Rabbi Alan Lew: “True love is connection. When we connect with someone, when we really feel our identity with them, I think we can’t help but love them.”
Rabbi Alan Lew was the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco from 1991 to 2005 and currently serves as Rabbi Emeritus there. He is also the director of Makor Or, a Center for Jewish Meditation in San Francisco. Previously, he was the rabbi of Congregation Eitz Chaim of Monroe, New York, and the first chaplain of the Jacob Perlow Hospice of Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. Rabbi Lew is the Past President of the Board of Rabbis of Northern California and for 10 years, the moderator of the Mosaic television program on KPIX-TV in San Francisco.
Rabbi Lew is currently writing a new book titled The Life That Ran Through Me. He is also teaching at the JTS Rabbinical Training Institute and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, as well as traveling all over the country speaking, doing scholar-in residence weekends and meditation workshops. The PBS religious newsweekly, Religion and Ethics, just aired a 10 minute profile of his work this past week, and next month he will travel to Spain at the invitation of Raimon Pannikar to take part in a conference of world spiritual leaders on the Costa Brava.
