For nearly 20 years, Rabbi David Cooper has been among the pioneers of Jewish meditation. Through his bestselling books and popular retreats, Cooper and his wife Shoshana have helped to create the hybrid of Buddhist and Jewish meditation practices that is now commonplace at synagogues across the country. Love it or hate it, the “BuJu” phenomenon continues to grow, influencing clergy and laypeople, the religious and the secular, traditionalists and innovators.

Cooper is positively upbeat about the lessons and transformations of the aging process — what rabbi and guru of the renewal movement Zalman Schachter-Shalomi calls “aging to sage-ing.”

Read more: David Cooper, Father of BuJu – The Arty Semite – Forward.com.