NeshamaCast host Rabbi Ed Bernstein travels to Israel and interviews Jewish chaplains from Israel and across North America attending a rabbinic conference in Israel.
NeshamaCast host Rabbi Ed Bernstein travels to Israel and interviews Jewish chaplains from Israel and across North America attending a rabbinic conference in Israel.
Chaplains interviewed in this episode are, in order of appearance:
Rabbi Mary Brett Koplen, BCC, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York
Rabbi Barbara Speyer, BCC, VA Medical Center, Los Angeles
Mati Halperin, CPE student, Ichilov Hospital, Tel Aviv, Kashouvot: The Center for Spiritual Care in Israel
Rabbi Beth Naditch, BCC, ACPE, Hebrew Senior Life, Boston
Rabbi Naomi Kalish, PhD, BCC, ACPE, Jewish Theological Seminary, New York
Rabbi Yonatan Rudnick, Community Chaplain, Jewish Family Services, Kansas City
Rabbi Miriam Berkowitz, BCC, Congregation Kol Haneshamah, Jerusalem, Co-founder of Kashouvot.
During the interview with Moti Halperin, listeners can occasionally hear the voice of Rabbi Ilana Garber, Director of Global Rabbinic Development of the Rabbinical Assembly. She and Rabbi Bernstein were matched with Moti for a tour of Ichilov Hospital.
Special acknowledgment to Rabbi Valerie Stessin, BCC, Director of Kashouvot and Rabbi Mira Rivera, BCC, JCC of Harlem. Rabbi Stessin planned the chaplain programming for the RA Convention, and Rabbi Rivera was a participant. See NeshamaCast feed for their full interviews with NeshamaCast.
Reference was made multiple times to Natal Global Resilience.
Rabbi Beth Naditch refers to the terror attack of February 25, 1996 in which JTS rabbinical student Matthew Eisenfeld and his girlfriend Sara Duker were murdered in a suicide bombing of the Number 18 Bus in Jerusalem. See the book edited by Rabbi Edward Bernstein: Love Finer Than Wine: The Writings of Matthew Eisenfeld and Sara Duker.
The Nova Exhibition that is touring the US, is currently in Miami. More information here.
This video discusses the agriculture crisis in the Gaza Envelope post-October 7 and the efforts of local kibbutzim to restore agriculture. Oren Barnea, who is featured in the video, spoke to the rabbinic group in December that included Rabbi Ed Bernstein and Rabbi Miriam Berkowitz.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
This edition of NeshamahCast was nearing end of production when the wildfire disaster in Greater Los Angeles occurred. Future editions of NeshamahCast will explore the depths of the disaster from the perspective of Jewish chaplains in the community. In the meantime, I, along with my colleagues throughout NAJC, are praying for the people of Greater Los Angeles including our colleagues in chaplaincy. Like our colleagues in Israel post-October 7th, the chaplains in Greater Los Angeles are in a shared communal trauma, experiencing a disaster while also supporting their community through the same trauma. May they be blessed with strength and courage.
Shalom and welcome to NeshamahCast, exploring Jewish spiritual care today, brought to you by Neshamah, Association of Jewish Chaplains. I'm your host, Rabbi Ed Bernstein. As we enter 2025, this special expanded edition of NeshamahCast comes to you from Israel. In December 2024, I had the special opportunity to attend the Rabbinical Assembly Convention in Israel. The Rabbinical Assembly, or RA, is the international association of rabbis within conservative Judaism. About 250 rabbis from around the world were in attendance in one of the first major conferences to be held in Israel since the start of the war that began on October 7th, 2023. The conference allowed participants from abroad to show solidarity with the people of Israel in a stressful time. We bore witness to the effects on the people of Israel by the October 7th attacks, the war, and the plight of the hostages and their families. We also bore witness to life-affirming resilience, even in the face of nationwide trauma. In attendance at the RA convention were a number of professional chaplains, many of whom are members of NSHAMA. Association of Jewish Chaplains. I was proud to participate in a pre-convention intensive seminar for professional chaplains. Listeners to NeshamahCast will recall two interviews with Rabbi Valerie Stessin, director of Kashouvot, the Center for Spiritual Care in Israel.
These interviews are still in our feed, so please check them out. Rabbi Stessin and Kashouvot organized the pre-convention chaplain seminar and one of the day-long tracks during the convention in which many professional chaplains within the RA traveled to Tel Aviv to take part in a track that was titled Trauma and Resilience. You'll hear more about this track from me and several of our colleagues about our key takeaways from our experience. You'll also hear about another day of the convention in which I traveled to the Gaza envelope and the trauma and resilience my colleagues and I witnessed there.
One technical note, the sound quality is not the same as most Neshama cast interviews. Many of my conversations took place in public places, like on buses or hotel or hospital lobbies. Please pardon the background noise and occasional dips in sound quality. I think you will still enjoy the stories and wisdom of Jewish chaplains. As our group was on the bus traveling from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv for our day-long track studying trauma and resilience, we were greeted by Rabbi Valerie Stessin. Here is Valerie on the bus.
