At one point in this gripping spiritual memoir, Alan Lew asks himself, "How can I realize my strength? How can I make my lion roar?" Born in Brooklyn where his grandfathers practiced Judaism, he spent his high school years as a football star. At college Lew majored in English and eventually wound up in California during the counterculture explosion of the 1960s. After trying drugs, poetry, and ouija board readings, the author settled down with Zen meditation as a centering force of his life. It opened up his heart to his deep yearning for Judaism. So at age 38, Lew decided to become a rabbi and enrolled at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.
As a conservative Jew, he found great meaning in the process of trying to uncover the will of God through the study of the Torah and the Talmud. Thanks to ten years of Zen meditation, he found he was able to plumb the depths of Jewish prayer. The author eventually became the rabbi of the largest conservative synagogue in San Francisco. One of his goals there is to "help Jews deepen their Jewish practice with Buddhist style meditation techniques."
Although Lew spends most of his life trying not to draw attention to himself, in the end he realizes that "the very thing we can't stand about ourselves is our divine name, our uniqueness, the way God has made us, the quality that gives our life its shape and meaning." Now Rabbi Lew uses what he once considered a grievous character flaw — the need for attention — as a means of bringing meditation to the synagogue and rallying people to protect the homeless. By the end of One God Clapping, the author is roaring like a lion!