To kick off Season 4 during Spiritual Care Week, NeshamaCast passes the host mantle from founding host and creator Rabbi Ed Bernstein to Rabbi Scott Klein. In this premiere conversation, Rabbi Scott Klein speaks with Rabbi Bruce Pfeffer, BCC, of Indiana University Health. Together, they explore how Jewish chaplains integrate into multidisciplinary clinical teams, how ancient Jewish practices like chavruta (paired text study) can help clinicians process lament and grief, and the tangible impact of Team-Based Spirituality at the hospital bedside.
Episode Dedication:
This episode of NeshamaCast is sponsored by Dr. Shahrad and Ruth Mabourakh of Plantation, Florida, in loving memory of Ruth’s mother, Marilyn Gamse Potter, who passed away in August 2026. Zichrona livracha—may Marilyn’s memory be for a blessing.
Spiritual Care Week:
Observed annually during the fourth week of October, Spiritual Care Week (also celebrated as Pastoral Care Week) is an international observance sponsored by the COMISS Network (Congress on Ministries in Specialized Settings) to recognize and celebrate the vital contributions of professional chaplains, pastoral counselors, and spiritual caregivers. Longtime NAJC leader and past president Rabbi Joe Ozarowski represents NAJC on the COMISS Network Board. Learn more at spiritualcareweek.org.
Related Listening:
Hear how Rabbi Bruce Pfeffer’s colleagues at Indiana University Health—Dr. Alex Lion and Rev. Anastasia Holman—reflect on clinical team dynamics and utilizing the Jewish concept of hevruta at the bedside on the Association of Professional Chaplains (APC) podcast:
In this episode, we discuss:
About Our Guest:
Rabbi Bruce J. Pfeffer, DD, BCC, has been a rabbi and chaplain since 2000, following an initial career as an industrial engineer. He serves as a chaplain at Indiana University Health, where his work has included the ALS Multi-Disciplinary Clinic, the Neurology Movement Disorders Clinic, hospice care, and research intervention. He collaborates with the Daniel F. Evans Center for Spiritual and Religious Values in Healthcare on projects including Team-Based Spirituality Care Training, and currently serves as a Congregational Care Network (CCN) chaplain in Fort Wayne, IN. Rabbi Pfeffer leads prayer at Temple Beth El in Muncie, IN, and DePauw University Hillel in Greencastle, IN, and has taught religious school for more than 18 years. At home, he is a baker of bread, yogurt maker, and student of bookbinding, crochet, origami, and haiku.
[Audio: Theme music plays – "A Niggun for Ki Anu Amecha" by Reb Cantor Lisa Levine]
Recorded Voiceover: 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.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein: Shalom, friends. In the summer of 2023, I made a proposal to the leadership of NAJC, namely Rabbi Joe Ozarowski, who was then the president, and his president-elect, Rabbanit Alissa Thomas-Newborn. And I had just gotten on the board, and I made a proposal: "You know, it might be nice for NAJC to have a podcast in which our members can come online and talk about issues in Jewish chaplaincy, and share our learning with our colleagues and also the wider world."
And to my great delight, and perhaps a tiny bit of surprise, they said, "Go with it, Ed!" And NeshamaCast was born. It has been my pleasure to take us through these three years with over 40 guests who are members of NAJC, and expose ourselves and the broader world to the wisdom, and the caring, and the stories that Jewish chaplains have to share.
I've taken on other responsibilities in NAJC. I'm chairing our next conference, so chaplain colleagues, please plan on joining me May 23rd to 26th in Atlanta, Georgia, for the next NAJC conference, which I'm thrilled to be chairing. And so I looked far and wide for someone who could take on the mantle of NeshamaCast host. I didn't have to search too hard because I found that person, and that is Rabbi Scott Klein. He appeared on our show towards the end of Season 3 in a fantastic conversation about military chaplaincy. He told his personal story in that episode. Scott is someone who is a fantastic chaplain, a mensch, a very learned person who is intellectually curious and always seeking to learn more. And on top of that, he has amazing media savvy and will be a great podcast presenter.
