
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
Author, Poet, Rabbi & Teacher
Bio

Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg served as a congregational rabbi for seventeen years. She has also 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.
Reviews
I am loving reading this book. It fills me with joy in its beauty and subtle dharma. God is there with a child eating macaroni or in the flight over Niagara Falls. The poems are so clear, lovely and evocative.
Rabbi Rachel Cowan,
author of Wise Aging: Living with Joy, Resilience and Spirit
With honesty, humor, and gentleness, Sheila Weinberg invites us to join in examining our lives. Drawing on Jewish and Buddhist teachings, life stories, and conversations with her grandchildren, she offers a very timely guide to enriching the spiritual, political, and personal dimensions of our experience.
Martha Ackelsberg,
William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor emerita of Government
Smith College
A prescient and persuasively timely collection, God Loves the Stranger inspires and challenges us to deepen our spiritual sensibility as we act for radical justice in our country and our world. Weinberg embodies and expresses a profoundly honest, clear, personal and moving call to wholeness, love and justice.
Rabbi Nancy Flam,
Institute for Jewish Spirituality
Senior Program Director
This book is like taking a contemplative stroll with a wise teacher who occasionally shares a story, a poem, a laugh, a prayer, a psalm along the way. Each page whispers to us “wake up” and embrace the stranger within and around us.
Rev. Larry Peers,
Unitarian Universalist minister
This lovely book comes along at just the right moment. The author has much wisdom to share for these difficult times about how to connect embracing the stranger within----our fears, vulnerabilities, and self-deceptions----with welcoming strangers without, whether they be those near to us or far away.
Judith Plaskow,
Professor Emerita of Religious Studies at Manhattan College
“Ordinary” moments----unintentionally saying something unkind or calming a hungry child----become extraordinary when Rabbi Weinberg tunes her heart to meditation and her pen to gentle eloquence. An excellent companion for our own ordinary/extraordinary moments.
Rabbi Arthur Waskow,
author of Godwrestling---Round 2
Most of us long for a friend who knows us well and loves us anyway, a companion who can listen deeply and offer insightful responses, and can double up with laughter over the delicious absurdities of her, and our humanness. Sheila Weinberg is that friend; God Loves the Stranger reveals why she is a beloved mindfulness teacher and trusted Spiritual Director. This rich and courageous collection invites us to both imagine and inhabit a world where we are no longer strangers to ourselves or to one another.
Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, PhD., editor of The Open Door Haggadah and Chapters of the Heart: Jewish Women Sharing the Torah of Our Lives.
News & Events
7-9 Dec 2018
HaMakom UK
Silent meditation retreat
(during Hanukkah)
7-9 Dec 2018
13- 16 Dec 2018
13- 16 Dec 2018
Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health
Stockbridge, MA
Deep Calls to Deep - Shabbat Yoga and Mindfulness retreat
With Rabbis Myriam Klotz and Rachel Timoner
Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health
Stockbridge, MA
Deep Calls to Deep - Shabbat Yoga and Mindfulness retreat
With Rabbis Myriam Klotz and Rachel Timoner
19- 20 Jan 2019
Leo Baeck Temple
1300 North Sepulveda blvd Los Angeles 90049
Jewish Meditation Retreat
With Rabbi Benjamin Ross
Beginning:
3 Feb 2019
Four Week Prayer Project Online:
Receiving and Giving Love
1- 3 March 2019
Adat Shalom
Bethesda, MD
Scholar-in-Residence
15 April 2019
Kol Tzedek
Philadelphia, PA
Preparing for Passover- Inner and Outer Liberation
7-9 pm
News & Events
19- 20 Jan 2019
Leo Baeck Temple
1300 North Sepulveda blvd Los Angeles 90049
Jewish Meditation Retreat
With Rabbi Benjamin Ross
Beginning:
3 Feb 2019
Four Week Prayer Project Online:
Receiving and Giving Love
1- 3 March 2019
Adat Shalom
Bethesda, MD
Scholar-in-Residence
14 April 2019
Kol Tzedek
Philadelphia, PA
Preparing for Passover- Inner and Outer Liberation
10- 12 pm
3- 5 May 2019
Shabbaton in Chicago area
Contact Rabbi Lisa Bellows for more information:
18- 25 August 2018
Jewish Meditation Retreat with the Awakened Heart Project
Santa Sabina Center in San Rafael, California
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