When It Comes to Childcare, Songstress Sings the Blues

She’s been called sacrilegious, sinful and a Jew for Jesus. For the first time, though, Neshama Carlebach — daughter of the late rabbi Shlomo Carlebach — is saddled with an adjective that hurts: nannyless.

Carlebach’s sixth CD, “One and One,” hits stores May 22. She will celebrate her newest full-length (and first English) record that night at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The concert — cue the epithets — will feature Reverend Roger Hambrick and 40 members of the Green Pastures Baptist Church Choir.
Still, with a 1-year-old son and a nanny who unexpectedly quit last week, Carlebach is less concerned with “people who say I must be Jews for Jesus” than with finding some childcare.
“The nanny just skipped out. It’s a woman I’ve been working with for months and months and months, and she just quit,” said Carlebach, who lives in New York. “I’m on the road for 18 days in May, plus my release, plus I’m going to Europe for 10 days without my son, which is the longest I’ve ever been away from him.”
As her father was wont to do, Carlebach works extensively in the gospel vein. Hambrick’s ensemble appears on two tracks on “One and One,” and Carlebach is arranging a live recording of her father’s music with the choir.
With a little intervention from Hambrick, funding may come quickly.
“I sang at their church for a Martin Luther King event, and the reverend got up and said, ‘This year, we and Neshama are going to do a record together, and we need some money,’” Carlebach said, laughing.
“At shul,” she offered meekly, “they’re like, ‘We need a donation.’”
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 3
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
- 4
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history.
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
-
Opinion Gaza and Trump have left the Jewish community at war with itself — and me with a bad case of alienation
-
Fast Forward Trump administration restores student visas, but impact on pro-Palestinian protesters is unclear
-
Fast Forward Deborah Lipstadt says Trump’s campus antisemitism crackdown has ‘gone way too far’
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.