An interview with Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg, a poet, educator, activist and nationally recognized pioneer in Buddhist-inspired Jewish contemplative practice.
Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg served as a congregational rabbi for seventeen years and is well known as a teacher of mindfulness meditation to rabbis, Jewish professionals and lay people as a co-founder of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. She's the author of several books , including Surprisingly Happy, God loves the Stranger and Let Us All Breathe Together, and has published widely on such topics as feminism, spiritual direction, parenting, social justice and mindfulness from a Jewish perspective.
Raised in New York by storekeeper parents, Sheila's story is that of a spiritual seeker growing up in the '50s and '60s. Sheila shares how her journey took her from the Peace Corps, to living in Israel, to attending rabbinical school, to serving as a pulpit rabbi and ultimately to co-founding the Institute of Jewish Spirituality. Not one to shy away from the rawness of life, Sheila opens up about her battle with addiction, her path to sobriety, and the priceless joy of finding her spiritual home.
"I really didn't have an external idea of success. I wasn't like an ambitious child or I don't think I've ever been ambitious or that I've even longed for (something). To me, success is only about values. It's only about holding up what is wholesome, what is loving, what is just, and healing the places of brokenness. That's the only thing I can think of as any success that I would want to participate in."- Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg
Key takeaways:
- Hold onto your dreams, even when they are delayed. Sheila described a deep knowing that she was meant to become a rabbi. However, as a single mom, she needed to work and took a job working for Hillel on a college campus instead. Though it took six years from the time she decided to become a rabbi until she actually enrolled in rabbinical school, she eventually did it while continuing her work with Hillel part-time.
- When you need help, reach out and seek the help. Sheila had begun drinking to cope with the stress in her life. She recognized that her relationship with alcohol had gotten out of control. It had kept her together for a while until it stopped working. She started to go to AA meetings and found that an unexpected benefit was a completely renewed sense of spiritual life on a profound level.
- Be open to guidance from the universe. Sheila's friends from her women's circle told her about an opening for a rabbi in Amherst, Massachusetts. The head of the search committee of that synagogue pointed out to her that the Jewish community of Amherst is midway between two of the premier spiritual centers, Kripalu and Insight Meditation. To any other candidate, this information would have meant nothing. To Sheila, this information was fantastic and was the beginning of her journey to the next stage of her life, integrating Buddhist philosophy with Jewish practice.
About the guest:
Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg served as a congregational rabbi for seventeen years. She has worked in the fields of Jewish community relations, Jewish education and Hillel. She has published widely on such topics as feminism, spiritual direction, parenting, social justice and mindfulness from a Jewish perspective and has contributed commentaries to Kol HaNeshama, the Reconstructionist prayer book.
Rabbi Weinberg has taught mindfulness meditation and yoga to rabbis, Jewish professionals and lay people in the context of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. She serves as a spiritual director to a variety of Jewish clergy including students and faculty at HUC-JIR in New York. She is creator and co-leader of the Jewish Mindfulness Teacher Training Program. She is married to Maynard Seider and they have three married children and six grandchildren.
Know her more at: https://www.sheilapeltzweinberg.com/
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Sheila Peltz Weinberg
I really didn't have an external idea of success. I, I, I wasn't like an ambitious child or I don't think I've ever been ambitious or that I've even longed for. To me, success is, is only about values. It's only about holding up the, what is wholesome, what is loving, what is, um, just and healing the places of brokenness.
Uh, that's the only thing I can think of as any success that I would want to participate in.
Narrator
Welcome to making change with your money. A podcast that highlights the stories and strategies of women who experienced a big life transition and overcame challenges as they redefined financial success for themselves.
Now here's your host, Certified Financial Planner, Laura Rotter.
Laura Rotter
I am so excited to have as my guest today, my teacher, Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg.Rabbi Weinberg served as a congregational rabbi for 17 years. And I know her as a teacher of mindfulness meditation to rabbis, Jewish professionals, and lay people with the Institute of Jewish Spirituality.
She's published widely on topics such as feminism, spiritual direction, parenting.social justice and mindfulness from a Jewish perspective. And she's married to Maynard Cedar and they have three married children and six grandchildren. So welcome Sheila to the making change with your money podcast.
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
Thank you. Great to be here.
Laura Rotter
So I always start all my interviews off with the same question, Sheila. And that is,what was money like in your family growing up?
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
Well, my parents were storekeepers, my parents were storekeepers in New York. Actually, my father had hoped to be a doctor, but he ended up becoming, and he, he trained as a pharmacist.
But it ended up going into my grandfather's business, which was floor covering, retail floor covering in New York, and it focused in the Bronx and my mother was in the business and my father was in the business. The business was the center of their lives. The center of their lives and money was very, very important, especially to my mother, who was really the leader.
