Welcome!

Welcome to Practicing Imperfection, a digital exhibit on Alan Lew, a self-described Zen Rabbi. The project that follows is an investigation into Lew’s life and a conversation about how we can use history to understand and discuss deeply religious experiences and lives.

 

Why Alan Lew?

This is an exhibit about a man who spent much of his life searching for meaning in two religious traditions that, at first, might appear quite different. For much of his early life, Alan Lew (1943-2009) felt little connection with his Jewish faith. As a young adult, he was fond of saying later in life, he thought that being Jewish simply meant belonging to a small branch of the Democratic Party. Disappointed with what he saw as a lack of spiritual vivacity in 1960s Judaism, Lew fled the eastern seaboard and settled in Northern California, where during the 1970s, he explored various religious traditions. Eventually, he found a home in the meditative practices of Zen Buddhism. It was during his final steps of becoming a Buddhist lay priest, however, that Lew realized much of the disquiet which had characterized his life to that point, was due to not reconciling his Jewish identity with his spiritual self. In the 1980s, he enrolled in rabbinical school and, upon ordination, lead congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco until 2005. Lew spent much of his time as a Rabbi, however, arguing for the importance of meditative practice within Jewish spiritual life. Throughout all of these endeavors, Alan Lew remained committed to introspection and self-discovery. His professional and personal life, it might be fair to say, were products of near-constant soul searching, the desire to understand and embody what he described as a “realm beyond language.” [1]

Here then, is the problem with which this exhibit wrestles: history is a practice that relies upon language to make sense of the past. For the most part, historians read the words others have left behind and write their own words expressing what they think happened in the past. Alan Lew was not satisfied with this arrangement. He was not a fan of history, going so far as to describe it as a “little more than a set of intellectual interpretations,” it was, he explained, “a subject with so little substance.”[2]

Lew was right, at least in part. There are times when words fail us. Whether it is was standing in front of an amazing piece of art, marveling at the splendor of nature, or watching a newborn slumber peacefully, we have all had moments in life where language itself is incapable of fully capturing our experience and emotions. But, perhaps more so than others, Lew spent his life dwelling on, embracing, and being confounded by these moments. That is not to say that Lew remained aloof or removed from the world during long periods of spiritual contemplation. Far from it. As he would readily admit, and as you will quickly see, feelings of inadequacy, insecurity, and impermanence – all of which were results of the specific contours of his life – drove much of his spiritual exploration. Regardless of his motivation, however, the fact remains that Lew spent much of his life trying to understand the parts of human experience that language can never fully describe. Which brings us to the two central questions of this project:
 

      How can we use the tools of historical inquiry to
                      make sense of Alan Lew’s life?

         What, then, can Alan Lew teach us about the
                        limits of historical inquiry?

Getting Started

As you may have guessed, this exhibit is as much about how history works as it is about Alan Lew. That is not to say that we will be abandoning Lew in favor of theoretical conversations about the ways in which people can and cannot know the past – although we encourage you to think about that as you progress through the following pages - our Zen Rabbi will remain from and center in this discussion.

While we’ve created this exhibit for a variety of audiences, most of the conversations within assume that our readers have little formal training in the historical profession. In the chapters that follow, we will discuss the difference between biography and history, as well as the relationship between archives, sources, and historical writing. Along the way we will be asking some basic questions about how an historian can make sense of Alan Lew’s life, it’s our hope that doing so will be rewarding for fans of history and active scholars alike.
 

As you will see, the purpose of this exhibit is to raise questions about how history works and to get you thinking about how and why we think about the past as we do.