Contributor

Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg

Senior Teacher, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

Rabbi Weinberg has served in multiple capacities in the Jewish community, including Hillel director, day school teacher and community relations professional. She is a 1986 graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and has served as a congregational rabbi for 17 years, including 13 years at the Jewish Community of Amherst.

In the last 23 years Rabbi Weinberg has studied mindfulness. She has introduced meditation into the Jewish world as a form that can enliven and illuminate Jewish practice, ideas and community.

She teaches mindfulness meditation and yoga in a Jewish idiom to lay persons, rabbis, cantors and other Jewish professionals and is a senior teacher and director of community outreach of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, a retreat based program for Jewish leaders. She also serves as a spiritual director to rabbis, cantors and educators across the USA. She is developer and co-director of the Jewish Mindfulness Teachers’ Training.

Weinberg has written extensively on a variety of subjects including Jewish spirituality, social justice, feminism and parenting. She is a major contributor to the Kol Haneshamah prayer book series. Her CD, "Preparing the Heart: Meditation for Jewish Spiritual Practice" integrates Jewish sacred text and meditation. Her first book, "Surprisingly Happy: An Atypical Religious Memoir," was published in 2010.

Rabbi Weinberg is married to Maynard Seider. She is mom to Abby and Ezra, step-mom to Aaron and mom-in-law to Nathan, Olivia and Erin. She is grandma to Hadassah Tikvah, Yehuda Meir, Noah Teeple, Lailah Teeple and Benjamin Joly.

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