Rabbi Valerie Stessin:
Good morning. My name is Valérie and I'm very, very glad to be with you today. Before we really begin our journey, I would like to suggest to do a small exercise.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
Rabbi Stessin asked us on the bus to talk with our neighbors next to us about our expectations for our day in Tel Aviv, learning about trauma and resilience. This is what I had to say on the bus at that time. This is Rabbi Ed Bernstein. I'm chaplain at Boca Raton Regional Hospital and I'm the host of NeshamahCast. And I'm in Israel attending the Rabbinical Assembly Convention. I'm actually on the bus. We're traveling to Tel Aviv to learn firsthand from experts working every day on the front lines of care for trauma victims. Natal, the Israel Trauma and Resiliency Center, will lead two hands-on workshops focused on trauma-informed leadership. We're going to also visit Ichilov Hospital to observe spiritual care in action, guided by our colleague Rabbi Valerie Stessin and Kashouvot, the pioneer organization for pastoral care in Israel. I'm anticipating it's going to be a very intense day. As I'm recording this, we are literally on the bus and there are a number of chaplains on the bus, people who are both members of the Rabbinical Assembly and it's wonderful to be with a group of colleagues and there are several other rabbis from around the world on our bus as well. I myself am feeling a lot of anticipation.
This is my first trip to Israel since October 7th. Today is Tuesday, December 10th. I arrived in Israel on Sunday, December 8th, and stepping off the plane and heading into the main hallway of Ben-Gurion Airport, which was designed to be a very inspiring gateway into Israel, and now that entrance hallway is a, it's like a shrine acknowledging the chatufim family, people held hostage. Going back to October 7th of last year, that hallway's been filled with photographs of people. And I was overwhelmed. I was overwhelmed by seeing those pictures in that setting for the first time. So I entered the country on December 8th and I saw those photographs. I just broke down. It was overwhelming. And I needed that cry. I'm not ashamed of that. Tears were streaming down as I was going through passport control, going to get my luggage, and I realized I needed that. And I suspect that there's more of that pent-up grief that may come out during today's programming on trauma and resilience. On the bus ride, I got to sit next to one of my chaplain rabbi colleagues. Let's meet her.
Rabbi Mary Brett Koplen:
I am Rabbi Mary Brett Koplen. I am a chaplain at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and I live in New York City. And I think the reason that I'm on this particular trip today, it would be easy to say that a chaplain attending the Trauma and Resilience Workshop makes sense and also just personally something that's always really impacted me when I've come to Israel is how we live here with such vibrancy and so much life and also with such deep knowledge of just horrible things that people who live here have endured, that the Jewish people have endured.
And just as a human being who has also experienced trauma and who's gone through a lot of time needing to process that. So that's the big reason why I'm here is I believe in this sacred holy place that has endured so much that we should be making the world a better and safer place. for people who have lived through terrible things. I go into experiences like this feeling really open and welcoming of whatever I do feel, aware that whatever I do feel is going to teach me something about what I need to be attending to.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
It happens that many of the RA chaplains are on this group and I suspect it's for similar reasons as me that this is really relevant to our work as chaplains. This The track was really envisioned by Kashouvot and our colleague Rabbi Valerie Stessin, director of Kashouvot. I really wanted to connect with our colleagues in Israel to get a sense of what spiritual care is like on the ground in Israel in this particularly traumatic time. So amongst all of the choices of things I could have done today, for me there really was only one choice to do this because it's really relevant to what I do on a day-to-day basis. Mary Brett, how about you?
Rabbi Mary Brett Koplen:
I agree with everything that you said, Ed, and I feel really similarly that as a chaplain, of course, I would gravitate towards the track that's taking trauma seriously and taking the resilience surrounding trauma seriously. In terms of why I'm here at all and why I came to this convention, which happens in Israel every five years and My plane tickets weren't easy to get, leaving my family wasn't easy. In considering coming and deciding to come, I've thought so much about Israeli patients that I've cared for in the past year and a half, and I haven't had the opportunity to come to Israel. in a few years. I've been living through the pandemic and working through the pandemic in the hospital.
I have a family with young children and my heart has been longing to be back here, but that longing gets so deeply activated when I meet an Israeli patient who has left their home in Israel to be able to receive treatment at my hospital or maybe left Israel years ago and is now living in America and to feel such distance from Israel in a moment when I really want to deeply and genuinely care for and understand the pain that someone is feeling both in the illness that they're experiencing or that their loved one is experiencing but also in the watching what's happening in Israel from a distance. I would connect with Israeli patients who I would meet in New York City and I would connect with their longing and really feel this acute sense of my own and it feels important to be back here right now.
It feels important to be back both to hear stories and better understand what's been happening on the ground and to be able to have that within myself when I meet Israelis and when I meet Jewish people in the hospital who are experiencing the same sort of both longing for this place but also the pain in living through and witnessing from afar what happened here a little over a year ago and what's been happening since.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
Shortly after an intense seminar on the subject of trauma with a therapist at the Natal Center, this colleague shared her reactions.
Rabbi Barbara Speyer:
My name is Barbara Speyer. I am the Jewish chaplain at the VA Hospital in West Los Angeles.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
What was your reaction to the Natal program on trauma?
Rabbi Barbara Speyer:
Basically, I think it was very insightful. I'm very familiar with trauma and working, I work with veterans who suffer PTSD or what we call moral injury, another element that's somewhat connected or related. And I feel that some of the concepts that were presented really were very enlightening.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
How are you feeling now being exposed to discussions about trauma and being in Israel at this time with colleagues. What's going on for you emotionally?
Rabbi Barbara Speyer:
Well, emotionally, I've been very impacted since October 7th. A classmate from Hebrew college, not my classmate, but his daughter and son-in-law were murdered on October 7th. And from October 7th until now, I am very impacted. My grandson is in the Israeli Air Force. And we came to Israel in December, right after October 7th, regardless of other people feeling you can't come to Israel. And we were here again in June. And I'll be here again next week to spend time in Israel. We're very supportive. But I connect with so many friends and relatives here who have pent up, I don't want to call it anxiety, but a need to vent whenever I see them or call them. They express the reality of what it is like to be living here.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
During our time in Ikhilov Hospital, all of the chaplains from the convention were matched up with chaplain residents from Ikhilov Hospital who are doing their training through Kashouvot. I was matched up with chaplain resident Mati Halperin. In the segments that follow, you'll hear a bit of Moti's story and about his experiences as a chaplain resident in Ichilov Hospital.