She loved the business. My father, I think was tremendously disappointed. He would have much rather been a doctor. His friends were doctors. It was a struggle for him, although he did it in. For the money. Money, I suppose. I mean, no, they did it. And my mother was, um, generous in her support of, uh, certain causes, like Hadassah.
Laura Rotter
I'm a Hadassah member.
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
I'm a lifelong Hadassah member. And, but they were, you know, she was very, very, very cautious about spending money. Very cautious. My father, much less so. He bought the latest thing that came up. If it was a color TV, a thing that came out, he got it. And she was like, really? It was very, it loomed large, shall we say?
Well, I have one sister. I had one sister. My parents had two children, my sister, and then they had a son. My sister is 16, was 16 years older than me. So she was born in 1930. And my brother was. Born after that. And he was killed when he was six in a accident on the street. My mother's store, actually, he was six years old.
My sister was 14 and I was born nine months, a year and a half later as my cousin doesn't like me to refer this way, but I was a replacement child.They weren't going to have children. They were old in those days considered old for children, but I was born and my sister passed away about a couple of years ago.
So I grew up mostly as an only child. My sister married when she was 18. And I was home basically as an only child. Wow.
Laura Rotter
Thank you for sharing that family dynamic. So a lot of expectations that maybe you weren't aware of on your shoulders.When you were born and what expectations Sheila, if any, were there around education as you.
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
So I grew up, you know, I was born in 1946, so I went to the local public school. It wasn't any question. At one point, my father was close to a rabbi and they thought they, maybe they should send me to a Jewish day school Ramaz. But they did. My mother thought it would be too Jewish. You know, I may be that Jewish.
It was enough, but not that Jewish. So I went to public school. I did well. I went to junior high. I was in what they call the SPs. That was a special progress. We skipped eighth grade and then it came time for high school. And I was, I had a good enough marks, whatever, to go to a, uh, one of the specialized high schools that you had to have a test for, you had to have a right IQ for something like that, but I had no capacities for music and art.
So that was out. They, they couldn't even consider me going to performing arts, although that would have been a good place for me probably, but that, I'm not sure. Hunter College was all girls. I didn't want to go to an all girls school. So the only one that was left was the Bronx High School of Science.
And I had very little interest in science, actually. But I went to the Bronx High School of Science. And then, you know, as far as a profession or studying for something at that time, there were really three things girls could do. Secretary. I was beyond secretary because I was going to go to college. My sister had gone to college.
I could be a teacher or I could be a nurse and I could not see myself being a nurse because I wasn't that interested in that kind of work. So it was a teacher. That was it. I could be a teacher. That was the only possibility.
Laura Rotter
It's true. It really was very rare for anyone to do anything other than that. My mother was a teacher. My mother in law, while she worked, was a teacher. So I take it you became a teacher?
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
I could have worked in a store, I suppose. They didn't really want me to work in the store. They didn't want me to work in the store that much, although I did, you know, sort of off times. So yeah, I did become a teacher. At one point, it actually occurred to me quite a bit later that I could actually get a Ph.
D. and teach in college. I thought of that, and I was actually enrolled in a program in Israel, because we had made Aliyah, we had emigrated to Israel, in a, um, a program at Hebrew University, and I thought I would become a, uh, professor of, uh, Jewish studies. And live in Israel. That was really my ambitions. That didn't work out.
Laura Rotter
Wait, stop you there. Cause I don't know this. So who emigrated to Israel? Your whole family?
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
No, no, not my whole family. I had been in Israel several times. I was there after I graduated high school. I was only 16. I went for a year. I went in 67. I was married in 66 so that I was, I was under 20 years old.
I was marriedand we volunteered to go in the summer of 67 at the end of the six day war. And then in 72, I already had a child. I was married to the same man, Steve Weinberg. And we made Aliyah,immigrated to Israel in 72. We went through the whole nine yards. My ambition was to, as I say, become a professor in Israel.
And I was part of a program and we were there for a little, through the 73 war and various circumstances, my parents were sick and my husband wanted to leave. I really didn't want to, I was pregnant. I had a young child. It was going to break up the marriage or if I stayed or. Leave and stay with the marriage and the pregnancy and the little child.
So I stayed and the marriage lasted another two years.
Laura Rotter
I'm still curious to back up Sheila, right? You grew up obviously a Jewish family and, but you mentioned how your mother didn't want you to be too Jewish. Where did the Zionism and the strong connection come from?
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
You know, it came from the times that I was living.
My parents made them. Casual choice, again, through this rabbi who wanted me to go to Ramah's, to send me to camp Ramah, it really hooked me big time. The Hebrew, the whole spirituality, Judaism, prayer, even though I wasn't, as a girl, I wasn't allowed to lead prayer. But at that time, I didn't even know that that was an exclusion.