Rabbi Scott Klein: I have been an avid listener to all three seasons of NeshamaCast, and I applaud you for the vision that you've created. I know so many folks that have learned so much, have been inspired by your leadership, and the conversations and the content that has been provided. It is an absolute privilege to step into the role of host and build upon the incredible foundation and vision that you've created over these past three seasons of NeshamaCast. So, yasher koach, thank you so, so much. I'm excited for the conference; I will be there in Atlanta. I encourage all of our colleagues, of course, to join, because I know I'll be building on your tradition. I think after a couple years we can now call it a chazakah—it's really now an established tradition that there will be a live recording of NeshamaCast, and I'm very, very excited to join you, Ed.
Well, Ed, I know you are not going far from the NeshamaCast airwaves, and you are continuing to ensure the sustainability of these important conversations. And in fact, there are several sponsors that have been lined up for today's episode and to support Season 4. So, Ed, let's make sure we acknowledge and introduce some of those gracious supporters.
Rabbi Ed Bernstein: Yeah, well, first, last year in NeshamaCast Season 3, we took a great leap forward in joining forces with Steve Lubetkin and his company to professionally produce NeshamaCast, which has really enhanced the quality of our program. And this production requires resources. We had some generous contributions last year; we have some more this year.
So this episode, starting our Season 4, is sponsored by my friends, Dr. Shahrad and Ruth Mabourakh of Plantation, Florida, in memory of Ruth's mother, Marilyn Gamse Potter, who died in August 2026. May Marilyn's memory be for a blessing. So I thank the Mabourakhs and their generosity and their support and trust in the NeshamaCast project. And we're blessed by people like them who are making this program possible.
So now, having acknowledged our sponsors, I'm thrilled to pass the torch of leadership of NeshamaCast to Rabbi Scott Klein.
Rabbi Scott Klein: Thank you so much, Ed. I accept that torch and the microphone, and let's jump right in.
So we are launching Season 4 right in the heart of Spiritual Care Week, a time when healthcare systems and communities pause to honor the sacred work of presence, dignity, and spiritual accompaniment. So in our world, chaplains don't simply walk the halls alone. We are embedded—and that's a really key word, embedded—right alongside physicians, nurses, social workers, and clinical teams on the front lines of human crisis. We know that when a medical team integrates authentic spiritual care, the very culture of the clinical unit shifts from transactional symptom management to holistic human healing.
Our guest today has spent years pioneering how we bring ancient Jewish modalities right into modern medical teams. Joining us for Episode 1 of Season 4 of NeshamaCast is Rabbi Bruce Pfeffer, Board Certified Chaplain with Indiana University Health. Bruce has served in acute hospital care within the Neurology Movement Disorders Clinic, where he developed Team-Based Spirituality programs and brought the classic Jewish practice of chavruta—paired text study—straight into clinician training and medical conferences.
Bruce, it is such a joy and an honor to welcome you to NeshamaCast.
Rabbi Bruce Pfeffer: Thank you. It's good to be here.
Rabbi Scott Klein: Thank you so much for joining us. Bruce, I want to jump right in, and I want to talk—take our listeners straight into your origin story, which I know is fascinating. As chaplains, we all carry a defining moment or internal calling that pulls us out of the traditional pulpit or classroom and puts us right at the hospital bedside. So I want to hear your story, and I know our listeners will too. What called you into healthcare chaplaincy, and what has kept you dedicated to this work across so many clinical environments?
Rabbi Bruce Pfeffer: Thank you. When I went to college, I studied to be an engineer. I didn't know I was going to become a rabbi, let alone a chaplain. My plan was to be an engineer. I did work as an industrial engineer for about five years. And, well, I wasn't doing enough to help the world. I would save maybe a few hundred thousand dollars by moving machines a little and getting more efficient. But the theory is that when you save money as an industrial engineer, the money is supposed to go a three-way split. Some of the money goes to the workers whose work you've changed—they get higher salaries. Some of the money goes to the customer because in savings. And some goes to the stockholders.
