Prince singer
“I made a lot of money off the profane and blasphemous,” Prince said. If you want to make fun of rabbis, do that, too, me included. We have enough of that, everybody saying they have all the answers. Make fun of God if you want - in the right way. “You want to repent? For what?” the rabbi said, lightening the mood Prince had brought into the room. Quiet and gloom soon descended again upon the room. The rabbi thought a moment, chin in his palm, before saying, “The point isn’t whether you’re a good person or a bad person - you’re a person and we’re stuck with you.” “I don’t know if I’m a good person or bad person,” Prince said, ignoring the question. To the immediate left of the desk sat a fax machine that beeped in newspaper clips, typewritten pages, and scrawled notes, written in both English and Yiddish. We’d gone into the rabbi’s study and sat down on industrial-looking gray chairs that appeared to have been bought from a used office furniture store that in turn had gotten it from a high school principal’s office, circa 1971. Prince laughed, for what seemed like the first time in a year. The rabbi stared him down again, this time for seven minutes and seventeen seconds, before saying: “They are excellent simulations of rabbis.” “Well, then what about rabbis in Los Angeles?”
“Los Angeles is a wonderful simulation of real life,” the rabbi finally said. The rabbi stroked his beard and stared Prince down - a virtually impossible task - I’d never before seen anyone overpower Prince with silence. “Why don’t you move to Los Angeles, and become a celebrity rabbi?” Prince asked, honestly curious. The rabbi was a real-deal Hasid, whose outreach and willingness to engage with the real world had brought more than a few celebrities to his door in times of dread. Could that be the voice inside him that had forever been pushing him on to do more, more, more, no matter how tired or hurt he was?Īnd he wanted to know about fame. Frankenstein’s creation - based on the kabbalistic giant with no soul who destroyed his maker?Īnd a dybbuk - the dislocated soul with no physical being who haunted the souls of the unlucky. Had he, Prince wondered, created a monster in Morris Day? A golem - the monster on which Mary Shelley based Dr. Prince, satisfied, went on to ask questions during the coming weeks, combing the kabbalah and his own life. “I believe you can be reincarnated in your own lifetime.” “Do you believe in reincarnation?” he asked, as a tryout. He said he’d like to visit the old rabbi. Prince seemed unimpressed that this man, who looked like he’d been animated off a box of Smith Brothers’ cough drops, had blown the mind of the mind of his generation. This rabbi, as it happened, was responsible for reconverting Bob Dylan back to the Judaism of his birth from his foray into evangelical Christianity. “Do you believe in reincarnation?” he’d asked one rabbi with a beard to his chest, a dozen children, and the distinction of being the only Hasidic rabbi to ever appear in “Random Notes,” Rolling Stone’s gossip column. And it saved his life, long before an overdose of fentanyl took it.īy 2003, he was tagging along occasionally as I worked on a book about kabbalah and met with a handful of Hasidic rabbis in St. And he didn’t care that his philanthropic efforts, even though they dwarfed most celebrities’, were kept as quiet as if they were his most lethal secrets.īut eventually he tried. He gave a million dollars a year to the Minneapolis Urban League. He would really begin to learn, or care, about other people and their needs starting around age 40. Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Neal Karlen’s “This Thing Called Life,” recounting the writer’s decades-long relationship with Prince and the singer’s evolution from “Dirty Mind” provocateur to Brother Nelson of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.