Mati Halperin:
The origins of the spiritual path for me came from the Buddhist world. I grew up in a Jewish family, half of it traditional. I had my grandmother who's 100 years old next Shabbat. And I had another grandmother. They are both Auschwitz survivors. So I retired from the prime minister office three years ago. After 15 years there, I thought, I have to do something to give to the sides, not just for me. For me, it's so wonderful. And I met a chaplain, and I heard about this profession in Israel, and I said, OK, can I do that? And then I signed to Kashouvot.
Meeting that woman, the chaplain, and hear about the opportunity to study chaplaincy in Israel, I said, okay. So, you know, sometimes, I don't know if you know, as a Buddhist, the main motivation for your spiritual life is to do good for others. And I told myself, OK, so think about it during meditation or just walk with this. It's not enough. I want to do this, you know. Tachos, do this, you know. And for me, it was like, wow, this is something I want to do. And it's the best gift. For me, the first year was like, okay, so I had this experience of visiting one of the internal medicine departments three hours a week and then coming down to the dialysis for three hours a week. And then the second year it was, Merav told me, listen, they ask you what you want to do next year. And I said, I feel very connected to the near-death area. I had this experience in the internal medicine department that I worked in. There were a lot of oncological patients. And I had the chance to be with people who had five or six appointments before they died. And the last one was with their family around the bed. And I feel that this particular... you know, thing is very close to my heart. And I told my wife, okay, maybe the oncology department, they want a chaplain here. They don't. I told her, okay, so find something that I can learn something new. If it's a near death situation with people, maybe in the geriatric department, because I see that people who are at the end of their life, they have this wisdom, you know. Do you want to try the ER? Yes, sure. And they were very afraid that in the ER, it's very different from the internal medicine, it's quite chaotic sometimes. So they gave me, this day, on Tuesdays, in the morning, three hours, I talk to people in the ER. And on Thursdays, I talk to people in another internal medicine department, so I have six hours a week. at least, and I can tell you that my experience in the ER is amazing, amazing. You know, it's something so different. People are in different needs there, you know, they come sometimes in a shock and they want, sometimes they don't want anyone to be, are you a doctor? I don't want you. Yeah. Are you going to take me to x-ray? I don't want, you know, but it's, this is the challenge. I find it's very, For me, it's like, I like new things, you know, to find new things. So for me, being a student in the ER, it's an amazing experience. I like it so much.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
You mentioned the Buddhist influence. I'm curious, through Kashouvot, have there been insights you've drawn from Jewish spirituality? And how have you done that?
Mati Halperin:
First of all, Kashouvot. This is something amazing that we absorb from all cultures. And of course, after all, we're in Israel, and the Jewish tradition is the main basis for what we study. It's in the air, it's in the water. Of course, of course. But, like, I read Martin Buber, and I read this and I see, okay, So what I'm studying from the Buddha and Martin Buber, it's actually the same thing. You know, when the truth is the truth, it doesn't matter. where you bring it from. And one of my friends in my group, in Kashouvot in the second year, is a rabbi in Ephrat, Eli, one of the students. A young rabbi, he made aliyah to Israel just three years ago from Brooklyn, New York. And he's a rabbi, I don't know how to call him, Mechinah, you know, before the army, in Ephrat, which is in Gush Etzion. They signed us together to do some projects together and we studied from one another and I told Eli, listen Eli, the deepest knowledge, the deepest truth, you know, we talk and we talk the same language. So you just take out the names, like Buddha or Siddhartha Gautama, who is the Indian Buddha, you know. It doesn't matter. It's the same way of looking at things. It's the same way of finding shekhinah in things, you know. It's exactly the same. And for me it's amazing to realize that through Ellie for example and through the stuff that we learned in the Pardes model you know and all this it's amazing and what are can you think of examples of something from jewish tradition that you didn't know existed before, and it sort of blew your mind that you've been in Israel and Jewish your whole life, and you're like, wow. Yeah, I grew in a secular family. Yeah, yeah, of course. But still. Yeah, but like I didn't know our traditions.
No, for example, we read stories from the Hasidim, from Hasidim, or even Martin Buber, Me and Thou, and you look at it, and it's like, Wow, nice that I have in my tradition something that I can take from, you know, it's amazing for me. It's very, very exciting for me. A few weeks ago, in the internal medicine department, I came into the room, and this oncological patient, she was a Haredi woman.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
Haredi, fervently orthodox.
Mati Halperin:
I enter the room, and we start a conversation. And it's not a problem for her that I speak there and I introduce myself. I'm a spiritual caretaking student. Do you want to have a talk? And she said, yes, of course. And the second sentence is about the presence of Hashem in the room. What is it for you? What is it for us? And she looked at me and she said, you don't have a kippah. You're not religious. And I said, does it matter? See, we're talking about the same thing. We're talking about the presence of the shame in the room. Let's talk about her praying. Do you want me to pray with you? And it's like, she's heretic women, you know, and like in, out of this, of this context, I'm not sure that even though I had, I have a family in Bnai Brak, because my mother's uncle is from a heretic family.
