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How a book by a ‘Zen Rabbi’ became a High Holidays classic
(JTA) — Every few years I put out a call asking what people will be reading in preparation for the High Holidays, and usually one book tops the list: “This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation,” by the late Rabbi Alan Lew.
Published 20 years ago this month, “This Is Real” is an attempt by Lew, a Conservative rabbi trained in Buddhist practice, to get perhaps jaded readers to see the period that includes Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot as a time for deep spiritual introspection — or, as he writes, a time to “move from self-hatred to self-forgiveness, from anger to healing, from hard-heartedness to brokenheartedness.”
If that sounds like the gospel of “self-care,” you’re not far off. Lew, who died in 2009 at age 65, came of age during the self-actualization movement, a serious attempt by psychologists to get people to live up to values that transcend their desire for wealth and status. By the time cosmetics companies, crystal sellers and lifestyle influencers took hold of the concept, it was derided as selfishness disguised as a spiritual journey.
But Lew’s book grounds concepts of “self-discovery, spiritual discipline, self-forgiveness and spiritual evolution” in normative Judaism. “This Is Real” never strays far from a traditional Judaism that saw the period of prayer, reflection and repentance surrounding the holidays as a time for a moral wake-up call.
That hybrid of the traditional and the much-maligned “New Age” continues to appeal to readers. Jewish educator Joshua Ladon, writing in the 2020 anthology “The New Jewish Canon,” calls the book “the handbook for American Jewish High Holiday survival,” comparing its influence to Rabbi Harold Kushner’s mega-bestseller “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” Synagogues host book groups to discuss the book in the run-up to the holidays; the book’s publisher, Little, Brown and Company, issued a paperback version only in 2018, suggesting its hardcover sales had remained strong for 15 years.
Ilana Sandberg, a rabbinical student at JTS, recommended Lew’s book last month in a video for the seminary.
She first read the book in the fall of 2020 as she was preparing to lead High Holiday services at Brandeis Hillel for the first time as the rabbinic intern, and considers the late author her “spiritual hevruta,” or study partner, in the lead-up to the holidays. The book, Sandberg says, is about “accepting this idea that we are ever-changing beings and there really is a possibility for change, for renewal as we go through the cycle of the year.”
Lew was spiritual leader at San Francisco’s Congregation Beth Sholom from 1991 to 2005. Raised in Brooklyn and New York’s Westchester County, he was underwhelmed by the suburban Judaism of the 1950s and ’60s and, like many Jewish seekers of his era, turned to Zen Buddhism — at one point considering becoming a lay priest.
“It was in a Buddhist monastery, meditating, that I realized who I really am. I am a Jew,” he wrote in “One God Clapping: The Spiritual Path of a Zen Rabbi,” a memoir he co-wrote in 2001 with his wife, Sherril Jaffe. “A Jew can use the practice of meditation to illuminate his or her Jewish soul.”
Rabbi Alan Lew appears on the cover of “One God Clapping: The Spiritual Path of a Zen Rabbi,” a memoir he co-wrote in 2001 with his wife, Sherril Jaffe.
A poet and sometime bus driver, Lew was 38 when he enrolled at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the training ground for Conservative rabbis. In 2000, he founded Makor Or, a Jewish meditation center housed at his synagogue.
In “This Is Real,” he writes about the meditative aspects of High Holiday prayer. “When we sit in meditation with other people, breathing the same air, hearing the same sounds, thinking thoughts in the same rhythms and patterns, we experience our connection to each other in a very immediate way,” he writes.
But Lew’s version of the High Holidays is hardly passive or even gentle: Preparing for the holidays, as he suggests in the title, is hard and daunting work. The dreamlike opening sequence describes the “journey” of the High Holiday period as “fraught with meaning and dread.”
Ladon wrote that Lew’s book represents “the possibility of American Judaism, full of vitality and transcending boundaries.” Perhaps because of, or even in spite of this, it was mostly non-Orthodox Jews who replied to my recent social media post asking about their attachment to “This Is Real.”
“I’m really moved by the way that Lew takes the traditional images of the Holidays — the wake-up call of the shofar, the books of life, death and the undecided, the opening of the gates — and retells them in a way that they speak directly to my personal existential discomfort,” wrote Jonah Mendelsohn, an actor and writer who has been reading the book with fellow members of SAJ, a Reconstructionist synagogue in Manhattan. “The book has me facing my own insecurity and self-judgment in a way that isn’t always comfortable, but pushes me to change.”
Karen Paul, a fundraising consultant and former executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Tikkun Olam Women’s Foundation, said a friend gave her a copy of the book the year her husband died from glioblastoma.