You know, I was allowed to study with the boys and I became absolutely passionate about Jewish studies. And it was all tied up for me with Israel because it was, it was the redemption. It was like, I was born to redeem my brother. Israel was born to redeem the Holocaust. That's how we understood it in those days.
My age, my time. That was it. It was absolute redemption. And I loved Hebrew. I loved Jewish studies and I found a program. I was very active in Jewish youth groups. My mother was like, do your English homework, do your science homework, start with the Jewish homework, start with all that stuff. I went to the JTS, Jewish Theological Seminary, as a teenager to their program.
I went through all the Ramah stages, and even though it was really unusual in 62 for a kid to want to go for a year to Israel, I don't know how they let me go, but they did. I was only 16.
Laura Rotter
I mean, studies have shown that it's Jewish camps, even more than day school, that really Tug at your heartstrings and, and get people emotionally connected. Oh, so thank you for sharing that. I didn't know that background.
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's very deep in me. My son ended up making Aliyah as well when he grew up. The one I was, he was, I was pregnant with him in Israel and he was born in the States. I called him Ezra. Thinking about Ezra returned the exiles back to the homeland.
To that level. And he ended up making Aliyah, but it didn't, he didn't stay. He was there for quite a few years. He was involved in a lot of Israel, Palestine, Israel, Palestinian work and interfaith work and, uh, conflict transformation work.
Laura Rotter
So back to your story. So you, when you were in Israel thought about becoming a professor to teach Jewish studies, were you teaching already?
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
I was teaching, I taught prior to that. I taught in a day school, actually, before we made Aliyah. I taught in a day school. I also was in the Peace Corps for two years prior to that. And we did that as a, it was out of our, I was married at the time and it was part of that of idealism, but it was also a draft deferment.
For my husband in those days, we were in Chile. I taught there and I taught back. We lived in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I taught in a day school and I didn't really love teaching kids that much. That's why I was more like, I thought I would do better with an academic teaching. And I got the idea that I could do that.
But then when I came back from Israel, I was so devastated that I, I went to work for the Jewish Community Relations Councilto do basically Israel community relations. And somewhere along the line, I guess around 1974, 75, well, we came back in 74, 75, 76, I heard that women were being ordained. And I was absolutely blown away.
And I was like, Oh my God, that is what I was supposed to do.
Laura Rotter
What did you imagine a rabbi did at that time? That…
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
I had no idea, I had no rabbi models, I had one friend who was a student at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College that I knew, he was a friend of my husband's, but he was a friend of mine. He was in one of the early classes, and I was doing a lot of reading of Mordecai Kaplan, I was reading Martin Buber, I was reading Heschel, I was doing a lot of my own reading, but I had no real Jewish community, even though I was a member of the synagogue, it wasn't.
Inspiring and the rabbis there weren't interesting to me, but it wasn't a question of thinking about what I would do as a rabbi. It was purely that's who I am. That's what I meant to be. However, I am a mother of two kids. I'm like in my late 20s. I mean, it's like over. How could I possibly do it?
Laura Rotter
And at that point where you were a single mom, you were a single mom at that.
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
Well, it was right around the time that, um, the marriage ended. And then I decided right before that, I decided I was going to actually apply for a Biblical school. What the hell? I went to see the two schools that took women, women at that time, Hebrew Union College and Reconstructionist. My friend who was at the Reconstructionist College, because I really identified with Mordecai Kaplan, I really liked Reconstructionism and I read Kaplan stuff like, and Buber.
So he said to me, you know, Sheila, you could be a rabbi and guess what? We have two women in our class and the smartest person in our class Is one of the women by far. I was like, really? Oh my God. And I went to their graduation. It was in 76. I went to their graduation and Harold Schulweiss, who was a very well known rabbi in California at the time and a reconstructionist gave the graduation address and.
After the, I was still married then at the end of his talk, or the end of the, whatever the ceremony was, I ran up to Shul Weiss, like a crazy person. And I said, Rabbi Shul Weiss, that was such a wonderful talk. I'm going to be a rabbi. I'm going to be a rabbi. He looked at me like, oh, that's nice. You know, like, who is this wackadoodle person?
Laura Rotter
So it, it sounds like it was just an inner knowing, like it wasn't at all a pros and cons. It was just. Knowing that this was the right role for you. How big was the class, by the way, the Reconstructionist rabbinical college? How many? Yeah.
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
I mean, I didn't go right away. It took me a bunch of years. So no, I didn't go immediately.
I had the idea to go and then the divorce. And I realized I really wasn't going to be able to go. Then I was a single parent and then I moved to Philadelphia though. And I started working for Hillel. So I worked for Hillel. I got a job. I had to work.So I got a job for Hillel, which I did for five years in Philadelphia.
