Rav Shlomo Carlebach zt”l

It is with great sadness that Matzav.com reports the petirah of Rav Shlomo Carlebach zt”l, former mashgiach ruchani of Yeshivas Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin in Brooklyn, NY. He was 96 years old.

Rav Carlebach was born on August 17, 1925, in Hamburg. His father, Rav Yosef Carlebach, was the city’s last chief rabbi and a scion of an illustrious German rabbinical family.

In 1941, Rav Carlebach’s family was deported along with the entire Jewish community of Hamburg to the Jungfernhof concentration camp near Riga in Latvia. Rav Carlebach’s parents and his sisters Rus, Naomi and Sara were killed in a forest near Riga in 1942. As the youngest son, Rav Carlebach was able to survive the Holocaust while suffering four years of internment in nine different concentration camps. His older four sisters and brother were sent to England by their parents and survived the war, while his sister Miriam went to Eretz Yisroel.

After the war, Rav Carlebach joined Yeshivas Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin, where he became one of the closest talmidim of the rosh yeshiva, Rav Yitzchok Hutner. In fact, Rav Carlebach was selected to write the brief welcoming introductions in Rav Hutner’s works, Pachad Yitzchok, where he would sign himself as שלמה בן הרב ר’ יוסף צבי הי”ד קרליבך.

Rav Carlebach was serving as a high school rebbi at the Yeshiva of Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn when Rav Hutner appointed him the new mashgiach ruchani of Yeshivas Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin following the departure of Rav Avigdor Miller. He served as mashgiach of the yeshiva and Kollel Gur Aryeh from 1966 to 1978, after which he was succeeded by Rav Shimon Groner.

Rav Carlebach was a very successful mashgiach and a brilliant baal machshavah with wide-ranging yedios. He developed a series of shmuessen that he eventually published, first in pamphlet form and later in a full series called Maskil L’Shlomo.

Following his departure from Yeshivas Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin, Rav Carlebach delivered shiurim and shmuessen at various Bais Yaakov schools and seminaries. His eloquent speaking style garnered him a wide audience, and he began to record and sell tapes of his lectures. But the bulk of his time and energy were reserved for writing his life’s work in Hebrew, which was to become the five volume Maskil L’Shlomo on Chumash that incorporated much of Rav Hutner’s thought system in his ten-volume Pachad Yitzchok. Rav Carlebach later dedicated time to writing a biography of his father, Ish Yehudi – The Life and Legacy of a Torah Great: Joseph Tzvi Carlebach.

Rav Carlebach lived in Flatbush, Brooklyn for most of his life. During the last few years, he lresided in Lakewood, NJ near his children.

Rav Carlebach is survived by his wife, Rebbetzin Maude Carlebach, his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

[Rav Carlebach was a cousin of famed composer Shlomo Carlebach.]

The levayah will be held tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. at the Congregation Sons of Israel Holocaust Memorial Chapel, located at 613 Ramsey Avenue, in Lakewood NJ. The aron will then be flow to Eretz Yisroel for kevurah on Har Hamenuchos in Yerushalayim.

Yehi zichro boruch.

{Matzav.com}