“Lew’s comforting and relatable stories were precisely the roadmap I needed to begin to reshape my future,” she told me. “My favorite parable in the book is the day that the rabbi had to be on one side of the park for a [funeral] and the other side of the park for a birth. This is the dialectic of life, which, if we listen for it, applies to all that we do.”
Rabbi Rachel Barenblatt of the Reform Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires in North Adams, Massachusetts, recommends the book for “folks who might not self-identify as seekers, but who are interested in approaching the holidays in a deeper or more informed way.”
“When I first read it, it changed how I experience this two-month window of time, and I love opening that up for those whom I serve,” she wrote me. “How can we harness this season to fuel our inner work so that we can emerge ready to grow and become and try again?”
But she, like others, notes that “This Is Real” isn’t without his flaws. She suggests that Lew “had some blind spots, notably around gender.” (Last year, Jewish blogger Shari Salzhauer Berkowitz criticized his “heterosexual, male” handling of the sexual dynamics in Ki Tetze, the Torah portion that includes instructions for soldiers taking women captives as “wives.”)
The book also has admiring references to Rudy Giuliani — the New York City mayor turned RICO defendant — and Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach — the songwriter who faced posthumous allegations of sexual misconduct — that read differently than they did 20 years ago.
Barenblatt suggests pairing his book with a “contemporary and feminist text” such as Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s recent book “On Repentance and Repair.”
Lew’s style — he glides between poetry and memoir, allegory and darshanut, or Torah commentary — isn’t for everyone. Many prefer Nobel laureate S.Y. Agnon’s anthology “Days of Awe,” first published in English in 1948, a collection of mostly primary texts related to the High Holidays. Philip Goodman’s various anthologies for the Jewish Publication Society take a similar approach. The 1999 essay collection, “Beginning Anew: A Woman’s Companion to the High Holy Days” by Gail Twersky Reimer and Judith A. Kates is a corrective to books that ignore the central place of women in the liturgy.
Many of these books seem intended for readers who are looking for inspiration in synagogue when their attention begins to flag. Lew invites you to read his book as a coherent narrative of a nearly three-month process from destruction (Tisha B’Av) to joy (Sukkot).
But for some readers, it is also a book to be dipped into and sipped from.
“I have never finished this book,” Pittsburgh Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman admitted last month in a column recommending books for the High Holidays. “I read four or five pages. I stop and ponder over the meaning of existence and God and human growth and obligation and fallibility. Lew is poetic and instructive and guru-esque but also deeply personal; you feel you know him. The book’s title is perfect, and yet the book really will prepare you for the High Holidays, even if you, like me, never actually finish reading it. One might argue that this book, if properly read, is never finished.”
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Letter from Vancouver: A monument draws on Jewish tradition to remember victims of Oct. 7
The garden of Temple Sholom Synagogue in Vancouver is a serene and contemplative place to remember the horrific events of Oct. 7, 2023—and the Israeli civilians, soldiers and foreign nationals who […]
The post Letter from Vancouver: A monument draws on Jewish tradition to remember victims of Oct. 7 appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Israel-Lebanon Ceasefire Deal ‘Tantamount to a Hezbollah Defeat,’ Says Leading War Studies Think Tank
Israeli tanks are being moved, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, in the Golan Heights, Sept. 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Jim Urquhart
The terms of the newly minted ceasefire agreement to halt fighting between Israel and Hezbollah amounts to a defeat for the Lebanese terrorist group, although the deal may be difficult to implement, according to two leading US think tanks.
The deal requires Israeli forces to gradually withdraw from southern Lebanon, where they have been operating since early October, over the next 60 days. Meanwhile, the Lebanese army will enter these areas and ensure that Hezbollah retreats north of the Litani River, located some 18 miles north of the border with Israel. The United States and France, who brokered the agreement, will oversee compliance with its terms.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), in conjunction with the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project (CTP), explained the implications of the deal on Tuesday in their daily Iran Update, “which provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests.” Hezbollah, which wields significant political and military influence across Lebanon, is the chief proxy force of the Iranian regime.
In its analysis, ISW and CTP explained that the deal amounts to a Hezbollah defeat for two main reasons.
First, “Hezbollah has abandoned several previously-held ceasefire negotiation positions, reflecting the degree to which IDF [Israel Defense Forces] military operations have forced Hezbollah to abandon its war aims.”
Specifically, Hezbollah agreeing to a deal was previously contingent on a ceasefire in Gaza, but that changed after the past two months of Israeli military operations, during which the IDF has decimated much of Hezbollah’s leadership and weapons stockpiles through airstrikes while attempting to push the terrorist army away from its border with a ground offensive.
