Photo by Kevin A. Roberts
Rabbi Scott Shafrin carries his plain cup of drip coffee, no syrups or soy, to a table that’s visible but out of the way. There he props a sign that reads, “Keep calm and ask the rabbi.”
A woman squints at the sign, gives him an uncertain little smile. He nods in welcome. It’s more than a year since he adopted this—tradition?
He tilts his head. “That’s a little strong. I’d say ‘trend.’” New to St. Louis, he thought it would be a good way to get to know the community. Besides, the Clayton Kaldi’s was close to his Kol Rinah synagogue, and it might be easier for people to seek him out at a coffeehouse.
Two-thirds of his interlocutors, though, are strangers. He’s heard about family dramas and spiritual angst, fielded theological questions both basic and arcane, absorbed the bitterness of Jews who vowed they’d never again darken a synagogue’s doors. It’s that last group he remembers when I ask how it feels to hang out a shingle of wisdom:
“I think about things I say a lot, because I know that at some point—and maybe I already have—I will say or do something that will push someone out of the community. And that terrifies me.”
He’s so gentle, it’s hard for me to imagine. “You really think you can do that much harm if your intentions are kind?”
“Yes. Yes, I do. If you’ve built a good relationship, they’ll at least talk to you about it, not think, ‘I don’t want to rile the rabbi.’ But if you don’t have that relationship, all it takes are a couple of words, and people are out the door. Spiritual life is very personal. If someone feels like you’re doing something that trivializes or messes with that, it hurts on such a primal level that people aren’t always thinking rationally.”
“Which explains a lot about today’s political landscape,” I remark.
He grins, remembering the middle-aged gentleman who blurted, “What’s the deal with Israel?” Oh, God, am I going to have to defend everything Israel has ever done? Shafrin thought. ’Cause I’m not going to do that.
Turned out, the man was a historian; he just wanted to talk to somebody who shared a passion for Israel and vent about the extremes on both sides. “That,” says Shafrin, “was a really great conversation.”
With more intimate questions—illnesses, mystifying behavior, wrenching conflicts—“people can be radically honest,” he says. “I’m a random person who has no stake, and they’re volunteering their story. That’s a sacred trust.”
I’m still curious what he’s afraid he might say or do that would alienate someone.
“Honestly, the thing I worry about most is just being preoccupied or distracted,” he says. “The idea of someone reaching out and needing something and me missing it, that scares me a lot.”
“You’re good at the presence thing, though,” I say. “You don’t even have your phone out.”
“There are times, when no one is around, that I’m tempted… But a friend who’s done this for a long time said, ‘I’ve found that people don’t come up if I’m on my phone.’ When you’re engaged with a device, there’s this air about you that is just not open.”
“Which is ironic,” I note, “because people usually reach for their phone when they’re bored and lonely.”
“And the whole design of these devices is to be connected!” Above all, Shafrin wants to listen. Empathy, he’s decided, is overrated. “People say all the time, ‘I know just how you’re feeling.’ No, you don’t.”
“It sounds so cliché, though,” I murmur, “if you just say, ‘What I hear you saying is…’”
He lights with a sort of relief, leans forward. “Yes! It totally does. But when you’re the person whose soul is burning, to have what you said restated means the other person physically heard the words—and that seems like a little thing but it’s actually everything. For someone to give their active, engaged time is to give their most precious resource. People feel it. And when you don’t, it feels really lonely.”
A fiftyish woman in a canary-yellow dress approaches. Sensing an agenda, I slip away to a nearby table, and she plunks down. Eavesdropping shamelessly, I hear only maddening snippets: “…and I said…and he said, ‘Why should I?’”
Shafrin’s patience reminds me of my lack of it. “What do you do about people who just recite a litany of complaints?” I ask after she leaves.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he deadpans. Then he smiles. “It’s hard. There are people who’ve told me, ‘This is a grudge I’ve had for 40 years.’ I’m a staunch advocate for radical forgiveness. People don’t understand; they think it’s the same as absolution. The action will never be acceptable, and forgiveness can’t erase it. That’s the point: Neither forgiving nor not forgiving is going to change the action, but being so angry is just hurting yourself.”
He finds common wisdom in all religions, just shaded differently. I ask what Judaism offers us at this time in history. “The idea that everything is permeated with sacredness is powerful,” he answers. “We pray all the time—there’s even a prayer for after the bathroom, thanking God that all the things in my body that need to be open stay open, and the things that need to be closed stay closed. Bread and other foods have their own special blessings. Eating is literally the most mundane thing we can do—every single organism takes nutrients. And yet we have the ability to lift up that mundane necessity and make it a sacred experience.”
When curious Christians ask what Jews believe about the afterlife, Shafrin tells them about early descriptions of Sheol, a gray, ghostly world. About the idea of olam haba, the world to come—which could either be a heaven or a transformation of Earth. About the traditional Jewish scholars who shrug, “You live, you die, that’s it.”
“The Jewish understanding is that very rarely is there one right answer,” he explains. “It’s totally possible that everything is just a bunch of atoms and disconnected—although even physics is disproving that. The idea that we are all the same stardust is no longer controversial. And if we are all made out of the same stuff as God, that should have a very strong impact on how we deal with the world.” He lets the words sink in. “But that would require us to be completely in the zone, all day, every day.”
I mention that my husband finds Judaism refreshingly realistic; he thinks Christians, in their desire to imitate Christ, set the bar too high.
Shafrin nods. “The Torah says things like, ‘There shall be no needy among you,’ and five verses later, it says, ‘If there is someone needy among you… You don’t just give up; you keep moving toward holiness.” You treat other people ethically not to ensure your own eternal life, but “because that is the way holiness enters the world. The everyday things really do matter.”
