The Jerusalem Report:
Julie Friedkin

They'd met only briefly in the 70s on a California beach, but Moshe Jarom recognized the world's best surfing rabbi the instant Nachum Shifren came into his store, Musa's Surf Shop.
"Back in 1976," says Jarom, remembering his visit to LA, " I asked a lifeguard if I could borrow his board. Twenty years later a rabbi with a long beard and sidelocks walks in here, and I realize it's the lifeguard from Malibu."
That was three years ago. And since the transformed Shifren climbed the graffiti-covered stairs to Yarm's shop in Herzliah Pituach's industrial zone, crammed with long boards, short boards, boogie boards and rubber suits, a great friendship has been born.
Today, the place is particularly chaotic, packed with followers waiting to surf with the rabbi. Enter Shifren, whose deep tan and obvious fitness, at age 47, are a bit out of sync with the image of a Chabad rabbi- unlike the tzitzit hanging out from under his white shirt.

The "congregation" isn't typical either. There are three red-headed Orthodox kids whose parents pay Shifren for surfing lessons; and Marcus Freed, of the U.K.'s Union of Jewish Students, who runs an annual Jewish surfing excursion to England's West Coast. And there are three soldiers from Kfar Saba, in Hawaiian T-shirts.
In hot pursuit of Shifren, as he bursts in, is a film crew from Ma'aleh, a Jerusalem film school for the religious, who are shooting a documentary about him. "He lectured where we live about the connection between Judaism and surfing," says one crew member, and they were hooked.
As a young woman shoves a fluff-covered mike at him, Shifren leans forward and speaks into the camera. "The Gemara says that we have to avoid the 'yetzer hara', the evil urge," he says. "When we surf, we catch the ocean's energy and refocus our thoughts on important things...This clarity helps us focus better on the Torah. That's the surf and soul philosophy."
Sadly, Shifren goes on, the religious world isn't into fitness. "Yeshivah students," he intones, "sit all day in dimly lit rooms, totally removed from the Creation they read about in Genesis. Surfing is one way we can really connect to our Creator, simply by getting wet."

Marcus Freed is clearly swept up by the notion. "Look at the parting of the Red Sea, Miriam's well, Jonah and whale," he enthuses. "The first thing G-d created in a physical way was the ocean. G-d's spirit hovered over the water. Nothing comes close to the spiritual connection."
A California native, and former competitive swimmer, runner and triathlete, Nachum Shifren first came to Israel as a kibbutz volunteer after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. A few years later, after a stint back in LA- where he taught gang members to ride waves, met a Chabad rabbi who surfed, and found religion-he was back, this time as an immigrant. After army service, he was ordained at Kfar Chabad.

He now lives with his wife, Rivkah- who publishes Bat Kol, an English-language journal for religious women- and their four kids in Tapuah, a West Bank village identified with the Jewish settler movement's extreme flank. But he won't discuss his politics- Tapuah, he says simply, offers him a four-bedroom house and a piece of land.
Shifren has written an autobiography, "Surf and Soul," documenting "the spiritual journey from Malibu to Jerusalem," and carries pamphlets, promoting signed copies, which feature his picture in his two incarnations: contemplative rabbi, in hat, tie and jacket; and assured surfer, riding a wave.

He earns part of his living by running courses in surfing and spirituality (he also teaches English- though he has degrees in German and Spanish lit). And, so far, his clientele is mostly foreign Jews; the Israeli yeshivah world, he says, is "out to lunch." It's time to hit the beach. Shifren disappears- and returns in a black-and-blue spandex wetsuit that stresses the athlete, not the scholar.
There's no contradiction, he insists: "Our sages wee always fit because they ate good food. Not masses of sugar and hydrogenated fats. They didn't sit around watching MTV and taking drugs, G-d forbid."

Some of his surfing friends, like shopowner Jarom, don't read his commentary. "We're not followers, just friends," says one of the soldiers, as they head to Herzliah beach. "He doesn't preach. He's just a great surfer."
And Shifren cheerfully acknowledges that not everyone is along for all aspects of his unique ride. "Most surfers couldn't care less about the profundity of it," he says. "It's just fun. But I try to draw attention to the spiritual aspect-to open secular people up to the spirituality that's in surfing, and to promote consciousness of physical fitness in the religious world. Maybe that's my role in life."