So, but you know, in general, it's not something that is... And I sit in the room and after an hour talk, I go out and I say, wow, this is breaking boundaries. This is, this is chaplaincy. Just be there. And it is always when you, when you... In the conversation, you get to the point where you speak about the meaning of your life and the near death. And so, now we start speaking about faith. So, what is faith for you? We speak about G-d and you know, it's like when you're there, at that moment, it doesn't matter which religion are you from or We're together here as human beings. Yes, we are talking about the presence of God in the room. And sometimes we do talk about the presence of God in the room and how we talk with God. And it's amazing for me.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
It's amazing. In his chaplaincy, Mati works not only with Jews of all stripes, but people who aren't Jewish, including Muslims and Palestinian Israelis.
Mati Halperin:
You know, here, because of the political situation and the history of the area, sometimes there are these suspicious feelings. I can enter a room and there is this Muslim woman with her husband.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
I was going to ask what the experience has been like with the Muslims.
Mati Halperin:
So I go there and I tell them, listen, I'm a spiritual care student and I would like to have a talk. And I feel that most of the times it's your personal attitude, you know, they look at you, they look at your eyes. And this is the most, you know, like stepping, putting your foot in the door, you know, this is the most important thing. Once they see that you come, it's a nice person, you are very interested in them. And the most important thing is that they're not rejecting you. Okay, have a seat. Okay, and then you start. there's a conversation, there are Muslims and I'm Jewish or I'm a non-religious person but we are two Israelis who speak in Hebrew because they speak Hebrew as well and we find our way together we're just like two people in the hospital now and we speak about our challenges and the sufferings that we have in our souls now and it's just talk between two people. It's amazing.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
So what do you want to do after you finish your student?
Mati Halperin:
Expanding my experience as a chaplain. Doing more and more. Go to the certificate exam. Get my certificate next year. And hopefully start working more as a chaplain. You know, in Ikhilov or in other hospitals and hospices or whenever I can find a chance to be a chaplain. This is my spiritual life that I want to be in.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
Back at the hotel, I sat down with two of my colleagues.
Rabbi Beth Naditch:
My name is Beth Naditch. I am a conservative rabbi and a CPE educator, ACPE certified. I'm the director of CPE at Heber Senior Life in Boston.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
Joining me at the table with Rabbi Beth Naditch was Rabbi Naomi Kalish.
Rabbi Naomi Kalish:
I serve as the Harold and Carol Wolf Director of the Center for Pastoral Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Prior to coming to JTS five years ago, I worked for 20 years as a hospital chaplain and CPE educator in New York City in acute care hospitals. I had a long period of time working in pediatrics. I also worked in palliative care and psychiatry as areas of focus. At JTS, I oversee our pastoral education program, which includes being an ACPE accredited center to offer CPE internships and coursework and we also just launched a master's in spiritual care and counseling.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
What prompted you to come to the RA convention in Israel this year?
Rabbi Beth Naditch:
Well, as you know, it's been a really challenging 14 months in our field. It's been interesting to me to be in such an interfaith context and to find support from some areas and honestly a lack of support from others. And I had a choice this year of going to one conference, and I decided that I really wanted to be at the one where I could be with my people. And that's here. That's here in Israel, and it's very, very meaningful for me to be here at this time in Israel. Being able to bring anything that I have, whether that's presents or actual skills as a chaplain, it felt important to come to this particular conference.
Rabbi Naomi Kalish:
My decision to come on this conference, in some ways similar to Beth, was to be with people. Over the past 14 months, I've made two trips prior to this one and have connected with and strengthened relationships both with Americans coming to Israel at this time and with Israelis here, you know, largely in the Livui Ruchani, the spiritual care field, as well as just the network of people I know beyond that and have really sensed how important it's been in both directions to cultivate these relationships and so to be able to come with the rabbinical assembly has been very meaningful as well as to be able to continue to strengthen the relationships and so this as the third program, the third trip, but then also building on Beth's program, that it's just, you know, it's step-by-step, the strengthening of relationships.
During this time when we've seen so much dehumanization, you know, obviously the dehumanization that has been manifest through such horrific violence, murder, execution, rape, humanization is so tremendously called for. And then we see dehumanization in other ways too. We see it in the rise of hate and hate speech and vilification of people. And so I find that this focusing on relationship building is, I've been calling it the molecular level that we need to function on. At least that's what's given me a sense of meaning and purpose. So to come here and be with rabbinical assembly community and to be here with the Livui Ruchani community and to focus on relationships and in a sense on a grassroots level to build in response to this rise of hate. So we're building from a place of love and a place of healing and a place of care even while the crisis is still taking place, I'm finding is incredibly important.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
Beth, can you talk about your particular expertise in trauma-informed care. What is trauma-informed care and how has that expertise played a role in your experience this week in Israel.
Rabbi Beth Naditch:
My entire career was really transformed and shaped by the year that you and I spent together in Israel, Eddie, in 1995-96 when we lost our dear classmate Matt Eisenfeld and Sarah Duker. And in many ways that shaped who I am as a person, that shaped who I am as a rabbi when they were killed in a pigua.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
Terror attack.
Rabbi Beth Naditch:
The number 18 bus. And in some ways I actually, when I came back to the states after that year that we spent here together, I actually signed up for CPE because I realized that we had received so much support from being in the middle of a communal trauma. And I had no idea at that time how I was going to support other people in my life. And I thought it was really critical that I gain those skills. And that's when I first signed up for CPE, and it took.
Also, because of that year, I decided I needed to know something about trauma. So I began to study about trauma. I began to study about spiritual care and trauma. At the time, the term trauma-informed care wasn't really even being used. But I gradually just started collecting more and more information, theory, experiences, and then worked as a chaplain in New York City through 9-11. And so that really cemented this desire to be present for people in the midst of communal trauma. I've been present at many of them and more recently over COVID was really drilled down on working with a lot of healthcare workers. I wasn't on the front line so I was not working in person in a hospital. I was in my attic in my house and doing session after session after session for healthcare workers about trauma learning about grief, processing grief, processing the trauma that they were experiencing, and also doing a lot of direct work calling elders who are shut in. So that's really how I developed my expertise in trauma-informed care.
