NeshamaCast

Look for the Helpers: Rabbi Shira Stern on Disaster Spiritual Care

Episode Summary

Rabbi Shira Stern reflects on her career providing disaster spiritual care, including service following the 2018 Pittsburgh-Tree of Life shooting, which marks its 5th anniversary October 27. Rabbi Stern also offers insight on the catastrophic terror attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023 and the early stages of communal trauma as a result.

Episode Notes

About our guest:

Rabbi Shira Stern was ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in 1983 and earned her Doctor of Ministry from HUC-JIR in 2003. She was the rabbi and educator of the Monroe Township Jewish Center for 13 years.
She has also served as a hospital and hospice chaplain, Director of the Joint Chaplaincy Program of Greater Middlesex County and the Director of the Jewish Institute for Pastoral Care in New York City.

Rabbi Stern founded the Center for Pastoral Care and Counseling in Marlboro, NJ, from which she recently retired as director. In her work there she worked with children and adults in focusing on problem solving and personal growth.

Rabbi Stern was trained by the Red Cross to serve on the SAIR team - Spiritual Air Incident Response Team in 2001 and worked for four months at the Liberty State Park Family Assistance Center in the aftermath of 9/11. She is currently the lead chaplain for Disaster Spiritual Care for American Red Cross in New Jersey.

Rabbi Stern writes on issues of Women in Judaism, biblical commentary and chaplaincy-related topics and has taught two Jewish feminist courses at Rutgers University. She is a Board Certified Jewish Chaplain and is a Past-President of Neshama: Association of Jewish Chaplains. She has been widely featured in the print and television media on a variety of topics.

Rabbi Stern is married to Rabbi Donald Weber.

Episode Transcription

Transcript Preview

Rabbi Ed Bernstein 0:00 Shalom and welcome to NeshamaCast, exploring Jewish spiritual care today brought to you by Neshama Association of Jewish Chaplains. I'm your host, Rabbi Ed Bernstein. The following interview with Rabbi Shira Stern was recorded in September 2023. Prior to the fall Jewish holidays, and prior to the horrific terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7. This interview is being released now in mid October 2023 to correspond with the fifth anniversary of the October 27 2018 Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh that Rabbi Stern discusses in the latter part of this interview. She also discusses other key events in her service providing disaster spiritual care for the American Red Cross, particularly post 9/11 and Superstorm Sandy. Please note that in the NeshamaCast feed, you will find an emergency podcast from October 9, in which Rabbi Valerie Stesson of Jerusalem discusses the trauma in Israel in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attacks and the spiritual care response in its initial formation at the time. In the upcoming conversation, Rabbi Shira Stern, reflects on major trends in disaster spiritual care and shares poignant human stories from a range of events. In the days following October 7, it was clear that publishing this conversation with Rabbi Stern would be most complete if she returned to comment on this catastrophic event. Rabbi stern graciously returned to meet me on October 15, and that conversation can be found at the end of this podcast. Please note while my conversations with Rabbi Stern do not contain graphic descriptions of violence, we are in conversation about events that produced communal trauma, and this interview is being published in the midst of Israel's national trauma that touches the Jewish community worldwide. Therefore, please take care while listening and feel free to postpone to another time if you need. Now on to my conversations with Rabbi Shira Stern. In recent years when a disaster strikes, a community whether it's a natural disaster or a human act of violence, one is likely to find a meme on social media quoting the late Fred Rogers saying when I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, look for the helpers, you will always find people who are helping. Our guest today on NeshamaCast has been one of those helpers, time and time again, even in the face of some of America's worst tragedies of the last generation. Rabbi Shira Stern is a distinguished rabbi, Chaplain, teacher and scholar. She was the founder and director of the Center for Pastoral Care and Counseling in Marlboro, New Jersey where she works with children and adults in focusing on problem solving and personal growth and she recently retired from that practice. She has also taught at Rutgers University and has served in synagogues for a number of years. Rabbi Stern has served as a director of disaster spiritual care for the American Red Cross, and her volunteer work in this capacity will be the focus of most of our discussion. She is also a past president of Neshama Association of Jewish Chaplains, producer of this podcast. Rabbi Shira Stern, it is an honor to welcome you to the Shama cast. Rabbi Shira Stern 4:03 I really appreciate it. Thank you. It's an honor to be here, Rabbi Ed Bernstein 4:06 Rabbi Stern, to set the stage for a discussion on your work in disaster spiritual care. I'm wondering if we could start with a bit of your spiritual and religious origin story. What was your spiritual life growing up? And what was the path that led you to become both the rabbi and the chaplain? Rabbi Shira Stern 4:28 So I grew up in a household that was a basic secular household. My mother is a Holocaust survivor. My father was also an immigrant. And I understood in the core of my being, that being Jewish and Israel were intertwined. My parents actually met in Jerusalem. And the caveat that my mother gave my father when he proposed was that she be allowed to come to Israel at least once or twice a year, every year, which was certainly something that he followed through with. So Israel, Israeli musicians, the rich culture that we understand to be our heritage, but also our legacy is something that I grew up with. It's sort of in my DNA. My inspiration for becoming a chaplain was twofold. My father always gravitated towards helping others and going to disasters to provide comfort. My mother, on the other hand, was hugely responsible for teaching me about bikkur cholim, visiting the sick, because