Updated at 4 p.m.
After 23 years at the helm of Congregation Beth Shalom, a small Reform synagogue in Carmichael outside Sacramento, Rabbi Nancy Wechsler is stepping down from its bimah, though she’ll never hang up her guitar.
Wechsler, a Sacramento native, became the synagogue’s rabbi and cantorial soloist in 2003, filling the sanctuary with music — and not always doing it solo. Every third Friday evening, Wechsler has been leading “Shabbat with a Beat,” alongside a band of congregants playing instruments, a lively acoustic Kabbalat Shabbat service with melodies often inspired by that week’s parashah.
“I am a product of Jewish summer camps,” Wechsler told J. “I was a song leader at what had been Camp Swig and became Camp Newman, and participatory Jewish music is so important to me.”
Music will be part of the June 7 community celebration honoring Wechsler on her retirement. The dinner will take place at Shangri-La Restaurant in Fair Oaks. Wechsler’s former Hebrew teacher and a founding member of Beth Shalom, who is now 104, will be one of the featured speakers.
In July, the congregation of some 150 households will welcome its new rabbi, Michael Feshbach, 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 of Jerusalem, where Wechsler also studies every summer.
The rabbinical search took a year — and some fundraising, Bob Bennett, a member of Beth Shalom for 22 years and a past president of the synagogue, told J.
“Part of our biggest expense is the rabbi’s salary and benefits,” Bennett said. “Attracting 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’ll raise the money somehow.”
Wechsler, 67, said she’s loved serving as Beth Shalom’s rabbi, but with her children grown and living away from Sacramento, she feels now is the right time to retire and try something new.
“I 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,” Wechsler said.
Among Wechsler’s achievements at Beth Shalom, 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.
“I’ve been able to really facilitate and offer my passions, which are Mussar and Kabbalah and music, and I feel that I’ve been able to create a consciousness around that, and I feel delighted and happy,” Wechsler said.
Social justice work and interfaith community building have been among her biggest achievements at Beth Shalom. 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’s also created and supported many interfaith programs, including the Sacramento interfaith freedom seder, Thanksgiving gatherings and teen programs.
“Her spiritual depth, it’s a commitment to everyone’s spirituality, whether or not you’re Jewish,” Bennett said of Wechsler.
One reason Wechsler and her family returned to Sacramento from her former congregation in Ontario in 2003 was to be closer to Wechsler’s parents. After her mother’s passing in September 2025, Wechsler found herself getting call after call from Jewish and non-Jewish community members who were sick and in need of pastoral care.
“It 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,” Wechsler said.
This summer, she will relocate to the Bay Area to begin a chaplaincy training program at Sutter Health in San Francisco, supporting people of all faiths.
“It’s an opportunity to learn how to accompany people,” Wechsler said. “Not fix them, but accompany them in different religious modalities.”