Nan Fink Gefen, PhD, is a teacher of Jewish meditation, a writer and an editor. She has taught Jewish meditation to hundreds of students around the country. For six years, she directed a program to train Jewish meditation teachers at Chochmat HaLev, a center of Jewish meditation in the San Francisco Bay Area.

She is a contributor to Meditation from the Heart of Judaism: Today's Teachers Share Their Practices, Techniques, and Faith (Jewish Lights), and author of Stranger in the Midst: A Memoir of Spiritual Discovery (Basic Books). She cofounded Tikkun magazine in 1985, and she is the cofounding editor of Persimmon Tree: An Online Magazine of the Arts.

Introduction to the Second Edition vii
Acknowledgments xiv

Part One: The Practice of Jewish Meditation
1. What Is Jewish Meditation? 3
2. The Promise of Jewish Meditation 17
3. States of Consciousness 29
4. Forms of Jewish Meditation 41
5. Getting Started 57

Part Two: The Core Meditations
6. Focused Meditations 81

• Hineini Meditation 81
• Shalom Meditation 85
• Divine Light Meditation 88
• Chesed Meditation 91
• Thankfulness Meditation 94
• Neshamah Meditation 97
• Sh'ma Meditation 100
• Yod-Hay-Vav-Hay Meditation 103

7. Awareness Meditations 109

• Gam Zeh Kadosh Meditation 109
• Walking Meditation 113

8. Emptiness Meditations 117

• Ayin Breath Meditation 117
• Space-between-the-Letters Meditation 120
• Beyond-the-Self Meditation 123

Part Three: A Meditative Life
9. Challenges of a Meditative Life 129
10. Meditation and Jewish Spiritual Practice 151
11. A Morning Meditative Prayer Practice 169

Jewish Meditation Resource Guide for Beginning Meditators 173