But what you see happening is the price is just whatever the market will bear; they try to pay the employees as little as possible, and it's going to the stockholders. So I felt I wasn't doing enough to make the world a better place. And then on top of that, I found myself one time unemployed. All of a sudden, I had this urge—I guess people would call it a calling—to become a rabbi, which is not the normal thing for an engineer. Sure, there's a lot of rabbis who used to be lawyers, but there's only a few of us who used to be engineers.
And so that brought me to Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, but first to Jerusalem. I struggled with Hebrew, and what got me through it was working with study partners in Israel, and it made a big difference. And I became a big believer in study partners where we could read things out loud to each other and help each other. And I'm very thankful to them.
So that's the beginning of me getting to be a rabbi. But how did I end up being a chaplain? I was at Hebrew Union College, and along the way, I met my future wife. Now, I was from the East Coast; I grew up in New Jersey, I was born in the Bronx. And she was from Long Island, but she had moved to Cincinnati for a new job as a physician in infectious diseases, and doctor and a specialist in infection prevention and control. And, well, we got married. I knew that I wasn't going to get a congregational job in Cincinnati because there's only so many synagogues there.
So I took CPE because we had to, and I loved it. It was a real change for me. I decided I could be a chaplain, and that's what I did. So that was my journey to being a chaplain.
Before we had children, before I was married, I used to say, "You know, if there's a couple and one makes a good living and one makes less, the one who makes less can take care of children." And it's as if my wife called my bluff, because she made more money, and so I became a full-time dad.
And because of having a part-time job—because I worked as a chaplain part-time—all these things fell in my lap. I worked in an ALS clinic, multidisciplinary clinic with a social worker, because they needed someone to provide routine standard care. So I would see the patient once a month while the other special chaplain in the research would see them a few times a week or something along those lines. It also meant I would end up in the Parkinson's clinic because they needed a part-time chaplain. Not at the same time; these were all separate events.
And it also meant that I ended up being an interventionist in research. And it also meant that I ended up working in team-based spiritual care training. I did not invent that, okay? There was another group: Dr. Alex Lion, Reverend Chaplain Anastasia Holman, an educator; Mona Reed, a physician—they wrote a curriculum. It's available now for anybody to use. That group, as well as Rabbi Ben Snyder—the five of us have worked on a lot of projects together. So that is my journey.
Rabbi Scott Klein: Amazing, Bruce. And I feel like I should add so many more titles to your introduction now that we know actually you started as an engineer, an industrial engineer, and you bring so many perspectives into your role as a chaplain today. And I know that for many of our colleagues, the journey towards healthcare or any other form of chaplaincy is not direct. What a fascinating journey.
I want to jump into something that you did that I find absolutely brilliant, and you've talked a little bit about that: in traditional Jewish learning, chavruta—sitting knee-to-knee in pairs to debate, interrogate, and to digest sacred text. That's our intellectual and spiritual lifeblood. So you just gave the shout-outs, and I love that you did it: you talked about Dr. Alex Lion and Reverend Anastasia Holman, and you presented alongside at the Conference on Medicine and Religion. I hate to shame all of the folks that are the PowerPoint masters out there, but instead of just another PowerPoint panel, you turned that entire room into a lively beit midrash, a house of study, pairing up 50 mostly non-Jewish physicians, nurses, and clinicians for chavruta study.
So talk to us about that moment. How did you introduce this ancient Jewish technology to secular and interfaith healthcare providers, and what happened when they actually started engaging that text face-to-face?
Rabbi Bruce Pfeffer: It took a few years to get there. The first year, the five of us—also Ben Snyder, Mona Reed—we're a diverse group. Mona Reed is a Muslim, I'm of course a Jew, Alex Lion is a conservative Protestant, and Anastasia Holman is an African American, so we cover lots of bases. We had a panel the previous year at the Conference on Medicine and Religion on the Book of Job. Alex Lion started by asking me, "Bruce, how would you like to be on a panel presentation on the Book of Job?" I wanted to run the other way. I said, "There's no way I'm going to be on a panel presentation about the Book of Job." But I said, "Yes, sure." And I did, and it was a lot of fun, but we were the sages on the stage. We each talked about something about the Book of Job that we found interesting. It went very well, people very excited about that.
