Exhibition | The House of Love and Prayer
Everyday Life at the House of Love and Prayer
BY OREN KROLL-ZELDIN
From the Kinolibrary archive film collections. To order the clip clean and high res visit http://www.kinolibrary.com. Clip ref JJ2 1960s Haight Ashbury Hippies, Cars, San Francisco.
Source: YouTube
The House of Love and Prayer was not only a place for prayer, Torah study, and Jewish ritual. In essence it was a Jewish commune influenced by other experiential living communities in San Francisco, most notably the Kaliflower Commune founded by Irving Rosenthal, a Jewish writer living in the city. In that regard, members of the House of Love and Prayer had to contend with what it meant to survive everyday life in 1960s San Francisco.
Specifically at the House of Love and Prayer, this meant dealing with financial struggles, drugs, food, and ultimately a controversy over the separation of men and women during prayer.
Shlomo Carlebach’s Role
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach was without question the spiritual leader of the House of Love and Prayer community, the central rabbinic authority that guided its vision. The House was his idea, he helped turn it into a reality, and it was his influence along with the constant promise of his presence that led to its growth and popularity. Further, those that inhabited and visited the House took Shlomo’s vision quite seriously. Shlomo wanted the House to be a place where “When you come someone loves you. When you leave someone misses you.” This was one of the guiding principles of the House and was one of the many ideas Carlebach put forth that inspired the quotidian actions of those present at the House.
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach teaching at the House of Love and Prayer on June 27, 1973.
Source: YouTube
That said, Shlomo was not an integral part of everyday life at the House of Love and Prayer because he was absent most of the time. Since Shlomo was in such a high demand across the country, and at times even internationally, he was only sporadically present at the House, coming approximately once every four to six weeks to lead the ever-popular Shabbat celebrations. (On occasion, he came to teach a week-long class at the House.)
When he was away from the House, traveling the world, he regularly handed out his business cards, inviting every Jew he encountered to come and visit the House. He famously told people, “San Francisco is the city of tomorrow. Jerusalem is the city of the day after tomorrow.” Largely due to Shlomo’s proselytizing efforts, approximately 150-200 people visited the House every Shabbat. On the weeks when Shlomo was present, the numbers easily were 300-400 or more.
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach teaching at the House of Love and Prayer on July 1, 1973.
Source: YouTube
Getting High on Torah and Prayer
Drugs, especially marijuana and psychedelic drugs such as LSD, were integral to the countercultural Hippie experience; perhaps unsurprisingly, they were also present at the House of Love and Prayer. Such drugs were seen as doorways to spiritual journeys. Even community leaders like Rabbi Zalman Schachter (who notably befriended Timothy Leary) famously engaged with such entities.
In fact, in the very early years of the House community, before the House had even opened (yet when people were meeting together in Forest Knolls), LSD was an integral element of the Shabbat experience. For those in this collective, there was no contradiction between observing Shabbat and getting high. For many, psychedelics enhanced the Shabbat experience. Even though the policy of the House was that illegal drugs were prohibited, like many other parts of the House the “no drugs rule” was ambiguous.
Aryae Coopersmith tells a story about drugs at the House of Love and Prayer.
Source: YouTube
This all said, for many, if not most, in the House community, Shabbat and Torah study became spiritual practices that enabled people to take the next step beyond the psychedelic spiritual awakening. As one former member put it, people at the House “got high on Torah and Prayer.”
Food and Shabbat Meals
Each week presented those running the House with a struggle to accommodate and feed the throngs who came for Shabbat, partially because they had no constant source of funding. With great effort, and a little bit of luck, every week they were able to provide Shabbat meals for all of their visitors.
For instance, the Sosnik family, which owned a local kosher food distribution business, routinely supplied them with food and wine. House members also went to a local grocery store on Clement Street to get donations of expired food, such as produce. Sometimes the House received random gifts and. In addition, though modest, the House of Love and Prayer was able to get funding from local Jewish organizations that felt obligated to help a group of Jews creating experiences for other Jews to engage in Jewish life.