Full time.And you know, I was with the kids until they got a little older. And was debating all those five years, met people who were at the college, you know, was involved with Jewish feminism at that time. The Havurah movement had some very important impact influences. Zalman Schachter Shalomi I met, Art Green, Judith Plasko.
I would sort of put the very, very important people for me. Arthur Waskow, we were involved in politics and Jewish politics. That was a very heady time. And In the end, I decided I would do it, you know, I would just do it. My mother was really opposed to it. She was like, Sheila. You'll never find a husband if you become a rabbi.
She thought it was a ridiculous idea. She wasn't in favor of my divorce either. And so
Laura Rotter
Sheila, why did you do it? Was it again, this intuitive voice? Because everything you described, you were already immersed in the, in the culture and it sounds like making a change or involved in the conversations from everything you've just mentioned.
And so why the actual need to. Dunny, what was that about?
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
Well, part of it was, it's interesting because my boss that time at, at Hillel, Sheila, you should go get a MSW. So part of it was a feminist thing. Part of it was if, I remember saying to myself, if there are going to be women rabbis now for the first time in history, dammit, I'm going to be one.
Just like that. Part of it was actually financial. I, I had two kids. I wasn't getting a lot of support from their father. We had a lot of tension at the beginning. We're now very friendly, but in those days it was tense and. I didn't have the hell I was going to get them through college and this and that.
And I knew rabbis, these male rabbis. I didn't realize the bulk male and women and female rabbis. But at any case, I thought it'd be a good investment. And I was paid very little at Hillel with what I was doing. I was doing a lot and not paying very much. So there was that element, but. It took me a long time and there was a period of time in those years where I, cause I didn't start until 82.
So if I first thought about in 76, I didn't get there till 82. And, but I did have friends who encouraged me who were already like the smartest woman in that class became a very good friend of mine and she was supportive. And I don't know when it came right down to it, I said, okay, you know what? I'm going to do it for one year.
I couldn't imagine doing it for more than one year. I'm going to do it for one year and let's see if I can, I can just. What happens after that? And I had, I was in a situation in Hillel where I could hire myself for a part time job that she paid fairly decently. And my mother helped out a little bit.
Laura Rotter
Like, did you actually enjoy the studies?
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
No, not that much. It was very, very, very difficult. The, there was very little spirituality. I remember I came with a lot of spiritual searching and connection and longing. And at that time, the reconstructionist rabbinical college was, it was all about this, this, this, this.
Now, luckily I had a good background. So I said, I lived in Israel. I had done a lot of stuff on my Hebrew was good. I didn't need as much, you know, from them, but the teachers were almost all men. I had one really wonderful woman teacher and I had Art Green as a teacher, which was very significant. One course, the first course he ever taught, which was very significant.
And I had a few teachers that were good. Sid Schwartz was a wonderful teacher. He was a, you probably know him, Sid Schwartz. He's done a lot of work in the Jewish world. Reconstructionist. But I also had teachers that were very tight andIt did not feel like a supportive environment for me. I had other places, and I was working, and I had the kids, and I was trying to date, you know, and I had all my women's groups and stuff that I was doing and my politics.
So I had a lot going on. So it wasn't like the school was like that, you know, like one of my teachers wrote it. I'll never forget this because he wrote this comment on my grades. He said, Sheila's not living up to her potential. You know, that doesn't, he should know what my life was like. I spent one year, they let me get out in four years instead of five or six because I, because my Hebrew was, but one year I took my kids to Israel for the year and that was a great year.
We, we rented our place. My father was very supportive. My father, interestingly enough, never liked my ex husband, was very supportive of my divorce. And my father actually bought me a house, a small row house in Philadelphia, which made my life possible, really. And then he died. My mother did not approve of any of this.
And then my father died. So I was divorced. My father supported me and he died. So he supported the divorce and the single parenting and even the rap, I think he thought was, I think he thought was okay, but he was very withdrawn. He wasn't, it wasn't a motive or, you know, he was probably very depressed as it turns out.
At any case, I don't know.
Laura Rotter
Was that the years that while you were in rabbinical school?
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
He passed away while you were in the way before. This was right after my divorce.It was right after my divorce when I, uh, first moved to Philadelphia and after I moved there. And, but the having the house was an enormous support to me.
Life, huge, incredible. I mean, I mean, I had a You know, take care of it and all of that, but still it was amazing. And I sent my kids to day school and they, and we got scholarships and loans and blah, blah, blah. But I wanted them to both to go to day school and they did.And then we went to Israel for a year that was 84, 85, and we rented a place.
That was an amazing, amazing, incredible year, and I had fantastic teachers. I had some fantastic superstar teachers, Moshe Greenberg, I had Nechama Leibovitz, Yehuda Amichai.
Laura Rotter
Oh my God. For those of you listening who don't know, these are big, well known names in Jewish academic study world. Wow. And so that was one of the four years of rabbinical school.