there was not a friend or an acquaintance that she had who did not benefit from a visit from her, you know, whether it's flowers, or a fruit basket, or a little bit of conversation or a phone call. She always taught me that being there was essential. And I became a rabbi, largely because of those two influences. I love being Jewish. I love the Hebrew language. I love telling stories and stories based on our texts. And I mostly love doing bikkur cholim. And the reason for me as a good chaplain, for me, the idea of bringing a little bit of comfort and repair, an offer of resiliency to others is holy work in every respect. You know, we all have different strengths. I was in a pulpit for 13 years, I worked on my husband's synagogue, as rabbinic associate, an educator for many years. There are things that I do well, and I understood early on, that the pulpit was good for others and maybe not so good for me. So I went back to chaplaincy, but I've been actually doing chaplaincy since I was 13. I worked in hospitals as a candy striper. So what did that involve? In New York City involved working with children at Roosevelt Hospital and playing with them and I gravitated mostly towards those children who were dropped at the emergency room and abandoned and who had no one coming to visit them. It made me understand that my presence made a difference in their lives. I spent a summer in Nova Scotia doing full time volunteer work at a children's hospital in Halifax. Same thing I was at that point hooked, I had drunk the Kool Aid, I was hooked. And I volunteered throughout my college and rabbinic years. In rabbinic school. I was at Memorial Sloan Kettering working as a chaplain between, you know, five and 15 hours a week and understood that there was so much I didn't understand about life, about what provided people with chizzuk with strength with provided people with hope. And I realized that I felt more alive when I walked through those hospital doors than I ever felt anywhere else, because I had something to offer. And I wanted to hone my craft. So 13 years after I was in a pulpit in New Jersey, I went back to school and did four units of CPE and became a board certified Chaplain that I went back and I got my doctorate in pastoral counseling, because I understand that there's a difference. But I loved both aspects of pastoral counseling and pastoral care. And at this point in my life, everything I do, I do because I love it. And I want to do it. Rabbi Ed Bernstein 8:34 After 13 year pulpit tenure, you made a conscious shift to go into chaplaincy to get the formal training, you got a doctorate? Where did you work in those years after the pulpit? Rabbi Shira Stern 8:48 As I was growing hours for Clinical Pastoral Education, I was working in three major hospitals in Central Jersey and in several long term care facilities. Right after 9/11 I became the director of the Jewish Institute for Pastoral Care, which was the only Jewish CPE program in the United States tgat was part of the healthcare chaplaincy. And I was there for three and a half years before I realized that the commute was killing me. I loved the job. It was. It was wonderful. I got to teach. I got to help direct passionate young men and women who were in rabbinic school trying to find ways to hone their pastoral care skills. I love that. I then came back to New Jersey and set up my practice and worked as a pastoral counselor in my husband's role as well. Rabbi Ed Bernstein 9:41 So you mentioned 9/11. I do want to jump into that. We just marked the 22nd anniversary of that horrific time. Where were you on the morning of September 11 2001. Can you take us through that day and how it unfolded for you personally and as a chaplain, and we'll get into, of course, you know, the following days and weeks as well. Rabbi Shira Stern 10:07 So I was preparing to visit patients in two nursing homes and I had plans to go in the afternoon to the hospital. And we got a call from a friend of ours saying turn on the TV. So we actually saw in real time, the second plane hitting the World Trade Center. And at that moment, we understood that the world that we knew had just ended, regardless of what happened after in that moment, we understood that there was a seismic shift, I went to the nursing home that I had intended to go to, and there was a woman in rehab who was glued to her set because her daughter worked in building one. And it taught me a very important chaplaincy lesson. If you can spend half a day a day with a single person, with a single family and make a difference in those people's lives. That's important. And I sat with her for six hours until her daughter called and every time the phone rang, you know, I saw her blood pressure go up, I saw her reach for the phone and disappointment when it wasn't your daughter. So there was a very personal stake for me in this immediately. Now our town was devastated. We had 25 people who died and three people in our congregation died. So it was the middle of the yamim hanora'im. High Holidays. Yeah, who shall live and who shall die? Those were tough words to get out. It Rabbi Ed Bernstein 11:37 It was exactly a week before the High Holidays that year. Correct. Rabbi Shira Stern 11:41 And so those were very difficult words to speak, you know, a week later. So I had worked at Robert Wood Johnson, which was a trauma hospital, and people from all over get flown to Robert Wood. And I immediately went to the ER and it was empty, because they had brought everybody either they had sent them home or brought them upstairs, so that they would be ready for all of the people who are going to come in wounded. And we waited. And we waited. And we waited all day. And it is very eerie to walk through a huge ER silent. Because no one made the trip over. There were no wounded who came and I went to another hospital closer to the shore, same situation. So for the first couple of days, none of us knew what to do and how to respond. I was deployed that first week, and the Red Cross had a number of different locations. I was in the New Jersey location at Liberty state park at the train station. Rabbi Ed Bernstein 12:46 So if I could ask just for a moment, how did you have a relationship with the American Red Cross at that time to be deployed at that moment? Speaker 3 12:54 So there was a fellow chaplain who had suggested that since I was doing chaplaincy, and I had the wherewithal to deploy, if