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Rabbi Michael Strassfeld starts most mornings off by washing his hands. This is a spiritual cleansing of sorts, an expression of hope that during the coming day "I use my hands well."

He then meditates for half an hour using a niggun, or wordless Chassidic melody, as a way of "focusing and trying to come to a place of awareness."

More and more Jews are infusing their lives with such spiritual practices, observes Strassfeld, who co-edited three enormously popular editions of the "Jewish Catalog" during the '70s.

Those how-to books take readers through the nuts and bolts of leading a Jewish life, offering resources and tips on everything from keeping kosher to throwing a Jewish wedding to understanding the Jewish calendar. Many Jews credit the books with playing pivotal roles in their lives.

Approached two years ago to update the catalogs for the '90s, Strassfeld traveled to Jewish events around the country, trying to discern what mood and trends in American Jewish life "The New Jewish Catalog" should reflect.

"In the end I came to this notion that what people seemed to be looking for was spirituality," says the rabbi of Manhattan's Conservative Congregation Ansche Chesed, who will bring his own burgeoning spiritual know-how to Berkeley's Chochmat HaLev the weekend of Jan. 10 and 11.

Thus, "The New Jewish Catalog" will serve as a resource for the major rituals and practices of Judaism while putting them in the context of a spiritual outlook, he says. "The orientation of the book will be to look at larger issues like eating, like work, like relationships."

Strassfeld, who has already written the book's first few chapters, admits that "spirituality is a very vague term. For me, it means the notion that there is something beyond ourselves that gives us some sense of ultimate meaning in our lives.

"For Jews, I would say that's a connection to the Holy One. From that comes a way of living which is an awareness of the essence of God, as well as living in an ethical and moral manner."

In the new book, he hopes to illuminate some specific methods of doing so — for example, washing one's hands in the morning, and other ways of starting the day with an eye on the spiritual.

In large measure, it is unaffiliated Jews who have revived their spiritual lives in the context of Jewish tradition, Strassfeld says. With his upcoming book, he hopes to appeal to mainstream Jews, as well.

"The problem with the Jewish community is that many people aren't aware of those practices," he says. In some cases, "the people who do practice them have kind of lost the connection to what it's about.

"The challenge of the book is to try to recapture some things that have been lost or de-emphasized as well as look at things that need to be recreated."