And were you working while you were?
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
Not in Israel. Not in Israel. I didn't work in Israel. And then when I came back from Israel, I did my fourth and fifth year together, and then I got a pulpit. That was amazing. I actually had a real pulpit. The rabbi had left and it was a kind of a mess and they hired me halftime.
And although I was their only rabbi and it was a conservative synagogue. So I was doing fourth year and fifth year rabbinical school. And I had this pulpit. So I used to do whatever it was I learned in school. I used to give those as sermons. And I remember one of the congregants saying to me, you know, Sheila, your sermons, they don't really have much to do with it.
They're so abstract, they're so, so yeah, I don't have time to like. do my work for school and then make up another sermon for you guys. But they hired me after that anyway, as their rabbi. And I was there for another three years.
Laura Rotter
Sheila, was that a risk for them at that time to hire? I mean, it sounds.
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
Desperate. Yeah, they were desperate. It was, you know, the summer, and they didn't have anybody. They had to have somebody.
Laura Rotter
So, in your description of the rabbinical school, and I also have been a member of a Reconstructionist synagogue for, God, it's like, it's a long time. I joined 1989, and there, too, there was a lot of, um, big shift from what was a very intellectual, everything was from the head and the clergy that's responsible for me joining really over this long period of time shifted it to be more spiritual.
And so if you could talk about your journey, because I know you post your role as a pulpit rabbi, how did that come about?
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
Okay. Well, okay. I started You know, with, with the spirituality and then it was kind of sucked out of me in, uh, rabbinical school to some degree, although, I mean, I've written about this, I, one of the things I did to sort of cope with my life, which was quite challenging was I drank, I drank and, uh, I mean, I didn't do drugs except pot, but I did do alcohol and, uh, You know, sort of kept me together for a while until it stopped working.
And I realized this was really a problem. This was not a good thing. Even though my friends were all like, Oh, Sheila, you know, it's not really a problem. I mean, you're so, you know, high functioning. And even the guys I dated didn't really see it, but I knew. And then I got to a point when I started this, uh, after my first full year in pulpit.
And I had a few accidents. I fell a couple of times and, you know, I would go to the bar mitzvah at the synagogue and the bartender would say, well, it'll be rabbi, you know, and I would always get the expensive stuff at the bar mitzvahs because I could drink cheap wine at home. And, you know, my daughter was getting very, a little suspicious of me, especially pot smoking, cause she was like 16, you know, and I was trying to hide that from her.
But she knew, and she was getting, the kids were getting all these things. I mean, my son was 12, my daughter was 16. She was getting all these, you know, lessons in school about drugs and alcohol. And one thing after another, in any case, I reached a point where I knew that, um, I had a friend who was another rabbi, actually, who decided to stop smoking pot.
And she gave me all her papers, and I also knew that she had gotten help. And. There was a moment when I got, I told her that I needed help and she understood and sent me to a women in recovery place and I met this amazing woman who became my sponsor, Grace, black woman, Christian at the time when she became a Muslim, and she was an amazing spirit and I started going to AA meetings.
I stopped drinking and started going to AA meetings. And I was a rabbi at the synagogue at this point, and I found in a renewed, I mean it was there for me, but a completely renewed sense of spiritual life, on a profound level. But don't forget, I had also hung out with Zalman in art, Lynn Gottlieb was a friend of mine back in the early days, but Zalman's scene was pretty druggie.
In the early days, so I really had to withdraw from a lot of that world. I had to withdraw from a fair amount of worlds thatWere sort of spiritual in that way, but not sober because my dedication was to a sober spirituality. And so that lasted, you know,through that period of time. And then I had this very profound emotional experience where I met, I reconnected to a, a man that I was.
I was in love with me when we were in high school and he was an amazing guy. And, uh, we, we fell in love again. And, uh, and then he was diagnosed with cancer and I was with him through his illness and death. And his death was devastating, but I stayed sober. And, but I realized at that time I needed to do something else.
My daughter was going to college and my son was very unhappy at the day school in Philadelphia. And my friends from my women's circles told me there was an opening in Amherst, Massachusetts for a rabbi. And that synagogue had never had a full time rabbi. See, the synagogue I was in was an established conservative synagogue.
I wasn't really a fit. I didn't buy into their pack, their, you know, no intermarriage. I didn't buy into a lot of their things, but, you know, I was able to do it because I had a conservative background and, you know, I cared about the people and I did the rabbi thing, but. To be the first rabbi and go as myself to the new pulpit in Massachusetts.
So I went up there and they hired me Amherst, Massachusetts, and we moved up there and Amherst, Massachusetts. I mean, I've told this story, but the head of the search committee was a man named Ted Slovin, beloved, dear man. He was also on the board of Insight Meditation Society, which was the Buddhist center that was only less than an hour away.
