After carefully removing his tefillin every morning, Stan Kephart places a .45 caliber pistol in his holster and his sherrif’s badge on his chest and drives to his office in the northern Central Valley town of Willows.
The former director of the Public Service Center at Butte Community College accepted the job as Glenn County’s No. 2 law enforcement official — undersheriff — in May.
“It’s a special calling and I think our Jewish faith is in harmony with what law enforcement is trying to achieve,” he says.
“There’s a real clear connection between a practicing Jew and the demands that society places on us as law enforcement officials,” adds Kephart, who converted to Judaism two years ago after many years of study.
“Modern law has its basis in Judeo-Christian law,” he says. “We do have a rich heritage and an understanding that we can bring to this job.”
As a Conservative Jew in rural Glenn County, which is mostly made up of Mennonites, other Protestants and Catholics, Kephart has taken a potentially intimidating situation and changed it into an educational one.
“Members of the law enforcement community have come up to me and asked questions” about Judaism, he says. “It fosters good interdepartmental relations.”
In observing Judaism, Kephart, 57, faces several dilemmas. For one, there are only three synagogues to serve the entire northern Sacramento Valley region, which stretches to Redding. Unable to participate in a daily minyan, he studies Torah daily on his own.
In addition, most of the people he serves have had little or no experience with Jews. “I’m a little bit of an anomaly because they don’t know what it means when I tell them that… I am a Jew,” he says.
“I find that I get to create the image of a Jew to those who don’t know [what a Jew is]. And I like that. It can be risky in my position, because some people don’t like peace officers for whatever reason, and being Jewish can compound that in the wrong situation, [but] I find it a challenge.”
Just as non-Jews may have misconceptions about Jews and Judaism, he says that people from urban areas also tend to stereotype those who live in the country.
“I don’t have a horse,” he says, chuckling. And Glenn is, in fact, civilized, even if it is about 65 miles north of Sacramento, he adds.
“I have a Crown Victoria that I drive to work. I may wear a cowboy hat, but we are not a backward county.”
While he says there are only two other Jewish executives in California’s sheriffs’ departments besides him, Kephart refuses to consider himself “unusual.”
“People think I’m unique because of my experience. I don’t consider myself unique at all.”
Raised Catholic, Kephart began exploring Judaism after high school. He spent four years in the Air Force and attended the University of San Francisco, receiving a B.A. in police science and an M.A. in secondary education.
Years later, while working as a security administrator for the 1984 Olympic Games, he met his wife, Patty, who renewed his interest in Judaism. By the time of his conversion, he had been practicing about six years.
One of the first tasks that Kephart completed as undersheriff was joining the Shomrim, a fraternal organization for Jewish police officers and law enforcement officials.
The group, which means “guardians” in Hebrew, is focused on “establishing a Jewish presence in law enforcement” and is involved in community outreach, including fund-raising for charity.
Kephart, who has served as head of security at various large venues, acknowledges that law enforcement is in the middle of some difficult changes.
In the wake of well-publicized abuse-of-power cases, including recent charges against San Francisco police officer Marc Andaya, who was implicated in the death of a suspect, he says there is a heightened focus on “the ethics of law enforcement officers and officials.”
He tries to bring the principles of Torah into his own work. “To me that’s an obligation that I accept openly,” he says. “Rather than being silent about my Jewishness, I feel [law enforcement] is an opportunity for me and other Jews.”
But he acknowledges that many Jews in law enforcement will neither talk about being Jewish nor even admit to it.
Kephart would like to see more Jews involved in his field not just to strengthen the Jewish presence, but also because he believes Jewish police officers can make a contribution.
“Unfortunately,” he says, “I think a lot of Jewish families look at law enforcement and would prefer their children to be a CPA or a lawyer.”