And from the beginning of the war, I've been working to support both our rabbinate colleagues and our chaplaincy colleagues long distance. And I wanted to be here to do it in person. Just a few weeks ago, we at Hebrew Senior Life brought over a group of 12 Israeli rabbis and chaplains, both for a break from the war and a course in spiritual care, because most Israeli rabbis don't have any training in that. It's gradually changing, but it was really special for me to be here this particular week to meet all of the people that had just come to the States and had this week with us, and to meet other colleagues that I've been connecting with and in some ways supporting throughout the war.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
With Rabbi Kalish's extensive experience as a hospital chaplain, I asked her to describe her impression of our group's visit to Ikhilov Hospital.
Rabbi Naomi Kalish:
One thing that was incredibly meaningful for me was being able to visit one of the hospitals here with chaplains who work in that hospital and receive a tour of the facility. And it was incredibly poignant to see how some of the patient care was moved to basement-level floors, which this is common here in Israel, because in the instance of an attack and the sirens going off, that many patients wouldn't be able to make a move, you know, to a safe room or to evacuate a building. And so they moved the entire floor. And so that's amazing, in a sense, to see the hospital accommodating, you know, and kind of transforming itself. But what I learned in addition to that was the challenges that that brings to a social and emotional and spiritual level, what it means to be working day in and day out for the staff in a, you know, very deep basement level floor without windows and without exposure to the you know, the fresh air. And so I learned that that's part of what the CPE educators need to factor in when they meet students and interview them and assess their readiness for CPE, but also their placements. And so this is an aspect that I learned about teaching CPE and learning CPE in the context of war, that that's one of the spiritual hardships that's being faced.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
Beth, we'll bring it to you. So we talked about our experience at Ikhilov Hospital. In our track yesterday, we also visited Natal, which is a center on trauma and resilience. And one thing that sticks out in my mind from the presentation that we had there was the concept of a shared communal trauma where the caregiver, the therapist, or the chaplain is experiencing the same communal trauma as those seeking help. And I'm wondering if you could comment more about that and any other specific takeaways that you had from our visit to Natal.
Rabbi Beth Naditch:
Well, it's actually connected a little bit to what Naomi was saying about the visit to Ikhilov and about learning about CPE education in a time of war. So in terms of shared communal trauma, we do have a colleague who is teaching her class.
Her CPE class takes place in Puria Hospital up in the north, and all of her students need to basically navigate and for the last 14 months have been navigating rockets and their own safety to be able to even come to class to be able to come to CPE and to offer their clinical time in the hospital and so there is no us and them when it comes to trauma and in terms of shared traumatic reality the educator, the students, the patients, the families, everybody is navigating the exact same stressors.
The person who was presenting to us in the TAL yesterday talked about a moment that she had when she was actually teaching. She was working with groups in the United States who are dealing with anti-Semitism on campuses and working to support them when she knew that Iran was going to be attacking imminently and was worried about how should she deal with it if she needed to run into her safe room with 15 seconds to spare. And what would her students, who are in the United States, be doing? Or what would the group that she was leading, what would happen? Who would lead them? Would they then have to start worrying about her, who was supposed to be holding the space for them? I found the visit to Natal really quite relevant because the topics that the presenter was sharing, I don't think that they were necessarily new to most of the chaplains in the room. But the examples that she was using were quite new and quite contextual. So we often talk about role, goal, and context in CPE education. And being in this context, being in the context of war, hearing about her work in Steyrot when she would go and meet people and sometimes have to sit in their bathrooms because those were the only secured rooms in the apartment until her daughter said to her, well, if something happens to you in Steyrot, what will happen to us? And she realized that all of the support that she was offering to other people was really impacting her family.
So some of the stories that she told and that some of our other presenters have told on some of the tracks have really made an impact. We also visited as part of a pre-conference chaplains intensive. We visited a nursing home. And the question was asked, what happens to the residents when there are sirens, when there are incoming rockets? And the director of the nursing home said, we can't get all of the elders to safe rooms within the 90 seconds that we have here in Jerusalem, but the staff must go to the safe rooms because They need to be able to care for the residents after everything happens.
And to think about the potential moral injury of knowing that you have run to the safe room, or at least moral distress, maybe not at the level of moral injury. To know that you've run to a safe room and you've had to leave your residents who you care for daily in their rooms, and to think about what are those conversations like when the staff comes back and the residents know that they're there in their rooms, but the staff has run to safety. Think about what are the pastoral issues that happen there, what are the emotional issues that are happening for the patients, the residents, the staff that really had an impact. When we asked about the impact of war in the nursing home, The director said that on... October 8th what changed was they had very little staff because most of their frontline staff is Arab and either they could not get to work or they were afraid to come and so the nursing home suddenly had to figure out how they were going to care for all of their residents and they had to find volunteers they had to train the volunteers and they had to figure out how they could still function safely for their people and that that really made quite a quite an impact.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
On a bus ride back from the Kotel, where we had early morning services on the last day of convention, I got to speak to this colleague.
Rabbi Yonatan Rudnick:
Shalom. I'm Yonatan Rudnick, and I have the privilege of serving as the Jewish community chaplain. in Kansas City, based at Jewish Family Services.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
Why did you decide to come to the Rabbinical Assembly Convention in Israel this year?
