One God Clapping: The Spiritual Path of a Zen Rabbi

“We no longer live in a global village. We live in a global apartment house and the walls are very thin.”

Alan Lew is known as the Zen Rabbi--a leader in the Jewish meditation movement and a Zen practitioner for more than thirty years. His story will take you from Brooklyn, where his grandfathers introduce him as a child to the rituals of Jewish life, to the flowering of the sixties in California where, in the company of poets, hipsters, and beats, he settles on Zen Buddhism as a spiritual path. The enhanced self-awareness he learns in Zen practice leads to a completely unexpected revelation--the depth of his attachment to being a Jew. Yet even after settling in as rabbi of the largest conservative synagogue in San Francisco, he is not at the end of his search for a spiritual home. One God Clapping is more than just a spiritual autobiography--it is a bold experiment in the integration of Eastern and Western ways of looking at the world. From Zen Buddhist practitioner to rabbi, East meets West in this firsthand account of a spiritual journey.