This week's Human Experience - Ami

amother

Sat, Mar 04 2023, 8:51 pm

If you read this week's Ami, I have so many questions:

Shlomo Carlebach meets an air hostess (Kathy) davening on a plane. He asks how come she's davening. She says she felt drawn to judaism and converted. She's engaged to a jew but his parents are against him marrying a convert. Carlebach says ok give me his parents number ill talk to them. He calls and the father yells at him that he's a holocaust survivor and even though he's not frum he doesnt want his son marrying a convert.

So he calls Kathy to let her know and instead her father answers and yells at him for interfering. Carlebach makes a joke about being a shadchan, the father calms down and says I'm going to tell you a secret no-one knows, not even our kids (but now I'm about to divulge my lifelong secret to a stranger over the phone?). My wife and I are jewish holocaust survivors. After the holocaust we decided to never tell anyone we're jewish and we raised our kids as non-jews.

Carlebach says wait so your daughter is jewish, you can now tell that to her fiancé's father and problem solved. Father agrees. (what? he never thought of that before Carlebach mentioned it?)

The 2 fathers meet and it turns out they're childhood friends and were friends in the camps and promised each other that if they survive their kids would marry each other.

scintilla

Sun, Mar 05 2023, 4:49 am

It's an old story, been around for decades. I don't know how true the details are but the author is Yitta Halberstam and she's pretty trustworthy. I was just disappointed to see something there that I'd already read!

I'm remembering now, I could be wrong, that she had some personal connection with Shlomo Carlebach? So maybe she heard it directly from him. Would explain the fanciful tone of the story.

amother

NeonGreen

Sun, Mar 05 2023, 4:53 am

All carlebach stories are fairytales and don't make an ounce of sense. I'm disappointed with Ami that they started printing Carlebach see stories. A few weeks ago it was yoel gold and now it's yita... Next thing you know they'll be printing stories about the gadlus of cw. Give them 12 years or so