Rabbi Yonatan Rudnick:
So, it has been a while since I've been both at a Rabbinical Assembly Convention and back to Israel after living here for 12 years. I was feeling very broken. When I'm feeling broken, when we're feeling broken from my experience, I need to feel connection. That's what brought me here, to reconnect. Do you feel reconnected? I do. I do. It's a paradox because I also had a feeling, and it was true, that coming here, being closer to the epicenter of so much brokenness, especially since October 7th, would mean more intense pain and sadness.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
Yonatan, on Tuesday we went on a trip that was titled trauma and resilience and I'm wondering if you can tell us about what you recall from that trip and what your takeaways are as a chaplain in America.
Rabbi Yonatan Rudnick:
So the trauma part is very personal because while I was not so aware of it consciously during the first part of the day when the focus was trauma with Natal, I became more aware of the triggering of my experience and the experience of the Jewish community in Kansas City. Eleven years ago, shootings and killings of three people at the Jewish community center and at the Jewish old age home. So I was at a deep reverberation and it was also an affirmation, which is why I chose that Maslul, that track for that day, because the waves, the ripples of the trauma are continuous. And even though, as I said, that this is the epicenter here in Israel, but certainly They're felt outside of Israel and all over, including in Kansas City. So I also wanted to feel a little bit more better equipped to relate with other people who are experiencing those ripples of trauma as well. Really, the exciting part of the day was the afternoon for me. I had the privilege to serve as the first professional chaplain in Israel, which was hard for me. It felt like chutzpah. before that happened to even say that out loud, which I typically didn't.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
What did you do as the first professional chaplain in Israel?
Rabbi Yonatan Rudnick:
I served as a full-time chaplain at Shaarei Tzedek Medical Center and started a training program and started to do public education throughout Israel about spiritual care and the importance of spiritual care for people in the midst of health and healing challenges, not exclusively, but to a large extent within the context of the health care system here. And there were no chaplains anywhere. There was not a reference point for people in terms of familiarity. So to be at the Ichilov Medical Center in Tel Aviv, not only where there are chaplains serving but where there's a training program to meet such a diversity of people 20 years later which was a dream that the spectrum of people serving in these in this context would broaden and expand. It's hard to put into words. It was very exciting and moving and humbling. I felt a lot of pride and zechut and baracha.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
privilege and blessing. Which section of the hospital did you visit?
Rabbi Yonatan Rudnick:
So I visited the emergency room with a special guy named Tidhar who had started to wade into these waters of, whatever you want to call it, let's say auxiliary support in hospitals by way of, what do you call it, medical clowning? Letzan refoui. I guess, medical clown or Patch Adams. And Tidhar made an interesting observation, which I thought was very true, though I was not aware of it 20 years ago when we started, which is that there is a formal certification of medical clowns and medical clowning through the Ministry of Health that kind of paves the way and for, I guess we could say, gives the her-share in the health system here. So, not to take anything away from that, but to give the hope that, okay, so there is a derech, and there is some kind of precedent, and hopefully we will get there, because that's key to continuing to make this service in this, what I call, Temikha Ruchanit.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
Just to be clear, the state of Israel gives a state recognition, state licensing to medical clowns, people who go into health care settings as clowns, and they do important work. They bring smiles to people's faces. But it's just interesting, there's licensure of medical clowns, but not formal licensure of chaplains in a health care setting in Israel. Not yet. But we spent time with our colleagues in Kashouvot, the organization training chaplains in Israel and we were with a number of residents at Iqalat Hospital and they're really paving the way. For me it was really inspiring to see the work that they are doing, the impact that they have.
Rabbi Yonatan Rudnick:
Yeah, I agree with you. It was very inspiring and one of the most striking stories for me, or experiences, spending time with this intern in spiritual care, Tidhar, was I remembered that the first three people I brought in to Shaarei-e-Tzedek for training to join me were the diversity of Reform HUC rabbinical students here in Yerushalayim. Someone from Schechter, actually, Chaya, who is now the dean of the rabbinical seminary.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
Rabbi Chaya Rowan Baker.
Rabbi Yonatan Rudnick:
at Machon Shechter, and a woman named Hani Kreuzer, who in general comes from the modern Orthodox community, let's say. And although I felt very good about that diversity, you know, from a different perspective, those were all Datiim, quote-unquote, religious people. And so Tidhar, not being from that world, reminded me of this idea that it could be such a rainbow of people serving in this role of t'michah ruchanit or livui ruchanit.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
Spiritual support or spiritual accompaniment.
Rabbi Yonatan Rudnick:
Seemed pretty far off, but as you know, you and I saw and heard and touched that reality earlier this week. So that says a lot, even without licensure. And I know that that continues at a lot of other medical centers at this point, which is really quite something. It's the realization of a dream.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
On the second full day of the convention, I participated in a track that traveled to the Gaza envelope for an intensive day in which we bore witness to the effects of the Hamas attacks on October 7th. Our first stop on that trip was Kibbutz Kfar Aza, a kibbutz right on the border with the Gaza Strip that suffered massive casualties on October 7th. And as of this recording, they still have six of their members being held hostage in Gaza. We were led in a tour by one of their members, Ayelet, who told her personal story of being in hiding for 30 hours while everything was going on outside her door. She led us around and we saw much of the destruction that is still quite evident throughout the kibbutz.
Our group then traveled down the road to the site of the Nova Festival and the massacre that happened there to the young people who were attending a concert. There is not yet any official government memorial at the site. There's a grassroots effort to memorialize what happened there. There are posters of Every single person who was either killed or is missing posted around the site where the concert spectators were gathered. They have marked off where the stage was. They have marked off where an ambulance was attacked. They have a section where police and security officers were killed. It is a very powerful site that's hallowed ground. I had previously attended a traveling exhibit about the Nova Festival. I saw it in New York City on Wall Street last summer and it's traveling around the country now. As of this recording it's presently in Miami and that's an experiential rendering of the concert. It takes you inside the concert experience. You feel like you're there. I had experienced the traveling exhibit, but it's something quite different to be on the actual site. It was moving for me to be there.
