“You know what? A thousand kids showed up!”
Despite what others may have thought, Reb Shlomo felt that ultimately there was no conflict between himself and the various segments of the Orthodox community.
“They want them [i.e. the secular] to keep Shabbos, I want them to keep Shabbos. They want them to put on tefillin, I want them to put on tefillin. I don’t tell people what to do; I want them first to get a taste of Yiddishkeit. And I want them to love it so much that they will want to do it.
“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.”
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.