Sheila Canal

Sheila Canal has studied Mussar with Rabbi Joshua Boettiger since its inception at Temple Emek Shalom, Ashland, Oregon 14 years ago. Five years later, he asked her to become a madricha and she began serving the community facilitating va’ads, co-teaching Mussar texts.  

Sheila grew up in a working class Jewish neighborhood in the Bronx filled with first and second generation immigrants and Holocaust survivors. Immersed in Jewish culture, hers was a secular upbringing and later in life she found spiritual sustenance in meditation, meeting and studying with Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and teacher. With a 35-year mindfulness meditation practice and the support of her meditation community, Sheila returned to Judaism, celebrating her Bat Mitzvah at age 70.  Sheila is nourished by “double belonging,” bringing the practical wisdom, spiritual friendships and emphasis on awareness and serving the other to the engaged practice of Buddhism. In 2018, as she ordained as a teacher in Thich Nhat Hanh’s tradition, she was given the encouragement of “Together we advance a global ethic to relieve the suffering in the world.”