Carlebach, Eli Chaim (1925–1990)

I. Family and Background in Germany
Eli Chaim Carlebach was born in Berlin, Germany on January 14, 1925, to Rabbi Hartwig Naphtali Carlebach (1889–1967) and Pessie (Paula) Cohn (1896–1980). He had two siblings: his older sister, Zerline Levovitz (1910-2001), and his twin brother, Shlomo (1925–1994).
The Carlebach family originally came from Heidelberg, in the German Grand Dutchy of Baden, where they had dwelt since 1745, working as successful merchants and shopkeepers. Some occupied positions of note, such as City Taxators. Eli Chaim’s grandfather, Rabbi Salomon (Shlomo) Carlebach (1845–1919), the son of a Heidelsheim farmer (and, possibly, a cattle dealer), was the second known rabbi in the Carlebach family since 1745. He served as Rabbi of the Jewish community in Lübeck. Salomon’s wife, Esther Adler (1853–1920), was the daughter of Lübeck’s chief rabbi, Alexander Adler (1816–1869), and descended from generations of rabbis. Of their twelve children, five of their eight sons, including Eli Chaim’s father, Naphtali, would become rabbis, and three of their four daughters married rabbis. Many of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren would, in turn, become rabbis or marry rabbis, as well.
It is significant to note that the full title of Eli Chaim’s grandfather, Salomon, was Rabbiner Dr. Carlebach. He held a Ph.D. from the University of Tübingen, thus embracing the concept of Torah im Derech Eretz – interacting with German culture while maintaining strict adherence to Jewish practice – as was articulated by rabbis Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–1888) and Azriel Hildesheimer (1820–1899), two of his teachers who laid the philosophical ground for Jewish Neo-Orthodoxy in Germany. Eli Chaim’s father, Naphtali, along with his other brothers who had rabbinic ordination, also, like Salomon, attended German secular universities where they received a doctorate. This was in order to officiate as rabbis and to meet the requirements South German states had established early in the 1800s for a modern rabbinate. These rabbis, versed in secular knowledge, were to lead Germany’s Jewish communities in the emancipation process. Thus, a new model was born, the “German” rabbi, who left a legacy among all German Jewry’s groupings, including its Orthodoxy and quickly conquered German-speaking central Europe. Naphtali’s brother, Rabbi Joseph Tzvi Carlebach (1883–1942), for example, who would later become the chief rabbi of Altona, Germany, wrote his University of Heidelberg Ph.D. thesis, “Lewi ben Gerson als Mathematiker. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Mathematik bei den Juden,” on the mathematical achievements of Rabbi Levi ben Gersonides (1288–1344). Eli Chaim’s mother, Pessia, was the daughter of Rabbi Arthur (Asher Michael) Cohn (1862-1926), the chief rabbi of Basel, Switzerland, who had received his rabbinical training at the Orthodoxes Rabbinerseminar zu Berlin founded by Rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer while also studying history and philology at the University of Berlin. Thus, both of Eli Chaim Carlebach’s parents came from Neo-Orthodox families.

II. Early Life in Germany
In Berlin, Eli Chaim’s father, Naphtali, served as rabbi of the Passauerstrasse Synagogue of the Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin. This was one of the few synagogues in Germany that did not discriminate in any manner against Jews of Eastern European origin who were members. Polish and Lithuanian rabbis who were visiting in Berlin, often gave sermons at the synagogue. In 1931, when Eli Chaim was six, the family moved to Baden, Austria, near Vienna, where his father served as the Chief Rabbi. Next door to his synagogue was a shtiebel where Tschortkover and Bobover Chasidim prayed and studied. Eli Chaim attended services there, loved learning their nigunim, and was greatly attracted to their religious fervor. At the same time, he was studying with private tutors his father had hired, who had studied at the Litvish (Lithuanian) Ponevezh and Telshe Yeshivas (that were anti-Chasidic). In 1937, the family traveled to Ponevezh to visit with the Ponevezher Rov, Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman (1886–1969), with whom Naphtali Carlebach had a friendship, and stayed there for several months. During that time the boys studied in the Ponevezh Yeshiva.

