In The Bookshelf

Spiritual Odyssey

Just Like Bubbe Used To Make!

Its been a long, strange trip
from Judaism to Buddhism and back again
for Rabbi Alan Lew.

SAN DEE B RAWARS KY
Special to the Jewish News

A

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11/26
1999

84

Ian Lew was getting ready
to sew his raksu, the gar-
ment worn by Buddhists
for lay ordination, but he
kept procrastinating. Instead, he
wrote poetry and a monologue in the
voice of his Bubbie Ida. With every
stitch, he was supposed to say "I take
refuge in the Buddha," and he soon
realized why he couldn't sew at all:
He felt he was betraying his Jewish
soul.
One God Clapping:
The Spiritual Path of a
Zen Rabbi (Kodansha;
$24) is Lew's memoir of
his circular path, from
interest in the Judaism of
his grandfathers as a
child in Brooklyn to
involvement in the coun-
terculture of the '60s to
10 years of a serious Zen
Buddhist practice in
California, then back to
Judaism and to rabbinical
school in New York.
Now a rigorously
observant Jew, he serves
as rabbi of the largest
Conservative synagogue
in San Francisco,
Congregation Beth
Sholom.
Written with his wife,
novelist Sherill Jaffe, the
book — just published
and already a bestseller in
San Francisco — is a
series of short chapters,
each quite focused, pre-
senting some large and
small stones along the
path.
The writing is often
poetic, sometimes funny,
always candid; his stum-
bles are not at all covered
up. "A spiritual path pro-
ceeds from mistakes, suf-
fering, failures. I tried to

be as honest as I possibly could,"
says Rabbi Lew, 56, in an interview.
This is the story of a searcher. He
acknowledges that his path is "fairly
unusual. A lot just happened to me,"
he says.
He writes about his early experi-
ences in learning Zen meditation,
how the world "came to have a
dimension of depth it hadn't had
before," his impressions of various
Zen masters. During many of the
years of his Zen practice, he support-
ed himself as a bus driver, always
writing poetry. He candidly describes

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Sandee Brawarsky is a New
York-based freelance writer.

— Rabbi Alan Lew