I could, that I should get trained. I went six days down to Pine Bluffs, Arkansas and was trained in disaster response and disaster chaplaincy. And I was told you go on call one month a year, it's only for air incidents. In fact, we were called the spiritual air incident response team. And of course, three months later, we had 9/11. So my first real deployment was that on 911 on the Jersey side. Rabbi Ed Bernstein 13:31 So once you were deployed by American Red Cross in the 9/11 relief effort, what was that? Like? Where did you go? Who did you see what did you do? Rabbi Shira Stern 13:42 So I was working as the Director of Community Chaplaincy for the Jewish Federation in Middlesex County, and I still did the work I needed to do at night or in the mornings before I went to Liberty state park where there was a Family Assistance Center, we provided people with information, we had mental health care, we had spiritual care, we had health care, we had childcare, eventually, all of the major organizations that would be helpful FEMA, and you know, various federal agencies all came there. So surviving families didn't have to struggle to put packages together and try to find out how they were going to get help. And it was an incredibly overwhelming and formative experience for me in terms of chaplaincy, I cannot go by, I can't go to that area of Liberty State Park without immediately walking in into the past. We took people into a private room, we talked to them about what they would experience. We talked to them for a while and then we put them on the bus that would bring them to the ferry to lower Manhattan. And so again, it was was a spiritual trip and we walked the last block and a half to the viewing station that was just diagonally up on the other side of the New York viewing station, one of the pile and we stood with him and we held them. And some days we did a brief service, I would sing E male rachamim, which is one of the two Memorial prayers, we would say Kaddish which is just the other Memorial prayer because essentially what we were going to was a very large cemetery. And then we brought people back and spent the rest of the time listening to their stories, supporting them, holding them and praying with them visually. There were these pillars. And the pillars were covered with letters and pictures. Have you seen my husband, wife, child, father, sister, brother, and we would stand there, and in many ways, pay homage because once the letters were up, people could move quickly. They just had to sit there and focus, and we were there to help them and to provide them with strength sometimes provide them literally with the ability to remain standing. I call it the tissue chaplaincy or the water bottle. We call it water bottle ministry. People water bottle don't say anything. So that is what I did. For four months. I did work at headquarters in Brooklyn, for a while I worked in New York at the three morgues, the temporary morgues, and then the one on the east side at Bellevue and I learned a lot about overwhelming community grief. I knew all about grief from being with my congregants. Personally, I lost my dad 11 days after Logan. So that was it was both personal grief that I understood. But I learned a great deal about communal grief. And that has served me well in the Red Cross. Rabbi Shira Stern 16:53 You mentioned your father, Isaac Stern, who was renowned violinist died of natural causes on September 22 2001, just 11 days after 911 You're here you are as you described, you were deeply ensconced in the disaster chaplaincy relief efforts. And then you suffered this personal loss and your father was a public figure on top of it. How did you manage at the time having your own personal grief of your loss, while at the same time guiding people through this major disaster? Rabbi Shira Stern 17:29 Every night I came home and my mailbox was full. And people I never knew and who never knew my father, but decided they had to write us reams of paper to write to me, and it was a very public mourning process that didn't permit me to do the mourning. I needed to do not for someone who was renowned, but for someone who was my dad. Yeah. Well, that's the difference. I didn't lose Isaac Stern. I lost my papa. Rabbi Ed Bernstein 17:57 Yeah. Rabbi Shira Stern 17:58 And standing side by side with families who were overcome with grief gave me permission to allow my own grief to emerge, not in their presence. I mean, I didn't, I had to be there to be strong for them. And yet, I understood that this was my way of grieving for my dad, because everybody was the same on those pillars. There weren't special people, everybody was special. And that helped me understand how I needed to grieve. So over the four months that I was working in the 9/11 response, I was able to understand the consequences of losing my dad, that helped me a great deal. Rabbi Ed Bernstein 18:41 Well, thank you for sharing that personal recollection. There have been so many incidents over the last 20 years that you've been involved in hurricanes and terror attacks, I want to focus on two more. One is Superstorm Sandy in 2012. I want to zero in on that because it also happened in your area where you lived the community that you were a part of on a daily basis. So I'm wondering if you can set the stage for Superstorm Sandy in the fall of 2012? What was it and what happens and how did you experience it? Rabbi Shira Stern 19:20 So the initial few days, I actually did not experience it at all because I was in Israel with my mother and one of our children. And my husband actually had to move out of our house and go to my mother's in New York City because she had power and we did not so when we arrived at night, we drove down the turnpike and the moment we got to our exit on the turnpike. It was dark. New Jersey's never dark. You can't see the stars because it's so brightly lit. Monmouth County in particular was very hard to get we were 10 miles from the shore so we didn't have power for for several weeks, and I remember going to either headquarters in New in New Brunswick, or some of the shelters primarily the one at the racetrack in Monmouth Park, seeing all of these repair trucks and looking at the license plates, and there were people from New Mexico and California and Illinois, and Michigan, and Arizona, all of whom had driven to New York and New Jersey to help bring back the light, literally. And