Soul Doctor

Soul Doctor
Journey of a Rockstar Rabbi
2013 Broadway Playbill
Music	Shlomo Carlebach
Lyrics	Shlomo Carlebach, David Schechter
Book	Daniel Wise
Basis	The life of Shlomo Carlebach
Productions	2008 New York City 2010 New Orleans 2011 Miami 2012 Off-Broadway New York City 2013 Broadway 2014 Montreal 2014 Off-Broadway

Soul Doctor - Journey of a Rockstar Rabbi is a Broadway musical that details the life of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, with music and lyrics by Shlomo Carlebach and David Schechter, and book and direction by Daniel Wise. The Soul Doctor show debuted at Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carre in New Orleans, and had subsequent runs at The Colony Theater in Miami, The Parker Playhouse in Ft Lauderdale, and The New York Theatre Workshop in New York City. The Broadway production started previews on July 2013 with its official opening night taking place August 15, 2013 at Broadway's Circle in the Square Theatre.

This coming of age story of courage and inspiring perseverance opens in 1960s Vienna, where Shlomo Carlebach is giving a concert, having returned to the city for the first time in decades, and then transitions back in time to Nazi-occupied Austria when Shlomo, as a child, witnessed the murder of a Jewish man singing in the streets. This experience causes Shlomo to make a pledge to always stand up for freedom of expression through music. To escape persecution, the Carlebach family moves to the Upper West Side in New York City where Shlomo is a Yeshiva student studying the Talmud and memorizing the Torah, following his father's footsteps to become a Rabbi.

Shlomo's path soon changes when he meets the legendary jazz singer Nina Simone in a Greenwich Village night club. She not only teaches him about her gospel and jazz musical roots, but also confesses how her people, like Jews in Europe at the time, were being persecuted in the U.S. Inspired by the music of Simone, Shlomo begins to break Orthodox tradition by obtaining a guitar. He is soon writing songs and playing his music for women and non-Jews in clubs around New York City. Shlomo embraces pop music and hippiedom over established scholasticism despite ramifications within his family. In the late '60s he moved to Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco where a "House of Love and Prayer" becomes his home with a following that keeps growing. During this period he played concerts alongside acts such as Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, Pete Seeger and Jefferson Airplane.