But the following year, Alex Lion said, "Let's talk about the lament," because he is a pediatric neuro-oncologist. He works with children, and the families sometimes have to lament. He said, "Let's have another panel discussion." And I said, "Well, there's this thing we have called chavruta," and I explained that you work in pairs. I've done this with children and with adults. Now, and they were Jews, and even they don't know what to do, because if you're steeped in it, you know what to do. But if you don't, and you say, "Let's study this text together in pairs," people read it silently, and then they look at each other and they don't know what to do.
So I read—I have a text, I'll read it: Talmid echad hayah l'Rabbi Eliezer shehayah shoneh b'lachash. L'achar shalosh shanim, shachach talmudo. Rabbi Eliezer had a student who used to study quietly. After three years, he forgot what he had learned. And when I do this with that large group of people who mostly were not Jewish, I read that text, and I explain to them that there's different modes of learning. One of them is to hear and to speak words. And you have to read it out loud to your partner, and then you read a few lines out loud, and then they read a few lines, and along the way you interrupt and discuss further. And they did it!
It was incredible. The classic way that it's good is when you say, "Okay, let's stop," and they keep going. So the first part, we introduced ourselves as a panel. We had to make a book ahead of time with laments from the different religious traditions, and we also threw in spiritual songs, African American spirituals like "Go Down Moses," which I always thought was a Jewish song because we always sing it at the seder every year, but it is from the African Americans, enslaved people. This worked great. The main part was the chavruta. And then after that, we gave people a chance to write their own laments. Then we gave a few brave people the chance to recite their laments. It was a wonderful experience; it really worked well.
The following year at the conference, they had me work a Jewish bioethics symposium, and I had a similar approach. Instead of being the sage on the stage, I got five or so chaplains and physicians to have a presentation. We put together a book again so people worked in pairs, reading text to each other and studying it out loud, and arguing with the text. And so I'm a big fan of chavruta.
Rabbi Scott Klein: It's powerful. And again, focusing on lament, studying that Book of Job alongside Christian, Muslim, African American spirituals like "Go Down Moses"—I'm beaming as I hear that, and I absolutely just learned something new!
So again, I'm chatting with Rabbi Bruce Pfeffer. And Bruce, in medicine there's so much emphasis on resilience and bouncing back. I talk about it on a daily basis, but very little institutional permission for clinicians to simply sit in the dirt and lament the patients that they couldn't save, or the suffering that they witness every shift. I want to push you a little bit more: Why was chavruta such an effective vehicle for breaking through clinical isolation, and how did wrestling with sacred text give these healthcare professionals a vocabulary for medical grief that a standard hospital debrief just completely misses?
Rabbi Bruce Pfeffer: I hadn't thought about that, but I think it's just a different approach. Some people in their churches, they might have a Bible study class, which isn't exactly chavruta, but it's similar. You're going around the room and maybe each person reads a few lines; that's another method that's also effective. And they never thought about doing that with anything to do with medicine. And so I think that they just did it, and they saw they got excited again, like when they were children learning something new.
Rabbi Scott Klein: So let's move out of the conference hall, Bruce, and right into the clinic. As mentioned, you've spent much of your career at IU Health serving in PRN and part-time roles, which require a very distinct clinical muscle. When you're floating around units, you don't always have weeks to build rapport with a floor nurse or an attending physician. You have about 90 seconds—that's my calculation—to walk in, read the room, and establish clinical credibility and bring calm to a high-stress crisis. How did navigating that reality sharpen your instincts for reading clinical teams, and how did you get medical staff to see you not as an outsider checking a box, but as an indispensable clinical partner?
Rabbi Bruce Pfeffer: I gotta give some credit to IU Health. In Indianapolis especially—I don't know about the other hospitals, I haven't worked there—but at IU Health Indianapolis, at the Riley Hospital, University Hospital, and Methodist Hospital, they have a good experience with chaplains. They work well with physicians. Not always—there's always rough spots, but they are used to it. And the doctors and the nurses will sometimes direct you where you should go.
