One God Clapping: The Spiritual Path of a Zen Rabbi - Hardcover

"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

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.