And it was also an hour from Kripalu, the yoga center. Now I was already into yoga to some degree, and I had been to Kripalu. He said, you know, this synagogue, Jewish community of Amherst is midway between two of the premier spiritual centers. for Palu and Insight Meditation, Rabbi. Now, if you say this to a normal rabbi, they're going to say, what?
But to Mickey, you know, and Amherst is a very, very crunchy place, very progressive, very crunchy, and. You know, I could go, I could be myself pretty much. I could be myself. I mean, it was, it was a startup in a lot of ways. And then shortly after that, the next year or two, I became very close to our sister Paula Green.
Who has had a strong Buddhist connection, interestingly enough, and I ended up going to my first 10 day retreat at Insight Meditation Society. And I realized, oh my god, this, I could do this in Jewish.And then I met Sylvia, because most of the Jews there were not interested in Jewish, except for Sylvia Borstein.
Laura Rotter
I mean, as I listened to you, Sheila, one could say that, right, these karmic things or these Bashir things happen to you, but, and it's really because.You've listened to yourself and what you're drawn to, even with all the responsibilities that you had. It's not like you could just pick up and go wherever you wanted.
You had children, you had, and yet you, by being true to yourself, you put yourself in a position to be in the right place at the right time or meet the right people. Is that how you
experienced it?
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
I, I think so. I think so. I think I was... I mean, I feel I've been guided every way, every step of the way. And sometimes I listened more quickly to the guidance and sometimes, you know, I didn't.
Coming to Amherst was amazing after, you know, when I was in AA in Amherst and in AA in Amherst, I met a guy who was a Catholic, Italian Catholic, and. After a couple of years, I said, you know, I'd really like to meet somebody. And my mother was right. Nobody wanted to date a rabbi. And I said, I didn't, it needs to be a Jewish guy, you know, that's willing to date a rabbi.
And this guy said, you know, I think I know somebody. I said, yeah, what's the matter with him? Nothing. He's actually a lovely guy. So that's, this guy fixed me up with Maynard.
Laura Rotter
And Maynard was an Amherst.
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
Maynard was, Maynard lived in North Adams, which was about an hour and 20 minutes away,but you know, he was willing to come, we met back and forth and he was so different from anybody I'd ever known.
And he wasn't, I mean, he's Jewish, definitely Jewish. His mother was born in Lithuania, but he had not been to shul in 30 years. He started coming to shul Friday nights. He said, I'll come just to see you because I really enjoy watching you.And he was completely and totally supportive of me being a rabbi and doing my thing and he had really, really good values, but I still was confused.
So I introduced him to some of my friends, my women friends, my lesbian women friends who weren't too crazy about men to start with. I said, what do you think of this guy? He said, this guy's okay. This guy's really good. This guy's really okay. That took me a while. And my son was like, are you sure he's Jewish? My son.
Laura Rotter
You don't come across that many Maynards.
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
No, and he has an 11 year old son too. So, and my son was at that time 16 and my daughter was 21. She was already almost graduating college.
Laura Rotter
So how did you make the decision to, to transition from being a pulpit rabbi?
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
That was very, very, very hard. That was very hard.
I used to feel, I mean, I used, I did a lot of retreats for myself. All my time off, I went to IMS. I went to Spirit Rock. I, I went to England for a period of time to a retreat there. You know, I was very serious. I did there. Training programs, spirit rocks training, because there was no Jewish meditation. You had to learn it from the Buddhists, but all the time I was translating, translating, we started a group in the synagogue, a meditation minion in the morning at the synagogue.
Although people resisted that we didn't even have a morning mini and a regular morning mini. And you're going to start a meditation. I said, stop the minion. Go ahead. So then we got two minutes in the show. So that was okay. I did a lot of really. Wild things. And all right. When my son graduated college, I thought to myself, you know, I am a free person.
I did my thing with my kids. That was a big moment for me. He was like 23 when he graduated college or something like that. He wasn't like, and I was doing the retreats. I was doing the retreats at Elan Chayim with Sylvia and then Jeff Roth. And, and we started the Institute. I started going to meetings.
Our first meeting was in 96 and our first program was in 2000. But we were doing programs. I was already teaching at, and I knew that was very fulfilling work. And I knew that I was doing it. There wasn't like a lot of people doing thisand the synagogue started getting, feeling more and more like a burden.
Less and less like it was my calling. And I, I remember being, I think it was being at the first institute cohort of the rabbis, first rabbis. And I was an assistant teacher. Sylvia was a mindfulness teacher. I was an assistant teacher. Art was there, Jonathan Oman. Shefa Gold was also an assistant and Michael Strassfeld was an assistant.
