In 1996, I went to St. Louis to be the Rabbi at the Hillel at Washington University. Near the university was one of St. Louis’ oldest Orthodox shuls, Bais Abraham, dating from 1894. During my time at Hillel I was a congregant at Bais Abraham, and its rabbi, Rabbi Abraham Magence, was my rabbi. After almost 40 years as Rabbi of Bais Abraham, as he was getting older, he asked me to take his place after him. I resisted, since my plan was to stay at Hillel, but when he passed away in 2003, after being a member of the shul’s rabbinic search committee, I took the job. I was the Rabbi of Bais Abraham after his death for 14 years until I came to Kesher Israel six years ago.  

Rabbi Magence’s last name came from one of the original cities in which the Jews of Eastern Europe lived: Mainz, Germany. Rabbi Magence learned Torah in the famed Grodno Yeshiva in Vilna before the war, and came from a long line of rabbis, including his grandfather who was the head of the Bais Din, Rabbinical court, of Suvalk, Poland.   

Rabbi Magence was from a generation of European rabbis who knew the hardships of life before the war. They came to America with very little except the clothes on their backs, the Torah in their souls, and a deep sense of kindness and love for all Jews. He was famous for his welcoming nature. Whether Jew or Gentile, black or white, wealthy or poor, he would welcome them with open arms. His face always formed a smile under his mustache. At his funeral, his son told me that it was not uncommon to see homeless people sleeping in their house when he was young.   

Bais Abraham was an urban synagogue located in a neighborhood which had been the center of Jewish life in the 1950’s. The shul, when I came, was small in numbers, mostly populated by faculty and university students who lived in the loop since most Orthodox Jews had moved years ago to more suburban locations. The Rabbi lived next to the shul in a house owned by the congregation which needed work, he got paid little, and was St. Louis’ mohel, ritual circumciser, for many years.

So as I read Jewish Insider's profile of the life and death of Kesher Israel’s Rabbi Philip Rabinowitz, I felt as if I had known Rabbi Rabinowitz. He and Rabbi Magence were cut from the same cloth. Rabbi Rabinowitz used to stand outside the shul gathering Jews for a minyan, and Rabbi Magence would drive several tattooed, WWII veteran, Russian Jews to shul each morning at 6:30 AM to help make the minyan. Both welcomed all people including the homeless; both were mohelim; both spoke English with a Yiddish accent; and above all, both genuinely loved all people and all Jews and brought so many close to Torah. Their priorities were truly in the right place. We have so much to learn from them.   

In the spring of 2017, just before I came to Washington to be the Rabbi at Kesher Israel, I went to Israel to visit Rabbi Megence’s burial place outside of Beit Shemesh. There, with tears in my eyes, I asked his permission to leave the shul that he loved and guided for so many decades, in order to go to my new position in D.C. at Kesher Israel. 

As I prayed at Rabbi Magence’s kever, the headstone at his feet caught my eye. To my shock, it was the grave of a Rabbi I had read about on the Kesher Israel website, Rabbi Phillip Rabinowitz. I took this as a sign from heaven: though Rabbi Magence wanted me on some level to lead his dear shul Bais Abraham, with Rabbi Rabinowitz there at his feet, I was meant, for the good of the Jewish people, to come to D.C. and be the spiritual leader of Kesher Israel. And so, after asking permission from Rabbi Magence to leave Bais Abraham, I asked permission and blessing from Rabbi Rabinowitz to take his seat at Kesher Israel.  

May we all continue to learn from the profound chesed of both these Tzadikim and may their blessing give us the strength to walk in their footsteps, gathering people into our shuls with love.  

Rabbi Hyim Shafner

To access archived writings and classes from Rabbi Shafner visit: www.www.RabbiShafner.org.org