Alan's impact on me, my daughter Lily, and Nishmat Hayyim was immeasurable. He visited Nishmat Hayyim twice and spoke to us and in other places of how much hope and inspiration he drew from our existence. He noted that no other Jewish meditation center was so egalitarian: not dependent on a charismatic leader but on forming a community that can support everyday practice. Both he and his life-long friend Norman Fischer, who like Rabbi Lew is an outstanding teacher of Jewish meditation and a writer, said that the Nishmat Hayyim model was the most sustainable in terms of forming a community that supported our daily efforts to wake up to What Is and be fully alive and engaged in the world.

Rabbi Lew was one of the greatest Jewish meditation teachers in this world, the most Jewishly knowledgeable and observant of mitzvot. Part of that he lived through his involvement in tiqqun olam, repair of the world, through his work in prisons, against the death penalty, and with the homeless. Part of that he lived through his continual personal kindness, humor, love, and encouragement to all who crossed his path. Part of that he lived through the books he wrote and through the love he demonstrated for his wife, children, and grandchildren.

He is the one who set me out on this path the summer I lived and worked at Elat Chayyim, the Center for Jewish Spirituality, as the Mishpacha Facilitator immediately after leaving my marriage of 25 years. He is the one who launched me and sustained me over these past 4 and a 1/2 years in this practice. He loved that my daughter Lily and I had a twice-a-year silent retreat practice together.

Rabbi Lew had this gift to shift the sense of failure and impossibility experienced when we "try" to meditate to one of opportunity in each moment to do teshuvah, turning back to reality, to the One. He taught that this process of turning and returning, awakening and getting lost was human and natural, in which seeming obstacles were actually gateways to the Reality that God's us.

This week I taught meditation in three completely different and new situations to a total of about 70 people of all races, ages, backgrounds and his teachings were so much a part of how I got to touch those people. At the moment I was presenting on Judaism and meditation to the faculty at Berklee while feeling his life so tangibly in mine, he died. He was so alive and committed to fully living and caring and helping. I could depend on him as someone committed to alleviating suffering on many levels.

Norman and Alan ECAMP, Elat Chayyim December 28, 2008-January 4, 2009

One week before he died, he sat with 40 of us on the final week of Elat Chayyim Advanced Meditation Program (ECAMP) 2-yr training and gave us his remarkable teachings. I sat directly opposite him and Norman and they remarked afterwards how great it had been to tune into each other's harmonies during the beautiful davvening chants every morning and for Shabbat.

After ECAMP he went to Baltimore for a Rabbinic Conference. Sunday night he delivered a great teaching to the Rabbis on Jewish Meditation, the next morning woke for davvening, meditation, and then went for a walk and died. His legacy will live on in each of us in every awakened breath, in every intention to show up and live our commitment to each other to awaken together and to repair the world.

I will depend more than ever on each of you to learn, love, and live with me in this deepening connection to the present, to each other's presence, and to the Presence, in this miraculous community we create and recreate with Nishmat Hayyim.

Rabbi Alan Lew was the founding director of Makor Or (Source of Light) Meditation Center and Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco. He was at the forefront of the movement to develop new forms of Jewish spiritual expression.

Rabbi Lew was ordained as a rabbi in 1988 at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and was the Past President of the Board of Rabbis of Northern California.

Rabbi Lew taught meditation in Jewish contexts, in order to cultivate a deeper understanding of Jewish prayer and communal practice and to enhance spirituality in our everyday lives. Known as "The Zen Rabbi", Rabbi Lew trained in Zazan meditation for more than 25 years. "Putting meditation in a Jewish context, inside a synagogue, inspires daily Jewish practice," said Lew. "Judaism has always borrowed techniques from other cultures when it served to make Judaism more vital."

Lew offered rigorous classes on the Talmud, Torah, and the cultural legacies of Judaism, scrutinizing subjects as varied as the role of prophecy in Judaism and meditations on the Book of Psalms. Rabbi Lew authored of many books, including: One God Clapping (Kodansha,1999), an award-winning spiritual memoir; This Is Real And You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation, (Little Brown, 2003), a guide for the Jewish High Holidays and the soul's journey through life, death and renewal; and Be Still and Get Going, (Little Brown August, 2005), accessible teachings and practices in Jewish meditation drawn from Torah and Rabbinical texts; and several books of poetry.

Rabbi Lew's work using Zen meditation to enhance Jewish spirituality has been highlighted on programs such as ABC News, The MacNeil-Lehrer Report, the PBS news magazine Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, and National Public Radio's All Things Considered. Rabbi Lew served as moderator of Mosaic, CBS's weekly religious talk show. He also taught at the Graduate Theological Union of the University of California at Berkeley.

Alan Lew was married to Sherril Jaffe, and brought three children into this world, a son, Steven, and daughters, Hannah and Malka.

In Be Still and Get Going, Rabbi Lew said: "Something else we've discovered at Makor Or is the necessity of practicing in community. This is how one moves from a sense of oneself as a discrete and separate individual to feeling oneself to be part of something larger."