Rabbi Neal Weinberg It was a chance meeting that set Rabbi Neal Weinberg onto his career path. He needed a haircut for a job interview on the East Coast, where Weinberg did not want to go. The legendary Rabbi Zvi Dershowitz decided to get a haircut at the same time at the same barber. While waiting the two men struck up a conversation, and Rabbi Dershowitz told him about a job opening at the University of Judaism leading their new conversion program. That was 1986. He got the job. (Prior to joining the University, he was the associate rabbi at Kehillat Israel, Pacific Palisades from 1975 to 1980, when he founded the Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue.)
In 2005, Weinberg and his Persian Jewish wife, Miri, co-founded Judaism By Choice, Inc. (JBC), a rethinking of conventional conversion programs. It’s “an interdenominational program for Jews who want to learn more about their heritage as well as for non-Jews interested in learning about Judaism.” It’s different from other conversion programs, he said. “We are not Conservative, Reform or Reconstructionist. It’s interdenominational. We teach about Judaism, about Orthodox and all others.” It was, he explained, “trying to provide more kinds of programming for all students.”
To start, JBC hosted monthly Shabbat dinners at various synagogues, Havdalah social evenings and Shabbat morning learning services at Conservative and Reform synagogues. But in 2009, Weinberg said, “the university decided to change the program and classes I had created.” His students urged him to continue what he had invented, and the rabbi agreed. So JBC began to offer its own classes at various Conservative and Reform synagogues, among them, Temple of the Arts, Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Beth Am and Mishkon Tephilo.
Asked how he would define success, the rabbi said, “It’s not just about numbers.” Instead, he said, “it is about those who have converted to Judaism, that they are knowledgeable, observant Jews. These people chose, and they love, Judaism.” Or, to put it another way, “I never have heard of a convert to Judaism who is an antisemite or anti-Zionist.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Rabbi Weinberg doesn’t have a typical student. “Everybody is different,” he said. Recently, Rabbi Weinberg had dinner at an Orthodox home. He sat near an Orthodox rabbi who told him he once had taken the class while dating a non-Jewish woman. The Orthodox rabbi said the class was a catalyst for breaking up the couple and restoring him to his birth religion.
But the rabbinate was not his first choice of career. While he grew up in Cheviot Hills in a conventional Conservative home, he wasn’t drawn to Judaism. Instead, while attending Hamilton High School and USC, he was a budding composer with Broadway as his goal.
But when he was a junior at the USC School of Music, he took a summer trip sponsored by the United Jewish Appeal. “We visited death camps in Germany and Austria so we could understand why there was a need for a Jewish state,” he said.
After seeing what had happened “to my people, I said to myself ‘Israel does not need another composer. I want to dedicate the rest of my life to the survival of Judaism and the Jewish people.’” Instead of Broadway, Weinberg set his sights on the bima.
His motivation was straightforward: Hitler murdered one-third of the Jewish people, Rabbi Weinberg said, and “we Jews have a small birthrate and a high rate of assimilation. The only way we Jews can grow and survive is by bringing new people into Judaism and the Jewish people.” Rabbi Weinberg urges Jews to remember that “Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people. There are Jews who don’t practice Judaism, Jews who know nothing about Judaism.
Unlike many colleagues, Rabbi Weinberg does not make a case against mixed couples. “I am not against mixed couples,” he said, “because I often find when mixed couples take my class, the born Jew (afterward) has a better appreciation of Judaism. I have had ministers and priests in my class. They’re not going to convert. But they want to know more about Judaism from a Jewish perspective.”
But Judaism By Choice also attracted those who were born Jewish. “I get people who took the Birthright trip,” he said, “I had a woman who is 22. She grew up in a Jewish family – but their home had no connection to any synagogue. No observance. She took the Birthright trip, came back and contacted us. She told me ‘I love Israel, but I didn’t know much about Judaism. I want to study about it now.’” Eventually, she studied for the bat mitzvah she did not have as a child. The rabbi officiated at the Beth Am ceremony, and when describing it, his eyes widen and he sounds like proud parent. She read from the Torah in Hebrew, ”really reading Hebrew, the Haftorah and everything.”
“When people ask me if this is a conversion class, I tell them no. It’s a learning class for people who want to learn more about Judaism.”
“This is what our program is for,” he said. “When people ask me if this is a conversion class, I tell them no. It’s a learning class for people who want to learn more about Judaism.”
Fast Takes with Rabbi Weinberg
Jewish Journal: What is your favorite Jewish book?
Rabbi Weinberg: just finished “In Pursuit of Godliness and a Living Judaism: The Life and Thought of Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis” by Rabbi Edward Feinstein. I was a student and friend of Rabbi Schulweis.
J.J.: Your favorite non-Jewish book?
R.W.: Because of my musical background, I have read biographies of George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers and Leonard Bernstein.
J.J.: Your favorite Jewish food?
R.W.: Matzoh brei. Every Passover, I make it for my wife and our two sons. Easy to make, and it is delicious.
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