that was very moving to me as a resident. As a responder, I heard stories that were really sort of earth shattering. There were two very stark images that stay with me. Number one, that shelter at Monmouth Park was huge. And people were in cots lined up. And on occasion, they would call for a certain apartment building to come and come to the bus. And they would go back and see whether or not they could retrieve some of their valuables. Every time they announced an apartment complex, you'd see one segment of the population stand. They all stayed together in their apartment houses, they were family, they knew each other, they wanted to be familiar they needed, they need to hold on to each other. So that was number one. Number two, the stories of unbelievable loss. I stood on line with someone as I was getting my ID and I looked at her and I said, what capacity are you working, she said, I'm not working. I'm here to get served. Tell me your story. And she talked about how she was unable to swim. But she lived on the shore in a house that her grandfather built and that her mother was born in and she now and her family lived in this house. And as the water started to pour in, her husband went out to get help. And she remained on the first floor and the water started to rise. And she got to the second floor and the water would continue to rise. And she was in the attic. When they finally were able to rescue her she was only able to swim. Not only was her house washed away, and all of her possessions, but her feeling of safety in the world. Home was no longer sanctuary. It was a place that was you know, threatening to be a prison. And she told that story. And I thought to myself, how is she standing? And what possibly could I say that would give her the strength to put one foot in front of the other. And I realized that everybody had to tell their story. And when you're the recipient of all of these sacred stories, they live with you in in your heart forever. I will never forget her face. I will never forget the feeling I had, as she told the story. And it literally I mean, I had a visceral reaction to her story. So stories like that were just remarkable. And one family had lost 200 years worth of Bibles that they had called family. Were in the flyleaf every important occasion, weddings, baby namings, whatever were written down, and they didn't want money, they didn't want anything else. They wanted a Bible to start their collection anew. For them, that was going to bring them to the next step, that image and that physical object. And when I was able to put a Bible in their hands, it was as if I were giving them back their life. All I did was to provide them with a Bible. That's all I did. There was a book, but it wasn't a book, it was a link to their past and a guarantee of their future. And that was so powerful for me. Rabbi Ed Bernstein 23:39 You gave them the gift of being able to reclaim their story to give voice to their story, you gave them the opportunity to create space to tell their story. And to make those connections. We've talked about 911 We've talked about Superstorm Sandy, which is a natural disaster. I'm wondering, since you've been in so many disasters, are there commonalities between acts of human violence and weather events, natural disasters? And what are the differences between the two when it's human caused and nature caused? Rabbi Shira Stern 24:15 There are some commonalities in all disasters, people being overwhelmed, and in shock, feeling guilty feeling a host of different emotions, but there is a substantive difference between an act of violence versus a natural disaster and that element of anger and shock. And again, communal response is profound, but not every violent act has the same impact either on the population or on us. Those of us who are there to support the Boston Marathon was unbelievably impactful for the people in Massachusetts and for everybody who came from all over the world to run and to be part of Boston Marathon. Tree of Life was a very different experience because it was targeted not towards just Americans. It was targeted against Jews. And for me, the Tree of Life will always have a unique place in my heart. Rabbi Ed Bernstein 25:14 Yeah, let's go to Squirrel Hill and visit this event. We're recording this on the cusp of the fifth anniversary of Tree of Life massacre. How did you get deployed to Pittsburgh? Rabbi Shira Stern 25:28 I just come off a two week deployment in North Carolina on a Thursday, Shabbat morning, I got a call must have been 45 minutes after it happened saying can you get down here we need you. We have this terrible thing that happened. I knew enough to say I'll be there next week. I need a week home, I need to regroup and we need to figure out how to do things. So I spent the rest of Shabbat and Sunday and Monday getting other rabbis to respond. Both is in within the Jewish community and as Red Crossers, and making sure that my team was in place, I was there on day eight, it was the Sunday, I spent two weeks there, you know, a week after it happened. And on Shabbat, I would go from one place of davening (prayer) to another place of documenting to a third place of davening. Everywhere, there were different pockets of people who were coming together to reestablish their sense of connection to everything Judaism provided for them was really amazing. And I spoke to hundreds of people, first responders and people who are on the chevre kedisha, that was an extraordinary experience. Chevre kedisha is a group of people who take care of the dead and prepare them for burial. And there were people who were from across the spectrum from reform to ultra orthodox, and every one of them said, knowing how we work together to prepare the bodies was such a holy act that anybody in this room could be the ones who would be on my chevre kedisha. Unbelievable collegiality, which wasn't, you know, it's why I love the NAJC Yeah, because we come from all walks of life, we come from every different denomination. And we find ways to work with each other, talk to each other, eat with each other, pray with each other, learn from each other. And that was what was happening in Pittsburgh. Rabbi Ed Bernstein 27:24 So funerals had pretty much all been completed. But you're you were there to support the community in the aftermath. Rabbi Shira Stern 27:32 And I was also there to support the rabbis who had spent, you