(The following are a few lines from an article in today’s Chicago Tribune) The rabbi, Shlomo Carlebach, was searching for a way to entice disaffected Jews back to their ancestral faith, Reb Sholomo Often billed as the “hippie rabbi,” Carlebach found himself particularly drawn to lost souls: drug addicts, runaway young people, the homeless. He gave alms to the needy as fast as his royalties came in from his records.

Shlomo Carlebach died in 1994, but his musical ministry is carried on, Traditionalists had problems with Carlebach’s rabbinical practices, notes J. Cohen, a musicologist at Indiana University. Though Orthodox by training, Carlebach eventually broke with the practice of separating men and women for services.

“I’ve met Orthodox people who will say, ‘Maybe in life we had problems with Shlomo,’ ” Cohen said. “Then they go on to talk about his music as divinely inspired.”

In fact, his style was like that of the Hasidic rabbis of Eastern Europe, popular preachers who taught with song and story.

His teaching is alive whenever someone recognizes that even human fallibility is not without purpose. Carlebach told a story about a Hasidic rabbi that might fit him, as well: Entreated to pray for a sick child, the rabbi rounded up 10 low-life types. Asked why he didn’t recruit a better class of people, the rabbi replied: “You don’t understand. The gates of heaven were closed. I needed thieves to break them open.”

Yet he was controversial in life and death. He called his San Francisco outreach center the House of Love and Prayer, hardly a typical synagogue name.