they are played at simchas, they are at our Shabbos tables, and often they work their way into the back of our minds.
His gift to Klal Yisrael will last long after others have faded, and in that sense he will always be with us.
Even so, Reb Shlomo, you are greatly missed.
Michael Paley, a young and talented writer with an eclectic range of interests, died tragically in December 2006. He wrote this article in 1996 for The New Standard, a publication no longer in existence that was edited by Jason Maoz, currently senior editor of The Jewish Press.