know, 15 hours a day working with their congregants, I was there to support as I said, the chevre kedisha, first responders and members of the community who were so affected, I did go to certain shivas, where I was allowed to go. And we always asked permission. And three months later, I returned to do a program through Jewish Federation and to speak at Jewish Federation about the event. And then I went back again, a third time to work with youth groups, who were brought together and for whom processing Tree of Life was the focus. So that was three times within a year period, I was there for the first anniversary memorial service. This summer, I went down twice, to support the families during the trial of the perpetrator. And again, those stories that came out were remarkable. And one of the things that almost every family said to me was that listening to the testimony of both survivors and people who have been wounded, or who were present was eye opening for them because they knew their story. But they didn't know the real story of what was going on with anybody who was wounded anybody who was hiding, or anybody who was you know, had lost to a loved one. And when families who have been together for five years because there are support groups for people who were wounded, support groups or people who were whose family members died, people who were present, even though they had spent so much time together, there was new information that was shared. Again, it's the telling of the stories. Power of the narrative is huge. And everybody said as difficult as it was to recreate what they were feeling at the time being able to have their say their opportunity literally to have their say in court. Their having their day in court was hugely impactful. And you saw people afterwards. It's as if not the not the sadness, the sadness will always be there. But there was a heaviness that was lifted. So even as it was incredibly painful, it was also for some people cathartic being able to support families in those moments again, impact Give me so I've been five times to Pittsburgh and I will eat you say the word Pittsburgh to me. And I'm walking through the first time anybody had walked through tree of life who was an FBI or some government agency, looking at what must have been a horrific scene, it was one shot of a memorial board where a bullet head pierced by the name. And the woman didn't know that when she walked in as a leader in the community. And to stand with her. There was nothing I could do to protect her from that visual. But it reminded me that every individual story needs to be heard, and we need to hear it. And if no one else wants to listen, that's what we do as chaplains. That's what we do is disaster spiritual care responders. We listen. Rabbi Ed Bernstein 30:48 How does the role of the chaplain in the situation differ from say, a therapist or social worker? What tools do we bring in our toolkit that is uniquely from chaplains, and helping people tell their stories? Rabbi Shira Stern 31:02 So when people are overwhelmed and are despondent or feeling tremendous guilt, a therapist is a really good person to talk to, I've been one I understand that power. But when you have questions that involve not comprehending how this fits in the world, and how God fits in our world, when this has happened, you know, even theodicy is, is an issue that people have been dealing with since Adam and Eve. But nonetheless, we don't shy away from those questions. We don't provide answers. There's no answer to why did this happen to me? Or why did God take this wonderful person from me? Or how could this possibly have happened? And can I even trust God anymore? It happened in a shul, it happened on Shabbat! In that respect, being able to take that to the next level is really important. You know, there were a number of things that I hate when people say, I'll swallow it. If someone says yes, I believe that I will swallow it. And I won't say anything. And inside I would seethe. Number one, this is God's plan. Number two, God doesn't give you what you can handle. Makes me crazy, just totally makes me crazy. And for someone to say that to someone who is in pain is a violation. That's like adding insult to injury. So there are ways that we can provide a reconnection to both God and to Jewish ritual, which I think is brilliant. I mean, if I, if I were not Jewish, I think I'd have to be Jewish. Because, I mean, if you think about it, you know, you're in every loop until the funeral, you have the funeral, you have intense morning, then you have lesser morning, and then you have 11 months of understanding all the first and then there is a point in every part of the year whether or not it's on Yom Kippur war, or the major holidays, and then on the end the anniversary of the death to say, I'm going to concentrate and focus on this moment, and then I'm going to move on. Bbrilliant, just brilliant rituals to help people cope with grieving not as an act but as a process. Rabbi Ed Bernstein 33:14 Thank you. The journalist Mark Oppenheimer wrote a book titled Squirrel Hill in which he recounts the shooting and the aftermath. In his reporting, he came across a term that I find intriguing he said, the people in Pittsburgh use the term trauma tourists, a term coined by local citizens referring to all the well intentioned people who showed up in Pittsburgh offering help. And then in my own personal experience, I was invited to Pittsburgh on a chaplaincy mission about six weeks after the shooting. And one thing I learned during my visit is that in the immediate aftermath, a number of people showed up in Pittsburgh, some traveling long distances, and they would just say I'm a chaplain, I'm here to help if there's a disaster, what is the appropriate protocol? What are the best practices for a chaplain to follow in order to truly be the most helpful in responding to an incident like that/ Rabbi Shira Stern 34:15 I give you the Red Cross rule, if you self deploy, you're not part of the Red Cross anymore. You're out. It's pure chaos. It's chaos anyway, but if all of these people are trauma tourists and show up with the best of intentions, the only thing it does is it makes the lives of those people trying to create some order in the chaos, totally uncontrollable. Because there's no central command. We understand the chain of command and the red Croc and we have to be very careful about not violating