One of G-d's Chosen People- The Surfing Rabbi

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"One of G-d's Chosen People- The Surfing Rabbi"

by Steve Krieger, NoHo Magazine, June 15

“The Surfing Rabbi”
by Steve Krieger

A rusted-out Volvo, surfboard strapped on top, clunks to a stop, and the wiry Orthodox Rabbi Norm “Shifty” Shifren jumps out, finds my hand, his frizzled, forked beard reminding me, a hopeless goy, of ZZ Top. “It’s been a long day, man,” he begins, “I’m ready for a beer, how ‘bout you?” He hoists his old-school longboard and jaunts up the stucco stairs to his second floor apartment in Venice Beach; we’re so close to the ocean I can taste brine on the roof of my mouth after a few deep breaths.

“I’ve been drinkin’ these since 1969,” he yells from the kitchen, torturing vegetables with a juicer. “And I’ve been surfing for forty years.” He upends his ritual glass of swirling carrot goo, catches his breath, then lets out a ripping belch; he excuses himself, surprised—even he doesn’t know what’s going to come out of his mouth next.

“The ocean is the manifestation of God’s hand on earth,” he continues, “surfing is the epitome of being free. It’s like a religious experience without the religion.” He pauses. “Hundreds of millions spent on psychiatry every year when all they have to do is go to the beach… Surfing recharges our primordial batteries.” He’s in equal awe of his rabbinical calling. “It’s a quest that doesn’t end. There’s no way of measuring it.”

When I ask if he sees a contradiction in his role as a conservative rabbi and his passion for a sport typically associated with rebellion, substance abuse, and thongs, he shrugs. “People get too hung up on labels. Surfing is the freedom to get out of yourself, to look at things in a different light…” He’s mesmerized by the waves cresting just beyond his kitchen window. “I’ll surf till the day I die.”

The Rabbi’s quest began forty years ago at Malibu Point when he took to the tides for the first time on a rented Blue Shark board and got “tapped” (smacked in the shins) by a pro surfer—“the Cat”—who wasn’t about to let a newbie, a “kook”, bogart his swell. Never giving much thought to his Jewish heritage, Shifren surfed religiously for the next fifteen years, freewheeling it from California to Hawaii to the balmy beaches of La Flor de Michoacan, Mexico, where he rode a mile long wave. (“Write that on your pad and put it in your article!” he yowls.) He was 27 when, as he puts it, he first became jealous that his pious younger brother was “having all the real adventures in Israel.”

Thus began the soul-searching chronicled in his self-published memoir The Surfing Rabbi: A Kabbalistic Quest for Soul, which included a stint as a vegetarian track star in the Israeli Defense Forces, a privilege he encored by meeting, marrying, and inevitably divorcing a non-Jewish girl from Hamburg who provided him not only with two sons but a one-armed, ex-Nazi/Wermacht-vet father-in-law (oy vey!).

Finally, inspired by his tireless LA rabbi mentor, who introduced him to Psalm 107: “Those who go down to the sea… who perform tasks in mighty waters, they saw the works of the L-rd and His wonders in the deep,” Shifren lit out for the antiquated Israeli city Kfar Chabad at the age of 35 and immersed himself in “pnimiut,” Chassidic for “delving into the true inner self.”

Through the Torah, the erstwhile “kook” from the subculture that brought you Baywatch experienced firsthand “the reasons for life itself, the secrets of our universe,” all of which literally rearranged his “brain cells around a clear and unambiguous world view,” which he offers a glimpse into as he folds a blue mat on the kitchen table and lays out a simple kosher dinner of frijoles, rice, and a Dos Equis.

“Kids today are wimps. They’re fat, out of shape,” he explains, having taught Spanish just east of polite society at Dorsey High for over a decade now. “We never sat around watching TV. TV was establishment, TV was for squares.” But the problem runs deeper. “The biggest mistake the 60’s generation ever made was letting the kids call the shots. Everything’s become relative. Values have become relative… There’s no innocence anymore. I never did drugs,” he declares, adding, “I did my share of pot.”

As a member of “God’s chosen people,” the Rabbi feels deeply responsible for the success or failure of his “Surf & Soul” program, dedicated to teaching troubled teens about more than just tide charts, cutbacks, and hanging ten. “I don’t proselytize. I just expose them to the power of the ocean. It causes them to think automatically about where they’re headed… It’s the revealed power of G-d. Getting to know the Creator through the ocean.” He shrugs, “I’m a Jew!” When I ask him what this means, he smiles. “Well that’s the question, isn’t it.”

Also on the Rabbi’s heaped plate: a trip to Costa Rica with his Jewish Surfers International club, a book-in-progress that explores the connection between surfing and spirituality tentatively titled, he tells me, What Happens to Old Surfers? (he pauses for my reaction), and a documentary based on Surfing Rabbi by Siestas Y Olas director and friend Dan Wozniak. “I’m fifty-two,” the renaissance Rabbi explains. “I feel like I have something to say.”

His cell phone vibrates for the fifth or sixth time this evening. It’s a friend. “Hey dude, what it is brother?” The Rabbi invites him over. “The kids’ll be stoked… bring some tequila or something.” He barely hangs up and his phone hums again. It’s his son. The Rabbi’s speech becomes soft, attentive, never contradicting his spacey surfer argot, just complimenting it; and suddenly it occurs to me that equanimity in our confusing times might be found when we try to embody disparate traits, like that of a surfer and a holy man, not when we try to resolve them. As Islamic poet Rumi’s “Zero Circle” asks, “Let us not be sure of anything… Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute, we shall be saying finally, with tremendous eloquence, Lead us.”

The Rabbi closes his cell, turns to me. “I’ll tell you what you can do for me.” He ducks into a back room, hurries out with a miniature Tiny-Tim-esque toy guitar from Germany, still in its package. “You can drop this off for my son, he’s at my ex mother-in-law’s, it’s on your way home.” He locks the guitar in my hand, laughing. “Just tell them you’re the Rabbi’s messenger.” (The Rabbi can reached at www.surfingrabbi.com)