Alan Lew is the rabbi of Congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco and is at the forefront of the movement to develop new forms of Jewish spiritual expression. His work in the area of 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. He also serves as moderator of Mosaic, CBS's weekly religious talk show. Lew explores meditation in Jewish contexts, and has conducted workshops and retreats on Jewish meditation throughout the United States and Canada.

PART I: To Leave Everything That Is Familiar
Prologue: The Way Things Are
1. A Vivid Dream
2. Jewish Karma
3. Please Throw Me a Rope
4. How I Learned to Look Beneath the Surface
5. Freedom Is a Spiritual State
6. Sublimating Spirituality
7. Lech Lecha
8. The War Between the Two Sides of the Brain
9. Death Recycles into Life
10. The Question Is Not Whether a Teacher Has Real Spiritual Power, but How That Power Is Used
11. Centering
12. Meditation
13. The Gateway
14. Form Is Emptiness
15. Spiritual Pyrotechnics
16. Dokusan
17. When Peace Breaks Out, the First Thing You Feel Is the Devastation of the War
18. The Need to Belong
19. Emptiness Is Form
20. Compassion
21. They Do Not Appear or Disappear
22. My Naked Heart
23. Healing Presence
24. Closure
25. Family
26. Wedding
27. Narrative
28. Hold On to Your Hat

PART II: God Was in This Place and I Didn't Know It
29. The Funnel
30. The Kaddish
31. Studying Talmud
32. The Holocaust
33. Prayer
34. Service
35. Why the Messiah Doesn't Come
36. Death
37. Teshuvah
38. The Lineaments of the Divine Encounter
39. Kabbalah
40. Taking Leave

PART III: To Struggle with God Until Your Name Changes
41. The Shem'a
42. Open the Gates
43. Our Divine Name
44. What I Learned from Buddhism About How to Save Judaism
45. How to Look at Your Heart