Additionally, the think tanks noted, “current Hezbollah Secretary General Naim Qassem has also previously expressed opposition to any stipulations giving Israel freedom of action inside Lebanon,” but the deal reportedly allows Israel an ability to respond to Hezbollah if it violates the deal.
Second, the think tanks argued that the agreement was a defeat for Hezbollah because it allowed Israel to achieve its war aim of making it safe for its citizens to return to their homes in northern Israel.
“IDF operations in Lebanese border towns have eliminated the threat of an Oct. 7-style offensive attack by Hezbollah into northern Israel, and the Israeli air campaign has killed many commanders and destroyed much of Hezbollah’s munition stockpiles,” according to ISW and CTP.
Some 70,000 Israelis living in northern Israel have been forced to flee their homes over the past 14 months, amid unrelenting barrages of rockets, missiles, and drones fired by Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah began its attacks last Oct. 8, one day after the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel. The Jewish state had been exchanging fire with Hezbollah but intensified its military response over the past two months.
Northern Israelis told The Algemeiner this week that they were concerned the new ceasefire deal could open the door to future Hezbollah attacks, but at the same time the ceasefire will allow many of them the first opportunity to return home in a year.
ISW and CTP also noted in their analysis that Israel’s military operations have devastated Hezbollah’s leadership and infrastructure. According to estimates, at least 1,730 Hezbollah terrorists and upwards of 4,000 have been killed over the past year of fighting.
While the deal suggested a defeat of sorts for Hezbollah and the effectiveness of Israel’s military operations, ISW and CTP also argued that several aspects of the ceasefire will be difficult to implement.
“The decision to rely on the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and UN observers in Lebanon to respectively secure southern Lebanon and monitor compliance with the ceasefire agreement makes no serious changes to the same system outlined by UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war,” they wrote.
Resolution 1701 called for the complete demilitarization of Hezbollah south of the Litani River and prohibited the presence of armed groups in Lebanon except for the official Lebanese army and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
This may be an issue because “neither the LAF nor the UN proved willing or able to prevent Hezbollah from reoccupying southern Lebanon and building new infrastructure. Some LAF sources, for example, have expressed a lack of will to enforce this ceasefire because they believe that any fighting with Hezbollah would risk triggering ‘civil war,’” the think tanks assessed.
Nevertheless, the LAF is going to deploy 5,000 troops to the country’s south in order to assume control of their own territory from Hezbollah.
However, the think tanks added, “LAF units have been in southern Lebanon since 2006, but have failed to prevent Hezbollah from using the area to attack Israel.”
The post Israel-Lebanon Ceasefire Deal ‘Tantamount to a Hezbollah Defeat,’ Says Leading War Studies Think Tank first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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What Nutmeg and the Torah Teach Us About Securing a Long-Term Future
A Torah scroll. Photo: RabbiSacks.org.
Here’s a fact from history you may not know. In 1667, the Dutch and the British struck a trade deal that, in retrospect, seems so bizarre that it defies belief.
As part of the Treaty of Breda — a pact that ended the Second Anglo-Dutch War and aimed to solidify territorial claims between the two powers — the Dutch ceded control of Manhattan to the British.
Yes, that Manhattan — the self-proclaimed center of the universe (at least according to New Yorkers), home to Wall Street, Times Square, and those famously overpriced bagels.
And what did the Dutch get in return? Another island — tiny Run, part of the Banda Islands in Indonesia.
To put things in perspective, Run is minuscule compared to Manhattan — barely 3 square kilometers, or roughly half the size of Central Park. Today, it’s a forgotten dot on the map, with a population of less than 2,000 people and no significant industry beyond subsistence farming. But in the 17th century, Run was a prized gem worth its weight in gold — or rather, nutmeg gold.
Nutmeg was the Bitcoin of its day, an exotic spice that Europeans coveted so desperately they were willing to risk life and limb. Just by way of example, during the early spice wars, the Dutch massacred and enslaved the native Bandanese people to seize control of the lucrative nutmeg trade.
From our modern perspective, the deal seems ridiculous — Manhattan for a pinch of nutmeg? But in the context of the 17th century, it made perfect sense. Nutmeg was the crown jewel of global trade, and controlling its supply meant immense wealth and influence. For the Dutch, securing Run was a strategic move, giving them dominance in the spice trade, and, let’s be honest, plenty of bragging rights at fancy Dutch banquets.
But history has a funny way of reshaping perspectives. What seemed like a brilliant play in its time now looks like a colossal miscalculation — and the annals of history are filled with similar trades that, in hindsight, make us scratch our heads and wonder, what were they thinking?
