After 23 years at the helm of Congregation Beth Shalom, a small Reform synagogue in Carmichael outside Sacramento, Rabbi Nancy Wechsler is hanging up her guitar.<\/p>\n
Wechsler, a Sacramento native, became the synagogue\u2019s rabbi and cantorial soloist in 2003, filling the sanctuary with music \u2014 and not always doing it solo. Every third Friday evening, Wechsler leads \u201cShabbat with a Beat,\u201d alongside a band of congregants playing instruments, a lively acoustic Kabbalat Shabbat service with melodies often inspired by that week\u2019s parashah.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am a product of Jewish summer camps,\u201d Wechsler told J. \u201cI was a song leader at what had been Camp Swig and became Camp Newman, and participatory Jewish music is so important to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Music will be part of the June 7 community celebration honoring Wechsler on her retirement. The dinner will be held at Shangri-La Restaurant in Fair Oaks. Wechsler\u2019s former Hebrew teacher and a founding member of CBS, now 104, will be one of the featured speakers.<\/p>\n
In July, the congregation of some 150 households will welcome its new rabbi, Michael Feshbach<\/a>, who has led a Reform congregation in New Jersey since 2022. Ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Feshbach also serves as a senior rabbinic fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute<\/a> of Jerusalem, where Wechsler also studies every summer.<\/p>\n The rabbinical search took a year \u2014 and some fundraising, Bob Bennett, a member of CBS for 22 years and a past president of the synagogue, told J.<\/p>\n \u201cPart of our biggest expense is the rabbi\u2019s salary and benefits,\u201d Bennett said. \u201cAttracting a new rabbi became more costly than the synagogue initially budgeted for. We had a number of people turn us down, so we had to just bite the bullet and say we\u2019ll raise the money somehow.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Wechsler, 67, said she\u2019s loved being CBS\u2019s rabbi, but with her children grown and living away from Sacramento, she feels now is the right time to retire and try something new.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI feel that I have completed what I came here to do, which was to be part of a participatory, very friendly, heimish [homey in Yiddish], lovely singing, Jewishly learned congregation,\u201d Wechsler said.<\/p>\n Among Wechsler\u2019s achievements at CBS, she established a monthly Rosh Chodesh program for women to mark the beginning of each new month and a Mussar program, which offers ethical and spiritual learning for adults.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been able to really facilitate and offer my passions, which are Mussar and Kabbalah and music, and I feel that I\u2019ve been able to create a consciousness around that, and I feel delighted and happy,\u201d Wechsler said.<\/p>\n Social justice work and interfaith community building have been among her biggest achievements at CBS. Wechsler is a longtime member of the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, a monthly program that brings Jewish and Muslim women together to exchange rituals and food and discuss the commonalities of their faiths. She\u2019s also created and supported many interfaith programs, including the Sacramento interfaith freedom seder, Thanksgiving gatherings and teen programs.<\/p>\n \u201cHer spiritual depth, it\u2019s a commitment to everyone\u2019s spirituality, whether or not you\u2019re Jewish,\u201d Bennett said of Wechsler.\u00a0<\/p>\n One reason Wechsler and her family returned to Sacramento from her former congregation in Ontario in 2003 was to be closer to Wechsler\u2019s parents. After her mother\u2019s passing in September of 2025, Wechsler found herself getting call after call from Jewish and non-Jewish community members who were sick and in need of pastoral care.<\/p>\n \u201cIt felt like I had become seasoned enough to be with people in those ways, and so the idea of diving into that and studying for an intensive year of chaplaincy seemed like a good thing to try out,\u201d Wechsler said.\u00a0<\/p>\n This summer, she and her husband will relocate to the Bay Area for her to begin a chaplaincy training program at Sutter Health in San Francisco, supporting people of all faiths.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an opportunity to learn how to accompany people,\u201d Wechsler said. \u201cNot fix them, but accompany them in different religious modalities.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n J. covers our community better than any other source and provides news you can’t find elsewhere. Support local Jewish journalism and give to J. today. Your donation will help J. survive and thrive!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After 23 years at the helm of Congregation Beth Shalom, a small Reform synagogue in Carmichael outside Sacramento,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[9824,137963,8523,121,123,122],"class_list":["post-333194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-carmichael","tag-congregation-beth-shalom","tag-retirement","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}