that. We stay in our lane. We go when we're called. And we go home when we're told it's time to go home. We don't say no, you know what, I feel like staying No, there's protocol and we accept that. It's something that I'm developing with Federation that wants to prepare it rabbis and cantors and lay leaders to respond in a disaster that's local. First thing I'm going to teach is you don't self deploy ever, ever. My grandmother used to call them looky loos. It's just it makes me crazy. It makes me crazy, because it's such a violation. And yes, there were 11 people who died, each of whom has a story. And many of them are completely interconnected in a way, not by their death. But they were connected beforehand, obviously, the families are all connected. Rabbi Ed Bernstein 35:35 They were sitting together in shul they were the people who made the minyan, the quorum at the start of the service early in the day, Rabbi Shira Stern 35:43 you know, and then you talk to the people who had that extra cup of coffee and you know, missed pesukei deZimra and the initial prayers, and then it would up just as the shooting happened, and we're able to survive, able to leave, they too had all of these emotions to deal with. Rabbi Ed Bernstein 36:00 At the top of the show, I mentioned Fred Rogers adage, look for the helpers. And I'd be remiss if I didn't note that Squirrel Hill, the neighborhood where the shooting took place is literally Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, what aspects of this community struck you as noteworthy as you did your work there? Rabbi Shira Stern 36:19 There was a powerful support system within the Jewish community, the Squirrel Hill, community and all of the surrounding communities were equally invested in bringing some kind of healing and conflict. Everybody was invested. I think that Mr. Rogers was reflecting what he lived. It wasn't just that he was an ordinary human being, he was reflecting where he lived, because that's the way people act in Squirrel Hill. They really are. If you go in for a cup of coffee at Starbucks, on the way up the hill, there was this huge painting on the Windows talking about supporting the Jewish community, Starbucks, and if you went in with a Red Cross, and they looked at you and they said, We are so grateful that you're here. What can we do for you when we were there to do for them Squirrel Hill, I think is a unique place in this world. Rabbi Ed Bernstein 37:13 Rabbi Stern, we're close to wrapping up. But we're recording this interview on the cusp of the new year on the Jewish calendar 5784. And when the episode drops, we will be reading the opening chapters of the book of Genesis Sefer Bereshit, and synagogue based on what you've experienced over the arc of your career, I'm wondering what you can say as a rabbi and chaplain to bring hope to our community for the new year and new beginnings for all? Rabbi Shira Stern 37:44 Our world is still a very precarious world. And we are as if on the cusp of being thrown out of Gan Eden, out of the Garden of Eden, and learning how to live in the world. And in order to live in the world, we need to be interconnected with our own people and with our communities. And with the greater world at large. In this moment, there are so many places where people are affected by weather, affected by tornadoes, affected by hurricanes, one after the other affected by enormous earthquakes and their aftershocks and fires, it feels like the world is in an incredibly vulnerable place. And our answer as Jews is to say we recognize the precariousness of life. That's why we put up aukkah right after the holiday of Yom Kippur war, like, don't think just because you did all this work, you're off the hook. But we were going to sit in one of those very temporary, very, you know, vulnerable little huts. And we're going to remind ourselves that it's God who was enveloping us with peace and comfort and strength and everything else. But that the world is a vulnerable place couldn't be a better message for this time. We're very vulnerable, but we have to be there for each other. And we have to recognize that we're not here alone in the world. And if we can reach out, not just reach in, we are always told to reach in during the holidays, set that aside and balance it with reaching out. And if we can take that image of just expanding our arms so that we bring in people from lots of different walks of life, the difference between what I do with the Red Cross and what I do as a rabbi is that as a Red Crosser I'm there for everybody, regardless of what their religious tradition is, and whether it's sometimes then they have no religious tradition. And they're not only atheists and agnostics, they're yelling at me that there is no God. It is at this time that we need to recognize that we are interconnected with everyone and that provides us with the ability to move forward. If we do it alone. We eventually run out of steam. At the beginning of the holidays, we're all there together, standing side by side, recognizing our personal and our communal missteps and trying to correct them and recognizing that we have another responsibility to hold each other close. And that, to me is what the holidays are about. Many of us, as a coping mechanism, tend to turn off the news or close the newspaper or concentrate just on what is around us and not what is beyond our community. And I don't think that we have the luxury to do that anymore. I think we all need to understand that we need to see the world in a much broader expanse. We slept with ourselves, but we don't stop there. Rabbi Ed Bernstein 40:46 Rabbi Shira Stern, thank you for sharing this time for sharing your stories. And thank you for all that you do to lift people up at the darkest times and to help them take that step forward. May you be blessed with health, strength and courage as you work to make our world a bit brighter. Rabbi Shira Stern 41:10 And thank you and shout out to that Happy New Year. Shanah metukah to come maybe a sweet year for you and bri'ah, may be a healthy one, Rabbi Ed Bernstein 41:18 good health to you. Today is October 15 2023. I'm back together with Rabbi Shira Stern, eight days after the horrific attack in Israel on October 7, Rabbi Stern, we're probably going to spend the rest of our lives processing this week's events. However, as a follow up to our last conversation on disaster spiritual care that listeners