October 1, 1999/21 Tishri 5760, Vol. 52, No.5
Jewish chaplains offer spiritual guidanceABIGAIL PICKUS
|
 Phoenix community chaplain Rabbi Martin Scharf is animated as he speaks about learning at Kivel Care Center in Phoenix. |
His life seemed complete, steeped as it was in Jewish learning. Yet, it wasn't until he registered in a Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) program at Lutheran General Hospital in Chicago, an intensive training and certification program where he visited and counseled patients throughout the hospital, that he realized he wanted to become a chaplain.
"I thought I was a good rabbi and that I had all the answers. But once I started visiting people, I realized I wasn't satisfied, there was something lacking," he said.
There, before his eyes, he saw the transience of human life. Amidst the whirring of machines, the blinking of lights, and the dripping of the I.V., he watched with profound understanding of the transformation that was often inevitable. Whether in a few hours, a few days, or even a month, he knew that the person who lay before him very much alive, whose heart still beat, whose blood still pulsed, would quietly slip away into the realm that we, the living, cannot comprehend.
And right then, he knew he had made the right decision.
"My heart felt closest to people right before they died," said Eisenbach, a chaplain at the Palliative Care Center Hospice of the North Shore in Chicago. "The Talmud teaches us one thing, but actually experiencing it is something else. Like a doctor who only reads books and doesn't have any hospital experience itself, clergy might know the law, but not know how to apply it."
Chaplains such as Eisenbach have become an integral addition to hospitals, mental health institutions, prisons, and long-term care facilities because they provide a much-needed, and often neglected, dimension to care: spiritual support.
"Studies and education have shown that treating a patient is a team effort: it's about addressing the mind, the body, and the spirit. Chaplains are a spiritual presence, and with the clinical pastoral education that they have, ought to be able to be a presence to anyone of any faith and to get them through their situation," said Jo Schrader, executive administrator of the Association of Professional Chaplains, the national umbrella organization representing 130 faith groups, based in suburban Schaumburg, Ill.
Of the thousands of chaplains across the country, 1,900 are board certified, which means that they have completed an advanced theological degree, a clinical pastoral care residency, and have been ordained by their faith group. Many are also certified by the Association of Professional Chaplains.
Rabbis have always done pastoral care through visiting the sick and counseling people in difficult times, but it was never a focus, according to Jeffrey Silberman, a CPE supervisor at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, who founded the National Association for Jewish Chaplains in 1988 as a way to bring Jewish chaplains together.
"I knew there were Jewish chaplains around the country who, if they were like me, were feeling pretty isolated," said Silberman, who has a mailing list of more than 400 people across the country, which includes Jewish chaplains from all streams of Judaism.
| Chaplain's
job is gift from God |
For today's chaplains, proselytizing is considered a breach of ethics.
"No professional chaplain today would even think about trying to convert a patient. CPE and professional chaplains in general are multifaith enterprises," said Silberman.
Many hospital chaplains go on rounds, checking in with doctors and nurses to see they can be of help, and visiting with patients and their families of all religions.
"I didn't come as a Jew, I came as an ecumenical chaplain. We're all created in the image of God. I try to be with all people, and share their pain. The only difference is, when I have Jewish patients, I can guide them through halachah, Jewish law," said Eisenbach.
A chaplain's job is to guide a person, to say a prayer if it's requested, and to listen to the suffering individual with a "third" ear, a term that means not just listening, but comprehending. It's no easy task. For often, they are brought in to comfort the dying who, aware that death is near, are grappling with weighing their actions on this earth on the one hand, and wondering what will become of them on the other.
"Once a psychiatrist, a Jew, asked me if he's going to heaven. He hadn't gone to synagogue in over 40 years, even though his own father (prayed) three times a day. So I said to him, 'How many people did you help as a psychiatrist?' He thought about it and finally admitted that he had helped many, many people. So I said to him, 'The Talmud says, if you save one life, it's as if you've saved the whole world,' " said Eisenbach. "I remind them of their accomplishments. They don't need me to tell them they're going to die; they already know that. I'm just there to listen, tell them their life was worthwhile, and validate their pain."
It would be false and misleading, chaplains say, to pretend to be a moral arbiter, or an all-knowing sage.
"In our society, we think we have to always have an answer," said Eisenbach. "But sometimes the question is stronger than the answer."
A chaplain's support has helped many patients, and their families, get through what is often the most trying passage of their lives.
Mayer Channon of Glenview, Ill., was distraught when his wife was placed in the intensive care unit of the hospital because of an aneurism. He felt overwhelmed by the doctor's predictions and frightened at the prospect of losing her.
Throughout it all, he found Schorin, the Jewish chaplain at Northwestern Memorial, a source of comfort.
"You can't measure it," Channon said. "He's been a jewel for us. When he held my wife's hand and said the mishaberach (the Hebrew prayer for the sick), I never felt so deeply as I did then."
As chaplains will tell you, though, such comfort is mutual.
"It makes me a better man. The most important thing I've learned from this is how to be a mensch (a good person)," said Eisenbach. Still, what kind of toll does being near death so often have on chaplains' own souls?
"Sometimes when I leave the building, I look up at heaven and think, 'Why am I doing this?' It's so hard, like when a child dies, but most of the time I leave thankful that I was given the privilege of having that moment in a person's life; it is such a privilege,"said Meg McClaskey, director of pastoral care and ethics consultation and a Jewish chaplain at Rush North Shore Medical Center in Chicago. "When you've been around death a lot, it's how a person dies that is the most important thing. When we can actually affect how a person dies, whether it's helping them reconcile with their family or with their own religion, then I've done some good in this world."
Abigail Pickus is a staff writer with JUF News in Chicago.