Louise Berky, who, in many ways, acted as the House matron, presided over the kitchen every week. She organized the food, as well as those preparing the food. In fact, everyday life at the house was starkly gendered. The women always cooked, served, and cleaned. Partially because this was a few years before the nationwide Women’s Liberation movement had taken root, both men and women gravitated towards traditional gender roles. Each week for Shabbat the women made giant pots of soup, rice, and vegetables (or vegetable lasagna). Usually they cooked recipes out of the Zen Macrobiotics cookbook.
Financial Difficulties and Fundraising
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the House of Love and Prayer was the only Jewish outreach program focused on young adults in San Francisco that was unable to secure a constant source of funding from the local Jewish Federation. Mainstream Jewish institutions felt that the House threatened the Jewish communities’ norm, which, at the time, was mainly to promote Israel education and Holocaust memorial projects.[1] They were largely disinterested in funding a project that involved young Jewish Hippies taking on Orthodox practices.
Furthermore, the House had no formal relationships with other Jewish institutions in the city. Anshey Sfard, an Orthodox synagogue on Clement Street, near the House’s first location, was the only community welcoming of the House and its unique brand of Judaism, as exemplified by occasional visits from Anshey Sfard’s rabbi to the House. Aside from Anshey Sfard, one of the only semi-partnerships that took place was a one-off event at Temple Emanu-El (now Congregation Emanu-El) invited Shlomo to visit their community to sing songs; on occasion, people from Emanu-El wandered over to the House to see what was happening there, purely out of curiosity. (Coincidentally, the first House was one block away from Temple Emanu-El.)
Since they had no support from the larger Jewish communities of the Bay Area, the financial struggles of the House were quite real. For example, every month they struggled to come up with their rent. Most who lived at the House didn’t have a paying professional job, to either help with rent or food. A typical monthly scenario was as follows: On the first day of every month, Aryae Coopersmith or Elia Succot, the co-leaders of the House, would go to the bank to see how much money they had in the House account, hoping that by some miracle there would be enough money to cover the rent. Surprisingly, every month there would be just enough to pay the rent and keep the House alive. To this day, they don’t know who put money into the bank account or even how it got there.
The mystery donor/s aside, most of the funding for the House came from a biannual fundraising campaign that often netted as much as $10,000.[2] The campaign largely consisted of a mail campaign, with letters sent out to Jews in the Bay Area and beyond. With the money, they paid rent or mortgage, bought food, or purchased books for the House Yeshiva library. The success of these campaigns showed members of the House that although they had no support from mainstream Jewish institutions, there were individuals who supported their efforts.
[1] Interview with member of the House of Love and Prayer, April 2017.
[2] Yaakov Ariel, “Hasidism in the Age of Aquarius: The House of Love and Prayer in San Francisco, 1967-1977” in Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation, Volume 13, No. 2 (2003), 139-165.
The Mechitzah Controversy
The founders of the House took pride in the fact that there was no mechitzah, the partition separating men and women during prayer found in almost all modern and contemporary Orthodox-affiliated synagogues. Carlebach was also proud of the fact that there was no gender separation during prayer at the House. This was not mere happenstance but was an intentional decision made at the first House, influenced by Shlomo, who realized that in the cultural milieu of late 1960s San Francisco people needed to be able to, at a minimum, sit down next to one another. He felt that he could not teach and sing his music and reach people in the same way if they were separated.[1] This ultimately led to Carlbach’s break with Chabad as early as the late 1950s. In response to the lack of a mechitzah at the House, he famously said, “We are not here to build walls’ we are here to tear them down.”[2]
At the second House, things were different. The decision to institute a mechitzah in this new location was symbolic of the many distinctions between the two Houses. After lengthy discussions on the matter, which was actually introduced by female members of the House community, they decided that they would pray with a mechitzah. Ultimately, the decision to have the mechitzah was one of core elements that played a role in the eventual closing of the House of Love and Prayer.
[1] Aryae Coopersmith, Holy Beggars: A Journey from Haight Street to Jerusalem (El Granada: One World Lights, 2011).
[2] Interview with member of the House of Love and Prayer, October 2017.