A Jewish Meditation Practice for Real Life

A guide to deepening our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world through meditation and a new reading of traditional Jewish texts.

Rabbi Alan Lew is the founder of the country's first meditation center connected to a synagogue. For the past 10 years, he has been teaching his congregation how two ancient traditions-classical Jewish writings and Zen meditation-can shed light on each other in electrifying ways.

Dimensions: 8.28" x 5.56"
Details: Paperback, 272 pages
Author: Alan Lew

Testimonials

"Once again Rabbi Lew (One God Clapping; This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared) beautifully marries the ancient traditions, history and lore of the Torah and Talmud with the serene meditative practices of Zen Buddhism. His singular distinction of founding and leading a meditation center, Makor Or (in San Francisco), the first of its kind connected to a Conservative synagogue, gives him a unique perspective. He says that Jews have had the written treasures, rich discussions and the sacred Sabbath right in front of them for 3,000 years, but have often overlooked them. Using selected Torah passages, Talmudic musings and contemporary stories of friends and congregants, Lew illustrates the intrinsic spiritual path within Judaism and suggests ways to incorporate that path into an everyday spiritual practice. Like any good teacher unafraid to address big, broad issues—suffering, fear, conflict—and agile enough to make sense of the more elusive ones—listening for and finding God, connecting to and appreciating sacred emptiness—Lew follows each lesson with a summation of "practice points." Seekers need not be Jewish to engage the ancient wisdom of these meditations that offer a rich, multileveled path to everyday spirituality."

—Publishers Weekly

About Alan Lew

Rabbi Alan Lew was the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco from July 1991; he stepped down at the end of July 2005. He is the director of Makor Or, the center for Jewish Meditation adjacent to the synagogue. Previously, he was the rabbi of Congregation Eitz Chaim of Monroe, New York and the first chaplain of the Jacob Perlow Hospice of Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City.

Rabbi Lew is the Past President of the Board of Rabbis of Northern California and for ten years, the moderator of the Mosaic television program on KPIX-TV in San Francisco.

Rabbi Lew has become one of the leaders of the burgeoning Jewish Meditation movement.

Rabbi Lew was ordained as a rabbi in 1988 at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York where he won more than a dozen major academic awards. He received a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1965 and a Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop in 1970.