If you want to read in detail about Alan’s life, there are many references on the Internet. He wrote five books on his practice. I knew Alan for several decades and loved him. He practiced Zen at the San Francisco Zen Center, where I knew him. He later became a rabbi and served at a San Francisco conservative congregation where I spent time with him.
I only wanted to pass on one thing I learned from him that may or may not be in his books.
Alan had a way of reading the most significant hebrew prayer, the Shema, that is a fascinating connection to Zen.
To understand what this reading of hebrew is about, one needs to know that Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, working with a radio telescope at Bell Labs in New Jersey in 1964, detected a microwave radiation at a wavelength slightly less than 3 degrees above absolute zero. This microwave radiation pervades the universe. This radiation is believed to be the current sound of the big bang creation of our cosmos.
Penzias is related directly to Judaism. His grandfather was a rabbi and his daughter is a rabbi in Safed.
This is the Shema: read the Hebrew from right to left
Sh'ma Yisra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.
The hebrew ‘Shema’ translates as breath, the origin of the word. Also hear, discern, obey, understand.
The hebrew Eloheinu translates as ‘our god’, ‘what we call god’.
The hebrew echad is ‘one’ but also ‘everything’, ‘the now’.
The two quote marks are the name of God that is never said, but is substituted for with the word Adonai.
Rabbi Alan suggests that the Shema should be understood: that the Adonai we are to listen to is the sound of the universe, the background microwave radiation. The ‘now’ of the universe. The universe is to be heard when we listen to our breath.
So it can be read as: ‘Listen Israel, god is the sound that pervades the universe, it is the great now.’
That works for Zen and Judaism. If it is of interest to you.