III. Flight from Nazism
In the summer of 1938, a few months after the Anschluss that had consequently resulted in the deportation of 1,871 Jews, the family fled Baden, Austria. Eli Chaim’s father, through the help of Kovno’s Chief Rabbi, Avrohom Dov Shapiro (1870–1943) was invited by the Association of Orthodox Rabbis in New York to come to America. The papers that would have allowed them to travel directly to America, however, did not arrive in time. The family unsuccessfully sought transit visas through other countries but were turned down (even by Switzerland where Eli Chaim’s mother was born). Finally, they obtained a travel visa from the Lithuanian ambassador and traveled (by train) 800 miles north to Telsiai, Lithuania, joining other Jewish refugees from Germany who sought safety in the great yeshiva, there. The Carlebach family would have been assured of welcome, since Naphtali’s brother, Rabbi Joseph Tzvi Carlebach, following the success of his Carlebach Gymnasium high school in Kovno (based on Torah im Derech Eretz principles), had been invited by the Rosh Yeshiva of Telshe during World War I to start a system of similar schools that became known as the Yavneh network.
Seven months later, in February 1939, having obtained a travel visa from the Consul of Denmark, the family left Telsiai and left for Denmark (probably from the port of Klaipeda). From Denmark, they were able to procure a visa to England. Naphtali then set out first for America. Six weeks later, in March of 1939, Eli Chaim, age 14, together with his mother and siblings, traveled on the RMS Queen Mary to New York.

V. Family Life in America
In March of 1949, Eli Chaim married Hadassa Schneerson (1928–2000), the daughter of Rabbi Zalman Schneerson (1898–1980), the former Chief Rabbi of the Association of Orthodox Jewry of France. (This also made her the second cousin of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the 7th Lubavitcher Rebbe.) They had five daughters: Sterna Citron (b.1950), Sheina Carlebach (b.1951), Billie (Yocheved Baila) Carlebach (b. 1953), Freyda Laufer (b. 1956), and Esther Leiba Leah Kugel (b.1960).

VI. Rabbinic Career
Following their wedding, Eli Chaim and his wife moved to Rochester, New York, where her father was serving as rabbi of a congregation. There, Eli Chaim studied to be a shochet (ritual slaughterer). The couple settled in Newark, New Jersey, where he worked as a shochet and also as a Talmud Torah teacher. He then served as rabbi of two Orthodox congregations in New Jersey: Machzikei Hadas in Newark from the mid-1950s to 1965, and then Hillside Jewish Center from 1965 until his death in 1990. In the 1980s he also co-led the Carlebach Shul in New York with his brother Shlomo, who had taken over the leadership of the Manhattan synagogue following the death of their father, Naphtali, in 1967.
The attendees at Eli Chaim Carlebach’s wedding – a mix of Litvish and Chasidic Haredi rabbis – were indicative of the course his rabbinic career would take in America: a blend of Misnagid and Chasidic Judaism. While leading Orthodox congregations, he remained for some years within the Lubavitcher world, as well (especially due to his wife’s family ties), and created the index for the first four volumes of Likutei Sichot, a collection of published lectures by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Schneerson. The Bobover Chasidim continued to draw him, as well. In 1975 he founded and was the editor-in-chief of Machon Zecher Naphtali, a research institute and publishing house in Jerusalem that issued more than forty titles on the works of Chasidic dynasties before the Holocaust, among them legends about the Baal Shem Tov; a study of Rabbi Elimelech and his brother, Rabbi Zusha; and stories concerning the Sabba of Shpola. Eli Chaim traveled to Israel every summer to help supervise the publication of texts, the majority of which carried introductions by him, and traveled all over the world to raise funds for paying the researchers and publishing the books.
Eli Chaim Carlebach died in New Jersey on March 23, 1990, while at the Hillside Jewish Center. He was buried in Har HaMenuchot cemetery in Jerusalem.