So I was in a good company as adjuncts, whatever they called us. And I remember seeing these younger rabbis. And at one point they were talking, and they really wanted to do pulpit work. They had like a lot of energy for it, and I was like, you know? There are a lot of other people that would love to do this job.
That was one thing. The other thing was, I guess I must have shared with some of the teachers where I was at, and Shefa, who's inimitable, speaks her truth. She said, Sheila, you know, if you're meant to do something and you don't do it, It festers. It can be very dangerous. Oh, you remember that. Scared me to pieces.
And I was married. And as my husband says, I had health care. And I got to a point where I said to myself, so, I mean, there is a financial piece to this. I said, I know I'm not going to be homeless. And I know I'm not going to be hungry. I didn't have a job at IJS. All they had to offer me were like gigs, paid for the gigs.
It was not a job and I had to give up, you know, a nice secure. It wasn't what the rabbi, male rabbis after me got by any stretch of the imagination, thank you very much, much less, but nonetheless, it was for me a nice salary and between my husband who was supportive and I was miserable, I was, I was like, Nancy, I used to talk to Nancy about it and she was, Nancy and Rachel, and finally I just decided I was, I don't know what tipped me over.
I just, I just knew I was going to let go and let God.
Laura Rotter
Oh, I love the way you say that. It's a tough life, the life of a pulpit rabbi.
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
I did it for 17 years. You know, I am not really a tremendously extroverted person.I may seem that way, but I don't, it was always like a push to be that extroverted. Teaching meditation was much more in alignment with mine.
Laura Rotter
So interesting you say that, that way. First of all, hearing, was it true the first time you did a silent meditation retreat was the 10 day retreat? more you had done shorter because, you know, I, I was privileged to be involved with one you recently led that was, you know, really less than four days, which feels it's like when you go on vacation, by the time you're settling in, you're getting ready to leave.
But everybody says to me, Oh my God, how are you silent for that long? And it's like, I love being silent. Besides the fact that it's not particularly silent. There's a very, there's a lot of noises.
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
Yes. And people said to this, you know, you're going to bring silence to the Jews. They'll never sit still. They'll never be quiet. What are you talking about? You're crazy. And they also said, this is traits. It's Buddhism. You know, you're bringing Buddhism. It's a Goyish. It's trade. So we had to listen to both of that.
And, uh, but. Our first retreat that we did with rabbis at El Ha'im, or no, it wasn't El Ha'im, it was actually the Barry Center for Buddhist Studies. The very first retreat, we just invited our friends. You know, nobody else would call us, but we had some good friends, you know, and Rachel. Oh my God, Rachel Cowan.
I miss her so desperately. She was such an angel and such a wise, loving human. And she was so supportive to me and to Nancy. And Nancy, oh my God, such a gift. You know, she's still my really closest beloved friend and such a wise, wise woman. So I was very fortunate. And Sylvia, you know, and I had those three women in my life, Rachel, Nancy, and Sylvia.
And my feeling was whatever they tell me to do, I'm willing to do it. They're channeling something, you know, so they were my guides.
Laura Rotter
So again, you listened to your inner voice and made a transition. I'm wondering now, Sheila, because I, I, I know you've described, you know, you're politically involved. Where are you being called to now with everything that's going on in our world, or are you just sitting with it?
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
No, I'm not totally sitting with it. You know, what I do in, you know, I'm, that was. Possibly the last retreat I plan to lead. I, I'm really not called to be leading retreats at this stage of my life. I did two this summer. It was a lot. I do a lot of spiritual one on one work. So I do a lot of support around rabbis in the field and rabbinical students.
I also work with faculty in the rabbinical school. So that's one thing that I do that feels important. It feels I have the energy and capacity to do it and people need support now more than ever. I even volunteered to support a new rabbi. You know, through the Reconstructionists andsomebody called me, he's married to a student rabbi in Israel with HUC, you know, things like that.
In 2014, I was in Israel with the Reconstructionists. In fact, Les was on that trip. And I, no, I don't think he did the encounter trip. We did the encounter trip where we... It was, the war was going on. It was the Gaza war. We were in shelters and everything else. Les was there. And I think with their son, their middle son.
And anyway,I was, I was overwhelmed when I met the Palestinians at that point with their pain. And, and their anger and their hurt. I had never really confronted that, that closely. And then in 2018, as I mentioned, Paula Green was involved with a group called Combatants for Peace. And Rachel also was, she knew, we knew the guy who, uh, Steve Apcon, if you know him, he's up in your neighborhood.
He was involved in making that film, Disturbing the Peace. So Maynard agreed with, he didn't want to go in 2014, Maynard, but in 2018, he went with me on the Combatants for Peace trip. And, uh, we spent a lot of time meeting Palestinians and Israelis too. It was a dual narrative trip. It was a very powerful trip.