The final stop our group made in the Gaza envelope region was Kibbutz Saad. Kibbutz Saad is a religious kibbutz and interestingly it suffered no damage directly on October 7th. For whatever reason the terrorists did not penetrate Kibbutz Saad, so the buildings are intact and the people survived. However, it's an integrated agricultural community in that whole region and we were debriefed by a member of the Kibbutz who is also a senior level agricultural engineer in the state of Israel who oversees the agriculture in the area. He described how agriculture was decimated and that the Hamas terrorists not only murdered people they saw, but they also sabotaged agriculture infrastructure, irrigation pipes, and the like to do as much damage as they possibly could. The region is a breadbasket for Israel. Crops had to be picked, seeds had to be planted, and people were scattered all over the country. So he told us about the challenges early on and along the way and also the accomplishments that they've made in restoring agriculture in the time since October 7th. And now here's my conversation with one of my colleagues on the bus back from the Gaza envelope on our way back to Jerusalem.
Rabbi Miriam Berkowitz:
My English name is Carrie Knight, but my Hebrew name is Rabbi Miriam Berkowitz. One of the few Israelis who did four units of CPE. I'm very proud of it. Studied in Israel and with Mychal Springer at JTS, long distance, at Lenox Hill with Father John Bikino and in Boston with Mary Martha Teal. I founded Kashouvot, which is the pastoral care organization with Rabbi Valerie Stesen in 2010. and then in 2019 she took it over and I've gone on to other things but I'm very pleased that it's still going and it's the largest trainer of spiritual caregivers in Israel all through the country. What are you doing now? Right now I work part-time at Kola Nishama, a values-based reform synagogue with very nice people in a grant writing slash fundraising role. I do bar and bat mitzvah tutoring and services for people from abroad and also I took the tour guide course. I started that in May 2023 so At this point, I did pass all the tests, but there are not too many tourists, so it's something I will build up slowly. I worked for five years once a week at the French Hospital, which is like a chronic care and palliative care historic building run by nuns of St. Louis of the Apparition in Jerusalem. And they really, really did. understand what spiritual care was for and there were many patients of all different faiths and it had some very memorable human interactions. I think that Israel society maybe doesn't know that they need spiritual care but they certainly do and not just for illness or end of life but for all kinds of life transitions and of course this last year even more so.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
Let's talk about that. You and I went on a trip with many of our colleagues to the Gaza envelope today. What are your takeaways from visiting some of the sites that were most affected on October 7th?
Rabbi Miriam Berkowitz:
The scope of what happened is even more than I had realized. You live in Israel. I live in Jerusalem.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
Was this your first trip to Gaza?
Rabbi Miriam Berkowitz:
Yes. So the scope of what happened, and the depth of the planning, and the maps, and the infiltration, cold-bloodedness and all that rape and all that stuff is way worse than I expected but the actual things we saw were less disturbing than I thought and before I had thought it was kind of voyeuristic and I didn't think it was really helpful for the people who would show us around that's why I avoided going and I was also terrified that the sights would just replay in my head over and over but we didn't see anything like crazy. That was so disturbing. So I'm really, really, really glad I went.
Now I think I'm going to tell everyone to go and be a witness to it. And the Nova was very beautiful. All the kind of spontaneous memorials that popped up and the life stories of these beautiful young people and I felt that I want to go back and read all their stories and their pictures and the inspiring quotes from their lives. I really think it is a sign of respect to go home.
You asked me how the rabbinical assembly conference affected me. Often in Israel it's kind of embarrassing to be not either secular or religious and sometimes have to hide it, or I feel I do. And so it was very affirming this week to be with colleagues and with such joy and the learning and, you know, we're going to go tomorrow to the Kotel with all our prayer gear and like proud and not try to hide that. So that was very affirming for me.
And another thing, I did not do too much volunteering in the beginning because basic survival is basically what I've been busy with this year. But now when I see what these people are doing in Gaza, it made me want to volunteer way more and just put everything to the side. That's the thing that inspired me most over the years, how Israelis, and people from abroad too, just rise to the occasion and help each other. I want to be part of that and not look back and say, you know, what were you doing that year? Oh, I was just doing the laundry. Like, that's not enough. I've been working at Kol Haneshamah Synagogue this year and doing grant writing. And we started a program to language exchange for Hebrew, Arabic, and English. And there's 20 people. Beit Safafa, Fashu Afat, Jabal Mukaber and the Old City Muslim Quarter and synagogue Jewish members and we do it's like games and activities learning language and it's social and it's fun and we end up laughing and everyone lingers at the end and doesn't want to leave so I feel that that may be my small contribution to a better future is the interpersonal building trust and overcoming stereotypes.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
And that's the only thing I could hope for a better... So even if you're not doing a formal, professional, chaplaincy thing right now, you're still out there helping people, being present.
Rabbi Miriam Berkowitz:
I hope so. I think the chaplaincy skills of trying to identify the feeling behind what their story is, that served me very well in life. I think that the two biggest gifts from chaplaincy is the listening and not fixing things, the being not doing.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
We were at Kfar Aza and Ayelet, who's a member of the kibbutz, gave us a tour. We saw the devastation, we saw burned out houses, and we heard her story, and you asked her a very poignant question. Say what you asked her.
Rabbi Miriam Berkowitz:
Yeah, well I said, how is this for you to take us around? Like, is it helpful for you that we're there to witness and know that we won't forget?
