Chaplain's job is gift from God
CHRIS GARIFO
Staff Writer
It's not green, it's teal!" Rabbi Martin Scharf exclaims to the people in the Thursday afternoon Mish Mash session on the second floor of the Kivel Care Center, responding to comments about his brightly colored sport jacket and matching kippah (skull cap).
As he chats with the Kivel residents, he leafs through a copy of Jewish News, looking for an article he plans to read aloud.
The Jersey City, N.J., native's exuberance for his work at Kivel Campus of Care in Phoenix shines through as he talks with the wheelchair-bound elderly men and women clustered around him.
As Kivel's chaplain and rabbi, and the Valley's Jewish hospital chaplain through the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix-funded Kivel Jewish Community Chaplaincy Program, Scharf performs clinical pastoral work at the care campus and at hospitals throughout the Valley. In this capacity, he deals with the aging, the sick and the dying.
Valley rabbis routinely make hospital calls to members of their congregation. Visits to Jewish patients who are not congregation members are handled by other rabbis - notably Har Zion Congregation's Rabbi Mark Bisman, who visits patients at the Mayo Clinic Hospital in northeast Phoenix, and Rabbi Andrew Straus of Temple Emanuel in Tempe, who makes many East Valley visits. A group of lay volunteers organized by the Kivel chaplaincy program also help out.
Local rabbis also serve as chaplains for other organizations, including the Phoenix Police Department, where Rabbi Robert L. Kravitz, the American Jewish Committee area director, has been a chaplain for about five years. Kravitz, who is also the only Jewish chaplain for the Arizona Department of Public Safety, received a Phoenix police commendation last spring for providing 1,000 volunteer hours.
Chaplaincy, says Scharf, has been his calling since his Reform ordination in 1978, when he completed his studies at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. He came to the Valley from Duluth, Minn., in March, 1994, to become Kivel's chaplain.
"I thank God almost every day for what I do in the chaplaincy, both within and outside of Kivel," says Scharf. "I can't even express my gratitude for all the (people I visit with) have done ... for me and all the happiness they've brought me."
Married to Roberta for 30 years and the father of two grown children, Raquel and Phillip, Scharf is now 52. He says chaplaincy work has been a way for him to honor the memories of his father, Paul, who died when Scharf was just 9; his first child, who was stillborn; and his mother, who died six weeks before Raquel was born.
Those experiences with death help him empathize with the families he sees - children dealing with a parent's death, a young couple whose baby has died.
Yet he often cannot answer questions posed to him, he says. "So many times, people will ask, 'Why?' And, of course, there is no answer."
Scharf says that many people ask him how he can deal daily with tragedy, sorrow, grief and dying. He explains that, while his strong belief in God helps him, painful circumstances also contain joy and happiness that some may overlook.
"There are smiles in grieving," he says, "when you hear people talking about their loved one who is dying or has died, and they're sitting there and remembering stories. ... Many times (grieving) brings back ... memories that they've forgotten."
There also are times that he feels a sense of helplessness in dealing with a patient or family. Sometimes "the person wanted to see you but also wanted to fight with you, because you are the representative of the God that they are so angry at," he explains. "They are using you as the person to yell at, because you they can see and touch; God they can't."
The cases he dreads most, he says, are those involving children. "Those are the most difficult," Scharf confides. "It doesn't matter whether the child has been sick a long time or it's sudden."
Scharf recalls once being with two young parents faced with deciding whether to turn off the life-support equipment that was sustaining their baby, born just that morning. When the parents agreed to allow the equipment to be shut off, the doctor asked a nurse in the room to turn off the switch. She couldn't reach the equipment and asked Scharf, who was closer, to do so.
"So, in a sense, I was the one," Scharf painfully recalls. "But I was in agreement (with the decision) and, if I was, I couldn't stand there and say I couldn't do it. ... I couldn't see this baby suffering and say I wouldn't do it."
Scharf says that despite the tragedy and grief he sees so frequently, the emergency calls at 2 a.m., the need to drive from one hospital to another on one end of the Valley, then to a third many miles across town, he's not about to quit - or even slow down.
"I wake up in the morning every morning looking forward to coming to work. That, for me, is probably not only one of the greatest gifts that this position could have given me. It's one of the greatest gifts that God could have given me."
Scharf says his experiences as a chaplain over the years have strengthened his faith in God, which has in turn made him a better chaplain. He loves interacting with a broad spectrum of people and from the variety of learning experiences that come with the job.
One thing he's learned is the importance of honesty. "The whole thing is about honesty and trying to bring comfort and peace of mind," he says. "I don't think anybody can succeed every time, because every person is different. They're still happy you're there, they're still happy you came."
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