We came back and we started to teach and show slides and show people about combatantsand we, we started a group. And we brought two of the combatants, an Israeli and a Palestinian. These are former Israeli soldiers, former Palestinian fighters who meet, work together, and they work together on the occupation.
I mean, I've known that the occupation is unjust and unsustainable for forever. I've known that. But the combatants are working together. I was just tremendously moved by them. So then we had the COVID business, but we, we continued to meet. We went to the joint memorial that they've done with the bereaved parents.
And then we organized our own trip. Which was a year ago, right before the elections. And it was a mostly Philly people. Several of the people that were on that retreat with us and went, and it was amazing, and then we came back and then the year, you know, so we're still meeting. We had a meeting last night.
We had hoped to bring combatants to Philly. We want to support them. It feels like it's, it's a small group, but it represents. The depths of my heart. So I, Maynard and I together, uh, that, and then we have a powerful meditation group that I'm part of every Tuesday, and that's a place for people to heal and rest and feel safe.
You know, it's not political, but those, you know, right. I send a sign things that I feel are appropriate. I'm not like out in the streets. I, I don't. I'm not a Jewish Voice for Peace person. I'm not an anti Zionist. I feel tremendous pain for what's going on now. And, you know, just offer my prayers for peace, that's it.
Laura Rotter
Your prayers and your feet on the ground and your voice. I did see, I, I, Combatants for Peace actually was running. I'm sure they've canceled it. I think in November was a, a trip. Israel. And I, I saw, you know, you were mentioned as one of the people.
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
That's right. We were like, yeah, that's right. A January ago.
I don't think it was ago. We were planning to do a trip next October, 2024. God knows.
Laura Rotter
So Sheila, as we come to the end of our conversation, I'm wondering, did you have an idea in your mind when you were younger of what success was and if you did, how has that shifted?
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
Well, the big, my mother had an idea of success.
I was marrying a, I was sort of as a dentist and living in an island. I really didn't have an external idea of success. I, I, I wasn't like an ambitious child, or I don't think I've ever been ambitious or that I've even law enforce. To me, success is, is only about values. It's only about holding up the what is wholesome, what is loving, what is just, and healing the places of brokenness.
Uh, that's the only thing I can think of as any success that I would wanna participate in.
Laura Rotter
Well, that, that's a big ask. And, you know, we, lo alecha ham lechal igmor, right? Like we do, we do what we can just reading about, you know, Norman Fisher saying there's sort of the contingent, if you will, compassion, right?
Like we wake up and we, we do our practices to open ourselves to compassion and, and those practices, like. Having meetings for combatants for peace, doing our part are necessary, and they're only possible through being able to tap into the greater compassion, which, you know, sometimes we can, and sometimes we can.
And if all we do is tap into the greater compassion, then nothing gets done and nothing changes on the ground. So they're both.
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
They're both necessary. Absolute and relative.
Laura Rotter
Yes. Thank you. This has really been a pleasure, Sheila. Thank you so much for agreeing to be my guest and for sharing your story.
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
You're very welcome and blessings to you.
Laura Rotter
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg. Some takeaways I'd like to share. Hold on to your dreams, even when they are delayed. Sheila described a deep knowing that she was meant to become a rabbi.However, as a single mom, she needed to work and took a job working for Hillel on a college campus instead.
Though it took six years from the time she decided to become a rabbi until she actually enrolled in rabbinical school, she eventually did it while continuing her work with Hillel part time. My second takeaway, recognize when you need help and actually reach out and get the help you need.Sheila had begun drinking to cope with the stress in her life.
She recognized that her relationship with alcohol had gotten out of control. It had kept her together for a while. Until it stopped working, she started to go to AA meetings and found that an unexpected benefit was a completely renewed sense of spiritual life on a profound level.My last takeaway, be open to guidance from the universe.
Sheila's friends from her women's circle told her about an opening for a rabbi in Amherst, Massachusetts. The head of the search committee of that synagogue pointed out to her that the Jewish community of Amherst is midway between two of the premier spiritual centers,Kripalu and Insight Meditation.To any other candidate, this information would have meant nothing.
So Sheila, this information was fantastic and was the beginning of her journey to the next stage of her life, integrating Buddhism with Jewish practice. Are you enjoying this podcast? Please don't forget to subscribe so you won't miss next week's episode. And if you love the show, please leave a rating and a review and it'll help other women.
Like you to find it, and I would so greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Narrator
Thanks for listening to Making Change with your Money Certified Financial Planner, Laura Rotter specializes in helping people just like you organized, clarify, and invest their money in order to support a life of purpose and meaning. Go to www. trueabundanceadvisors. com forward slash workbook for a free resource to help you on your journey.
Disclaimer, please remember that the information shared by this podcast does not constitute accounting, legal, tax, investment, or financial advice. It's for information purposes only. You should seek appropriate professional advice for your specific information.