The Zen of Zohar S.F. rabbi pens ode to Jewish meditation

Not all Jew-Bus are created equal. Some Jewish Buddhists are more Jew than Bu, among them Rabbi Alan Lew, longtime spiritual leader of San Francisco's Congregation Beth Sholom.

As a young man, Lew was a devoted Zen Buddhist. He later returned wholeheartedly to Judaism but kept up the meditation practice he developed from his Zen days. Today he is a leading advocate of Jewish meditation.

And he wants his fellow Jews to climb aboard the alpha-wave express. His new book "Be Still and Get Going" is an eloquent appeal for a more meditative approach to Judaism. And while not quite a primer on meditation, the book cannot fail to resonate with most Jewish readers.

Lew's previous book, "One Hand Clapping: The Spiritual Path of a Zen Rabbi" was a best-selling spiritual autobiography (it was voted best nonfiction in j.'s recent best of the Jewish Bay Area readers' poll).

His new book includes more stories from his life, and not all of them flattering. He recounts his struggles facing his mother's creeping dementia, his ego-driven personal ambitions and his daughter's searing teenage rebellion.

Lew uses examples from his own life to make this point: Judaism and classic Jewish texts are more than just compatible with the contemplative life. They are inextricably bound together.

Lew mines familiar midrashim and Bible stories (most from Genesis) yet, true teacher that he is, he manages to extract from them new levels of insight.

In one chapter, he links the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel and Tower of Babel stories through the Hebrew word kedem, which appears in all three stories. The term has multiple meanings: "eastward" or "to advance" as well as "to go back in time."

Taken together, the three stories, writes Lew, "form a progression ... they are points on a time line, a continuum that goes two ways at once."

Transcending a linear view of time offers a new openness to the present moment, which, adds Lew, "is the only place we can experience our life, the only place we can feel it ... Breathing in, we enter the present moment; breathing out, we feel ourselves to be a part of the timeless flow of life."

In contrast to the more ethereal passages, Lew delves into darker themes, such as living with pain and facing death. In one chapter, he recounts a visit to the doctor for nagging back and knee pain. The doctor notes that the body is actually not the solid object it seems but something in constant flux. Lew then draws a parallel between the body, the seasons and the Jewish sacred calendar:

"All these things -- fullness, decline, destruction, renewal, tearing down, rebuilding -- are actually part of the same process ... consecutive segments of a never-ending circle."

Clearly, Lew remains enchanted by Zen Buddhism, but he makes clear his devotion to Judaism is absolute and only enhanced by his meditation practice. He writes movingly of the power of prayer (he has carved out a special makom kavuah or "fixed place" at Beth Sholom at which he prays every day), and his meditation practice these days is infused with a Torah-driven spirit.

As his book makes clear, Judaism already has in place both the mechanics and the instruction manuals for serious Jewish meditation. Even such common prayerbook phrases as shavat vayinafash (which Lew loosely translates as "stop and breathe") seem ablaze with reflective power.

Lew is a fine writer, and though his book meanders from topic to topic, the approach works. Perhaps he was trying in some way to mimic the miasmic peace he experiences during his own early morning meditation.

If that is so, then in "Be Still and Get Going" Alan Lew could not have made a stronger pitch to the uninitiated to get going themselves.




"Be Still and Get Going" by Rabbi Alan Lew (272 pages, Little Brown, $14.95).