VII. Legacy
Eli Chaim Carlebach’s rabbinic career and influence is notable both for what he embraced and what he did not. The world of Western, secular culture was not of interest to him as it had been to the two previous generations of Neo-Orthodox rabbis in the Carlebach family, and hence he did not attend the university nor publish works synthesizing secular and Jewish thought. Though he had spent time in Litvish yeshivas, it was the Chasidic world that drew him: its mystical teachings, fervor, stories, and nigunim. It was this that he endeavored to pass on to the American Jewish community. Hence, his later involvement in publication of Chasidic tales and legends. Yet, in his last years, all the elements that had influenced him were present in his work as Rabbi of the Carlebach Shul, as he reached out to young American Jews with a mix of his brother Shlomo’s American folk guitar, Chasidic stories and nigunim, together with the teaching of traditional Jewish texts.

Books
Bamberger, Naftali Bar-Giora, Alexander Carlebach, et al., eds. The Joel-Adler-Carlebach Families. Brooklyn and Jerusalem: privately printed, 1996.
Carlebach, Alexander. Men and Ideas. Jerusalem: Koren Publishers, 1982.
Carlebach, Eli Chaim. “My Brother: Shlomo as a Young Man.” In Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach: Life, Mission and Legacy, edited by Natan Ophir. Jerusalem: Urim Publications, 2014.
Carlebach, Ephraim. Die Carlebachs-Eine Rabbinerfamilie aus Deutschland. Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 1995.
Carlebach, Naphtali H. The Carlebach Tradition: The History of My Family. New York: Joseph Carlebach Memorial Foundation, 1973.
Carlebach, Naphtali. Joseph Carlebach and His Generation: Biography of the Late Chief Rabbi of Altona and Hamburg. New York: Joseph Carlebach Memorial Foundation, 1959.
Carlebach, Shlomo. Ish Yehudi: The Life and the Legacy of a Torah Great, Rav Joseph Tzvi Carlebach. New York: Shearith Joseph Publications, 2008.
Gillis-Carlebach, Miriam. Jewish Everyday Life as Human Resistance 1939-1941: Chief Rabbi Dr. Joseph Zvi Carlebach and the Hamburg-Altona Jewish Communities. New York: Peter Lang, 2009.
Gurock, Jeffrey S. Orthodox Jews in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.
Marx, Jeffrey A. “History of the Carlebach Family of Heidelberg.” Unpublished ms, 2024. Library, Leo Baeck Institute, NY.
Natanowitz, Shmuel. “The Telshe Yeshiva.” In Telshe Book; Memorial Epitaph of the Holy Community (translation of Sefer Telz [Lita]: Matsevet Zikaron Le-Kehila Kedosha, edited by Yitzhak Alperovitz). Tel Aviv: Telz Society, 1984.
Ophir, Natan. Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach: Life, Mission and Legacy. Jerusalem: Urim Publications, 2014.
Scheinbaum, Leib A. The World That Was Ashkenaz – The Legacy of German Jewry 1843-1945. Cleveland: Shaar Press, 2010.

Articles
Cohn, Arthur. “Jerusalem: Roots and Wings.” Israel National News. June 4, 2004. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/332351.
“Eli C. Carlebach, 65, Rabbi of Synagogue on Upper West Side.” The New York Times. March 27, 1990.
Guttentag, Gedalia. “Western Light on the Eastern Front.” Mishpacha: Jewish Family Weekly. March 23, 2021. https://mishpacha.com/western-light-on-the-eastern-front/.
Kobre, Eytan. “Zei a Mentsch.” Mishpacha: Jewish Family Weekly. June 1, 2021. https://mishpacha.com/zei-a-mentsch/.
“Swastika Desecrates NJ Shul.” Intermountain Jewish News 52, no. 44 (October 29, 1965): 14.

Interviews
Hadassa Carlebach. Interview by Molly Resnick. “Daughter of a Schneerson, Wife of a Carlebach: An Interview with Mrs. Hadassa Carlebach.” Jewish Press. September 23, 2018. https://jewishpress.com/indepth/interviews-and-profiles/daughter-of-a-schneerson-wife-of-a-carlebach-an-interview-with-mrs-hadassa-carlebach/2018/09/23/.
Rabbi Chaim Zev and Sterna Citron. Interview by author. Los Angeles, January 11, 2026.