Gottlieb became the spiritual leader of Temple Beth Or of the Deaf and Hebrew Association of the Deaf in 1973, at the age of 23, while a student at JTS. In 1975, she founded an experimental synagogue, Mishkan A Shul, in New York City. In 1974, she founded the now-defunct Jewish feminist theater troupe Bat Kol, which explored feminist
Midrash. In 1981, she co-founded Congregation Nahalat Shalom in Albuquerque, NM, which she led until becoming Rabbi Emerita in 2006. In the 1990s, Gottlieb played an important role in bringing to light
Carlebach's long history of sexual assault and sexual violence, In 1997, she gave a lecture at
Jewish Renewal community Congregation Chochmat HaLev in
Berkeley, California, where she described Carlebach's molestation of one of her congregants. From 2007 to 2009 she was co-director of the Middle East Program at the San Francisco office of the
American Friends Service Committee. In 2007 she was selected as one of The Other Top 50 Rabbis by
Letty Cottin Pogrebin. Gottlieb led a
Fellowship of Reconciliation delegation to
Iran in 2008, thus becoming the first female rabbi to visit Iran and the first American rabbi to travel there "in a formal peacemaking capacity" since the 1979
Iranian Revolution. A 2013 dissertation from the University of New Mexico's department of anthropology, “Storied Lives in a Living Tradition: Women Rabbis and Jewish Community in 21st Century New Mexico,” by Dr. Miria Kano, discusses Gottlieb and four other female rabbis of New Mexico. == Palestine activism ==