Another contender for history’s Hall of Fame in ludicrous trades is the Louisiana Purchase. In 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte, who was strapped for cash and eager to fund his military campaigns, sold a vast swath of North America to the nascent United States for a mere $15 million. The sale included 828,000 square miles — that’s about four cents an acre — that would become 15 states, including the fertile Midwest and the resource-rich Rocky Mountains.
But to Napoleon, this was a strategic no-brainer. He even called the sale “a magnificent bargain,” boasting that it would “forever disarm” Britain by strengthening its rival across the Atlantic. At the time, the Louisiana Territory was seen as a vast, undeveloped expanse that was difficult to govern and defend. Napoleon viewed it as a logistical burden, especially with the looming threat of British naval power. By selling the territory, he aimed to bolster France’s finances and focus on European conflicts.
Napoleon wasn’t shy about mocking his enemies for their mistakes, once quipping, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” But in this case, it’s tempting to imagine him swallowing those words as the United States grew into a global superpower thanks, in no small part, to his so-called bargain.
While he may have considered Louisiana to be a logistical headache — too far away and too vulnerable to British attacks — the long-term implications of the deal were staggering. What Napoleon dismissed as a far-off backwater turned out to be the world’s breadbasket, not to mention the backbone of America’s westward expansion.
Like the Dutch and their nutmeg gamble, Napoleon made a trade that no doubt seemed brilliant at the time — but, with hindsight, turned into a world-class blunder. It’s the kind of decision that reminds us just how hard it is to see past the urgency of the moment and anticipate the full scope of consequences.
Which brings me to Esav. You’d think Esav, the firstborn son of Yitzchak and Rivka, would have his priorities straight. He was the guy — heir to a distinguished dynasty that stretched back to his grandfather Abraham, who single-handedly changed the course of human history.
But one fateful day, as recalled at the beginning of Parshat Toldot, Esav stumbles home from a hunting trip, exhausted and ravenous. The aroma of Yaakov’s lentil stew hits him like a truck. “Pour me some of that red stuff!” he demands, as if he’s never seen food before.
Yaakov, never one to pass up an opportunity, doesn’t miss a beat.
“Sure, but only in exchange for your birthright,” he counters casually, as if such transactions are as common as trading baseball cards. And just like that, Esav trades his birthright for a bowl of soup. No lawyers, no witnesses, not even a handshake — just an impulsive decision fueled by hunger and a staggering lack of foresight.
The Torah captures the absurdity of the moment: Esav claims to be “on the verge of death” and dismisses the birthright as worthless. Any future value — material or spiritual — is meaningless to him in that moment. All that matters is satisfying his immediate needs.
So, was it really such a terrible deal? Psychologists have a term for Esav’s behavior: hyperbolic discounting — a fancy term for our tendency to prioritize immediate rewards over bigger, long-term benefits.
It’s the same mental quirk that makes splurging on a gadget feel better than saving for retirement, or binge-watching a series more appealing than preparing for an exam. For Esav, the stew wasn’t just a meal — it was the instant solution to his discomfort, a quick fix that blinded him to the larger, long-term value of his birthright.
It’s the classic trade-off between now and later: the craving for immediate gratification often comes at the expense of something far more significant. Esav’s impulsive decision wasn’t just about hunger — it was about losing sight of the future in the heat of the moment.
Truthfully, it’s easy to criticize Esav for his shortsightedness, but how often do we fall into the same trap? We skip meaningful opportunities because they feel inconvenient or uncomfortable in the moment, opting for the metaphorical lentil stew instead of holding out for the birthright.
But the Torah doesn’t include this story just to make Esav look bad. It’s there to highlight the contrast between Esav and Yaakov — the choices that define them and, by extension, us.
Esav represents the immediate, the expedient, the here-and-now. Yaakov, our spiritual forebear, is the embodiment of foresight and patience. He sees the long game and keeps his eye on what truly matters: Abraham and Yitzchak’s legacy and the Jewish people’s spiritual destiny.
The message of Toldot is clear: the choices we make in moments of weakness have the power to shape our future — and the future of all who come after us. Esav’s impulsiveness relegated him to a footnote in history, like the nutmeg island of Run or France’s control over a vast portion of North America.
Meanwhile, Yaakov’s ability to think beyond the moment secured him a legacy that continues to inspire and guide us to this day — a timeless reminder that true greatness is not built in a moment of indulgence, but in the patience to see beyond it.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
The post What Nutmeg and the Torah Teach Us About Securing a Long-Term Future first appeared on Algemeiner.com.