Rabbi Alan Lew

Residence : San Francisco, CA

Biographical information
Rabbi Alan Lew has been the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco since July 1991. He is also the director of Makor Or, a center for Jewish Meditation adjacent to his 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 was the 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. He has also appeared on The Lehrer Report, PBS's Religion and Ethics, ABC News, The Osgood File, All Things Considered, and more.

Alan Lew has become one of the leaders of the burgeoning Jewish Meditation movement. His book One God Clapping; The Spiritual Path of a Zen Rabbi, published in September of 1999, was a San Francisco Chronicle Best-Seller and the winner of a PEN award, the Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence. It chronicles his ten years as a serious student of Zen Buddhism and his current work in exploring the use of meditation in enhancing Jewish spirituality

Alan 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. He has published several books of poetry, including Eight Monologues (Open Books, 1978.) His forthcoming book This Is Real And You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation will be published by Little Brown and Co. in August of 2003.

Discussion topics

• This Is Real And You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as Journey of Transformation - An examination of the Jewish High Holidays as a spiritual path of seven distinct stages that mirrors the soul's struggle to cope with those matters of life and death which transform us despite the fact that they defy our capacity to prepare for them. It will help Jews understand and even enjoy a Holiday season they still feel drawn to but all too often sit through bored to tears without passion or understanding. This lecture will deepen their understanding and help them experience the tremendous spiritual passion the High Holidays were meant to convey. Lew also addresses the question of how to prepare for those events in life for which it is impossible to prepare; death, terminal illness, the loss of a job or a spouse. Using the High Holiday Season as its medium, this lecture offers timeless spiritual strategies for coping with such occasions. We can't prepare for them, but properly understood, they can become the agents for transformation in our lives.
• One God Clapping; The Spiritual Path of a Zen Rabbi - This talk deals with the question of spiritual paths, what they are, and how they manifest themselves in our lives; my own path from a ten year engagement with Zen Buddhism, to a serious practice of observant Judaism, and finally to the synthesis I have forged between these two practices.
• The Biblical Encounter With God; The Real Roots of Jewish Meditation - A close examination of three Biblical texts and what they tell us about the lineaments of the Jewish path to spiritual transformation.
• On The Healing Power of Simply Being Present - An examination of Talmudic teachings on the nature and meaning of suffering, and the art of simply being present as an answer to the problem of suffering.
• What To Do When You Have To Do Something And You Have No Idea What It Is; The Torah's Five-Step Program for Dealing with Intractable Suffering and Impossible Dilemmas.

Note: topics 3-5 can be present as talks (app. 45 minutes in length) or as two-hour meditation/text study workshops.

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