February 2009

I was at a Rabbinical Study Retreat this week. On the first full day, one of my colleagues died. His name was Rabbi Alan Lew. He had recently retired as a pulpit Rabbi in San Francisco and had opened a Jewish meditation center. Earlier in his life, Rabbi Lew had studied to become a Zen Buddhist monk, yet something inside pushed him to explore his Jewish roots and eventually he became a Conservative Rabbi. He was an outspoken voice for social justice. Part of the reason that the life of a monk may not have been right for Rabbi Lew, was that he felt the call to live life fully, rather than to withdraw into the solitary life of contemplation and meditation.

On the first morning of our retreat, he had led a meditation session before Shacharit, the morning service. He had gone for a walk and suffered a heart attack. That afternoon, we gathered in the Synagogue and were told he had died. We were all in shock. He was our colleague, teacher and friend.

Rabbi Lew had just published a book called, “This is Real and Your Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation.” The book is a collection of his ideas, developed in sermons, about how the High Holidays are rituals for transforming our lives. A number of colleagues had read it and were deeply impressed. After our meeting I grabbed a copy of his book, opened it to the chapter, Death and Yom Kippur Atone and read: we are born and we die, and nothing that happens in between is nearly as important as these two fundamental facts of life. I do not know if Rabbi Lew had thought these words would apply to him so soon, but it certainly has made many of his colleagues think about it. We have little say over how close the two fundamental facts of life will be. We do, however, get to choose what happens in between. Hopefully we can make an impact on the world, as did my teacher and colleague, Rabbi Alan Lew. Zichrono livracha, may his memory be a blessing.