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
She's reliving the trauma every time.
Rabbi Miriam Berkowitz:
Every single day, yeah. Or is it like it's enough already and it's exhausting? And she said she is getting a bit tired, but I think she said she wants people not to forget and she does it with special groups and her husband does also every day. When we were there we saw at least three or four other groups passing through.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein::
But I think she also said she finds great meaning in being able to tell the story.
Rabbi Miriam Berkowitz:
Yeah, because it's the thing that people won't forget it and that they care. They're not going to deny it. They're not going to minimize it. And I don't know if we can learn some lessons. But I also have a great, a lot of anger. Like, why didn't the army listen to the tatzpitani oath?
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
military intelligence spotters, mainly women, who warned about the impending Hamas attack and who tragically also suffered massive casualties on October 7th.
Rabbi Miriam Berkowitz:
They made a report before and said, you know, we know something's going to happen. And, you know, why did it take so long to arrive on that day? It feels frustrating that maybe part of it could have been avoided.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
I wanted to ask you one more thing. You had mentioned earlier the need for chaplaincy in Israel. Chaplaincy is a growing profession. From your perspective as someone who's been on the front lines of developing the profession of chaplaincy in Israel. How important is that role now, post-October 7th, and where do you see it going? How can it fill a need in this society?
Rabbi Miriam Berkowitz:
Well, I don't know all the details about how it's been integrated this year. First of all, I'll step back and say that it developed very differently here than in North America. And they don't even call it chaplaincy. The first, we called it t'michah ruchani, it's like spiritual support. And then it became l'vuy ruchani, spiritual accompaniment. And the idea was, if you say it's a religious profession, then the Rabbanut will take it over. And then we won't be able to do it as Conservatives. That was a very intentional choice.
And this year, I guess everyone's different, but there's so many. The people who are worried about their kids in the army, or people who lost a relative, or people who lost their livelihood, or people who... you know, just general have anxiety and now it's worse, or people, survivor's guilt, like there's every, so many things. And then let's say in a synagogue, you've got all those different people. So over the high holidays, there was Masaorti did a lot of preparation, you know. So did the reform movement. How are we going to do the holidays? On the one hand, how can you even bother going to synagogue when this is happening and it's so much more important things? How can you even pray? It's all hollow. And on the other hand, how can you not do it?
This is where we need to be. We need to affirm normalcy. We need to affirm, you know, faith and tradition and song and community. So I think most people I knew picked something in between. Because chaplaincy didn't emerge as a religious profession here, the strength of that is that it can be in all kinds of different settings, and I think can reach people who would not be open to something specifically religious. But everybody told us in the beginning, oh, don't bother, the religious will never talk to you if you're a conservative, and the secular don't need it.
But in my experience, in all those five years, not one single person didn't want to talk unless they were just really tired and they would say, come back later. Because the people just have so much on their heart. It is important to have some kind of Jewish sources and rituals and we shouldn't completely give up on that and this is a way of helping people feel like it belongs to them on their terms, which is very important. And on the other hand, just that matters of the spirit or matters of purpose in life or forgiveness or, you know, what is my legacy to the world, this is important too. And you can't just go through life and be practical. And that this coming from the chaplaincy and bringing it to Israel is a gift to people here, an opportunity to pause and reflect. So I really hope that we continue to do it and whoever is doing it and the very diverse people who are attracted to this field for many different reasons.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
People of the state of Israel still have spiritual needs and as you said you don't have to be religious to have issues with forgiveness, or reflecting on why bad things happen to good people. I mean, there are any number of spiritual issues that are not necessarily connected to a religious tradition.
Rabbi Miriam Berkowitz:
Right, I think that they do have these needs, and this year maybe even they realized that they had them, so that's one good thing. The one thing I really, really like is the use of the Ishmael story as a metaphor for meeting someone where they are, like Ba'shel Husham. And that, I think, is the great gift of chaplaincy. You get a window into someone's story and you get to meet them where they are. And it's incredible how people just, in the first 30 seconds, tell you what's the most important thing on their mind. People here are quite open.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
Chaplains are trained to create that space.
Rabbi Miriam Berkowitz:
To feel safe, yeah. And many, many stereotypes on both sides and this amazing human connection that transcends the stereotype. To me, being a chaplain was like collecting little pearls on a necklace and you get to hear their stories.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein:
NeshamahCast is a production of Neshama, Association of Jewish Chaplains. Thank you to Chaplain Resident Mati Halperin and Rabbis Miriam Berkowitz, Beth Naditch, Naomi Kalish, Mary Brett Coplin, Yonatan Rudnick, and Barbara Speyer for their interviews. Special acknowledgement also to Rabbi Mira Rivera, who is part of our cohort and Rabbi Valerie Stessin who coordinated the chaplains track at the RA convention. They are both NAJC members who have previously been interviewed on NeshamahCast. Please find them in our feed. Please consider making a contribution to NAJC to support NeshamahCast and all of the vital work that NAJC does to promote Jewish spiritual care. Click on the link in the show notes to donate.
Thank you to Rabbi Katja Vehlow for technical support and production assistance. Additional thanks for logistical support to Allison Atterbury, NAJC Executive Director, and Rabbi Drew Kaplan and the NAJC Social Media Committee.
Transcripts for this episode and other episodes of NeshamahCast are available at neshamacast.simplecast.com and are typically posted one week after the episode first airs.
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May we all work together to heal our world. On a future trip to Israel, I definitely want to be guided by you.
Rabbi Miriam Berkowitz:
Oh, Adi Bernstein. Thank you, that's very sweet.