just heard. I'd like to ask you how you are dealing with this on a personal level? And what do you observe in the reaction in the last week in Israel and the Jewish world? Rabbi Shira Stern 41:58 I woke up on Shabbat, having had this wonderful experience of services of Shabbat, which was joyful, and it was a beautiful service. We had dinner afterwards with friends and it was just amazing. And we woke up and it felt like being bathed in tears. I remember flying from Calcutta to over the Himalayas and realizing that we had gone sort of from sort of a hellish situation into heaven. And it, it felt like the opposite had happened on Shabbat morning. And I think that I as an individual am responding the same way that I responded to two and a half years of COVID incarceration by reaching out to others. So I've been calling and texting and emailing colleagues all over Israel. I've been talking to colleagues here in the United States. And particularly I spoke to one colleague who is in a kibbutz outside of Sederot, not evacuated, but in a kibbutz where people are welcoming the evacuees from further south. And she wanted to know, what do I do to help those who are helping others. And my being able to speak to her provides good me with the focus, and a sense of purpose to do something, you feel two things, you feel rage and sadness, three things, and you feel helplessness. So the rage and sadness has a place. And then the question is, what do you do with it? My answer was to reach out to others. And so when I got this call from a colleague who said, I'm a disaster chaplain, my head is scrambled, what do I do, I have to be able to help others. In talking to her, she helped me as I helped her. So we helped each other Friday night, we went to services, as did millions of others. And I and other rabbis in the congregation were able to share our hurt our perspective, my point was responding to people's anxiety, responding to people's fear and a sense of aloneness. And the bottom line was, you are not alone. We are here with you. And that's my response. And I think that everybody in the United States who feel so far away for those of us who want to be on a plane yesterday, I mean, ironically, four weeks after the Yom Kippur War, I was in Jerusalem, and it feels like 50 years ago, I'm still walking around feeling the same way. Now, I can respond differently. I can respond from the United States. And those of us who are raising money and collecting things to send to Israel are feeling a tiny bit useful if we can mitigate the pain a tiny bit That is the kind of the what we do, and it makes us feel less helpless. So I still have rage, I still have sadness. And I still have fear, but I don't feel helpless quite as much. And I think that the American American Jews looking at Israel at this point, for those of us who are connected, feel the same way if we can do something, if we can actively comfort, support, feed, close, whatever the soldiers in Israel, then at least we're doing something. Rabbi Ed Bernstein 45:34 Going back to our prior conversation. We talked a lot about your work after 9/11. You talked about watching on TV, the second their plane hit the towers in real time, and you said you knew at that moment, the world has changed. And similarly, I think October 7, things changed. There's pre October 7 and post October 7. In addition, 9/11 was a terrorist attack on a nation that produced a national trauma. And then we also talked about Superstorm Sandy, as I listened to our prior conversation, you talked about people flooded out of their homes and how a home ceased to be a sanctuary for its dwellers. The incident in Israel was very different. It was violent, but suddenly a home was no longer a sanctuary. And then finally, in Pittsburgh, there was an assault on the Jewish community that may have killed 11 individuals, and at the same time, it struck the hearts of the entire Jewish community. And it seems to me that October 7 combines all of those elements. And I'm wondering, is it helpful to try to compare October 7 to others and categorize it? Or is October 7 in a category all by itself as we try to make meaning out of it, Rabbi Shira Stern 47:05 I think that it is important to know that every disaster is different, and the overlay of emotion that we have as American Jews and chutz la'aretz (diaspora) Jews, are those emotions that come into play. When we react to a disaster such as this since the show, I don't think there has been as destructive an act against the Jewish people in a single day as what happened on October 7, the fear that continues for Israelis that there are pockets of terrorists who remain in Israel, and who remain a rodef a threat pursuer Is that another overlay of emotion. And I don't think that we can compare this particular horrific act to anything else. It is sui generis, and the fact that it happened on the 50th anniversary of just after the Yom Kippur War simply reminds us that even in times of joy, we need to be careful. And I'm thinking a little bit like my mother, who begged me when I wore kippah. Now I wear a kippah to pray with others. Even in an interfaith setting, I wear a kippah to study, obviously, privately in my home, I wear a kippah when I do Jewish ritual, but I made a promise to my mother 45 years ago that I would not rule my kippah outside for fear that that would invite violence against me. And that was my mother's Holocaust reaction. The only other time I absolutely felt that fear, other than the one she relayed to me was when we were in Paris, and we were at the Shabbat services. And we were leaving, and the President and the rabbi raced over to us and said, Please remove your kippah before going outside and certainly in the metro, because he will be a target. And that was 10 years ago. And I remember thinking just came from this wonderful Shabbat service and this feeling of calm and joy and connection to Judaism dissipated as I removed my kippah. That fear remains alive here. And I think that colors, this particular event, I mean, I went through, I went to a rally on on Wednesday, and was particularly watchful, making sure that my situational awareness was on total focus, because you never know. And I don't think as Jews, unless we've experienced things like the violence that people experienced last week or the Holocaust violence. I don't think people understand didn't understand until they were faced with oh my god, I'm