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From Zen Buddhist practitioner to rabbi, East meets West in this firsthand account of a spiritual journey.
Rabbi Alan Lew is known as the Zen Rabbi, a leader in the Jewish meditation movement who works to bring two ancient religious traditions into our everyday lives. One God Clapping is the story of his roundabout yet continuously provoking spiritual odyssey. It is also the story of the meeting between East and West in America, and the ways in which the encounter has transformed how all of us understand God and ourselves.
Winner of the PEN / Joseph E. Miles Award
Like a Zen parable or a Jewish folk tale, One God Clapping unfolds as a series of stories, each containing a moment of revelation or instruction that, while often unexpected, is never simple or contrived. One God Clapping, like the life of the remarkable Alan Lew himself, is a bold experiment in the integration of Eastern and Western ways of looking at and living in the world.
"Speaks with honesty, compassion and humor, sharing the revelations and insights that spiritual seekers need and appreciate. A beautiful and rewarding read."
—Light of Consciousness
"A fascinating personal story and a parable for Jewish practice in our time. Lew is not afraid to share some of the stumblings and confusions of his life, and so when the moments of clarity arrive, they do so with sincerity and force, and often in images that linger with the reader like a bell sounding in a quiet space."
—Rodger Kamenetz, author of The Jew in the Lotus and Stalking Elijah
“Lew opens his heart and treats the reader to a banquet for the soul. A treasure.”
—Lawrence Kushner, author of Invisible Lines of Connection: Sacred Stories of the Ordinary; Honey from the Rock: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism; and other books
“The compelling personal encounter with the divine that shines through this straightforward, honest, wonderfully well-written autobiography inspires faith that an awakened spiritual life is a possibility for all of us.”
—Sylvia Boorstein, author of That's Funny, You Don't Look Buddhist
PART I: To Leave Everything That Is Familiar
Prologue: The Way Things Are
1. A Vivid Dream
2. Jewish Karma
3. Please Throw Me a Rope
4. How I Learned to Look Beneath the Surface
5. Freedom Is a Spiritual State
6. Sublimating Spirituality
7. Lech Lecha
8. The War Between the Two Sides of the Brain
9. Death Recycles into Life
10. The Question Is Not Whether a Teacher Has Real Spiritual Power, but How That Power Is Used
11. Centering
12. Meditation
13. The Gateway
14. Form Is Emptiness
15. Spiritual Pyrotechnics
16. Dokusan
17. When Peace Breaks Out, the First Thing You Feel Is the Devastation of the War
18. The Need to Belong
19. Emptiness Is Form
20. Compassion
21. They Do Not Appear or Disappear
22. My Naked Heart
23. Healing Presence
24. Closure
25. Family
26. Wedding
27. Narrative
28. Hold On to Your Hat
PART II: God Was in This Place and I Didn't Know It
29. The Funnel
30. The Kaddish
31. Studying Talmud
32. The Holocaust
33. Prayer
34. Service
35. Why the Messiah Doesn't Come
36. Death
37. Teshuvah
38. The Lineaments of the Divine Encounter
39. Kabbalah
40. Taking Leave
PART III: To Struggle with God Until Your Name Changes
41. The Shem'a
42. Open the Gates
43. Our Divine Name
44. What I Learned from Buddhism About How to Save Judaism
45. How to Look at Your Heart