a Jew and they're going to target me and that's what people are fearing and are watchful for now. So I think it makes this act of violence, this terrible event, an event unto itself. This is not a singular event in Texas, or a singular event in Pittsburgh, it feels like it is a collective wound. And we're going to have that scar for a long time, forever. Rabbi Ed Bernstein 50:18 We had on this podcast conversation with our colleague in Israel, Rabbi Valerie Stesson of Kashuvot the Center for Spiritual Care in Israel, just to get her initial reactions. We recorded her during day three of this, just to get the sense, I'm wondering, from your perspective, as a seasoned professional in the field, from your observations and experience what is happening right now on the ground in Israel in terms of Israel tapping into and building infrastructure to support a traumatized nation. Rabbi Shira Stern 50:56 I think that unfortunately, Israel is fairly well prepared to respond to death, destruction, kidnapping, etc. Because that's what life in Israel is like, I think particularly in the south near Gaza over in other parts of Israel, it is clearly a daily concern to support those who have had this kind of tragedy, I'm noticing that there are more Israelis reaching out than ever before for support. And so if we as Neshama, you know, Association of Jewish Chaplains can respond by reaching out to our colleagues in Israel and providing them with chizzuk, with strength with comfort with listening to their narrative. If you take a look at your Facebook page, I mean, text after text after text is filled with horror. Sometimes there's a brief moment of exaltation, when, you know, someone is discovered who has been hiding, and yet, they're still reaching out. And so right now, what can we do? We can reach out back, we can respond, we can say, Okay, we're here. And I think that in Israel, usually people feel very self sufficient. I've been to Israel since I was six weeks old. And my impression of Israel has always been that the the somehow who is able to defend him or herself, who's able to look beyond what everybody else sees to what people don't see, in order to protect themselves, that people in Israel are so advanced, that they can really survive now is blown. And the fact that people are reaching out to us confirms that to me, and we need to respond, and we need to respond immediately. And we need to respond in droves. I'm sure that people called family and friends as I did, but listening to the narratives is really, really important. Because who are they going to tell each other? Everybody has a story? Every single person has a story. And when someone says, Do you have family in Israel? We suggested that the real answer is, of course I do. There are 8 million people who are my family. And that's I think both I will say our salvation, because the only way in which to combat fear is to find purpose and meaning and to find a way to hold on to what we think is good and to reinforce it. And that connection that we have, not with a country but with individuals is what's going to help them it's going to help us in our fear and their devastation and our devastation. Rabbi Ed Bernstein 53:43 Yeah, I know from our prior conversation that you would never self deploy on a chaplaincy mission. I'm wondering if you think you will be deployed in any official capacity on a chaplaincy mission to Israel and coming days or weeks. Rabbi Shira Stern 54:00 Right now. I can't I mean, the Red Cross is not sending me and I believe that if we as Neshama, want to put together a group to go that in the coming weeks and months, I would certainly do that. This is not going to happen overnight. Yeah, there's so much healing there's so much there's so much to to anticipate in terms of overwhelming reaction to the extent of the devastation, that it's going to take years and years and years to rebuild, not just buildings and and you know, moshavim and kibbutzim and hospitals and infrastructure. I'm talking about people, it's going to take a very long time to rebuild our people in Israel. And so whether or not we go next week, or next month or six months from now, we will still have people to talk to and people to support in the near future. If I'm asked to go, I would go. Rabbi Ed Bernstein 54:58 think we're so fortunate that we have you to turn to for wisdom in a time like this. Do you have anything else you wish to add that you might not have said already on this matter? Rabbi Shira Stern 55:11 I think the only thing that I would add is to encourage all of us to grieve the way we need to grieve to respond the way we need to respond. I know that there are people in the United States who are particularly feeling isolated because their interfaith colleagues are not reaching out. Some are and many are not, and they feel abandoned. And so I would encourage all of us to try to maintain relationships to at least keep doors open, even in our private rage. Rabbi Ed Bernstein 55:44 Rabbi Shara Stern, thank you so much for all that you do. And for the support and bearing witness that you do day in and day out to support our people. Rabbi Shira Stern 55:55 It's my honor to do so. And I really thank you for the opportunity to talk about the work that we do the sacred work that we do all of us. Speaker 3 56:03 NeshamaCast is a production of neshamah association of Jewish chaplains. Thank you to Rabbi Shira stern for her generous time in two separate interviews. For more information about Rabbi Stern check out our show notes. Special Thanks for technical and logistical support to Alison Atterbury, NAJC Chief of Operations, Rabbi Ben Flax NAJC Executive Director and Rabbi Drew Kaplan and the NA JC Social Media Committee. Our theme music is a nigun for ki anu amecha, written and performed by Rabbi Cantor Lisa Levine. Please help others find the show by rating and reviewing the show on Apple podcasts. We welcome comments and suggestions for future programming at Neshamacast@gmail.com. And be sure to follow NAJC on Facebook to learn more about Jewish spiritual care happening in our communities. Finally, as a gesture of solidarity with Israel, this episode will close with Hatikvah performed by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in July 1967 with Leonard Bernstein, no relation, conducting. The lead violinist is Isaac Stern, late father of Rabbi Shira Stern, may we all work together to heal our world.