One time there was a physician, chief resident, whose parent—I think it was his mother, his father died. And the nurses said, "Oh, you gotta go talk, you gotta go over there." So I went there, and there was a doctor, and I was a chaplain, and he like was shutting me down. He said, "Oh, no, no." And I said, "Listen, I'm not going to tell you that there's a reason your father died; I don't believe that." And he said, "Sit down. You can sit with me." And then I listened mostly. They were used to chaplains, and that helped make things work better.
Rabbi Scott Klein: Wow. You took this team-centered approach into the Neurology Movement Disorders Clinic at IU Health, building an eight-week Team-Based Spirituality training program directly with neurologists, fellows, and nurses. Now, neurology is notoriously analytical, fast-paced, and diagnostic. When a rabbi walks in and announces an eight-week spiritual training curriculum, I imagine, Bruce, you may have had some eyebrows raised. What kind of skepticism or institutional resistance did you face at the outset?
Rabbi Bruce Pfeffer: Well, you're making me bigger than I am, thank you. I didn't set this program up. It was the team that I mentioned before that set up the program, but they did push back, and some people wanted PowerPoints, because they've done this a few times. And I'm a big fan of the text the way it is: we take turns reading paragraphs and then discuss it. Sometimes somebody would bring—I'm jumping ahead—somebody would bring, "Oh, I found this article, can I read it?" I said, "Of course."
So we did have physicians, nurses, and medical assistants—let's not forget them, they were there—and one of the medical assistants, I think it was, because we had an exercise where they put Post-it notes about their thoughts, she was very skeptical about the whole process of chaplains. So we worked through the process, and people don't understand what chaplains do; they think we're just pastors who are telling people what they should believe. But we follow where they are. We as chaplains know that, and once they see that, they became advocates for us.
Shelly Varner Perez, another chaplain, a research chaplain, and I were leading this group. She wasn't able to continue after the third session. We were alternating; she had done one session with PowerPoints, and they weren't having it, which I think we were all happy about that. They liked the reading.
Rabbi Scott Klein: Yet over those eight weeks, something remarkable happened: those same skeptical clinicians turned into passionate champions for spiritual care. So from your vantage point as the facilitator, what was that breakthrough moment? What shifted in how those physicians, nurses, medical assistants viewed their own burnout, and how did it change the way they stood in front of their patients?
Rabbi Bruce Pfeffer: I think they heard me talking about things that they don't normally say out loud—about the grief and the fear, and how you can comfort people. That's one part of it.
The other part is I'd been working in the Parkinson's clinic with one of the physicians for over a couple years. They were excited about having a chaplain, so some of the people were already excited about chaplains and had a lot of enthusiasm of what we bring to the table. In the Parkinson's clinic, I would often go in with the physician, and sit there trying not to say much while the patient talks at first. Then, when I was new, the doctor would say, "I'm going to let Chaplain Pfeffer introduce his role." I didn't really introduce my role; I just did my role.
Because if you ask people, "Would you like to see a chaplain?", usually they're going to say no, because chaplain represents death and nobody wants the chaplain. But if they just see you doing your work, then they're happy with it, so you need that moment.
Rabbi Scott Klein: Spiritual Care Week is all about honoring presence in action. Give us a window into what this synergy looks like at the bedside. Can you share a concrete case—protecting privacy, of course—where you and a physician or a nurse walked into a room together, and where having that aligned interdisciplinary presence completely transformed a patient's care trajectory?
Rabbi Bruce Pfeffer: I'm going to talk about the ALS multidisciplinary clinic for this, okay? Because I haven't mentioned anything about that, and that happened when I first got there. They were doing a research project, and I was the standard care; I was the control group.
And the first day I got there, the chaplains, the research chaplain, the previous chaplain, forgot to tell them that I was coming. So here I was, I just got plopped in from the moon or something. They didn't know what to do with me. There was a whiteboard where they had columns with each person, and the chaplain column had X's all over it because they asked, "Would you like a chaplain? No, no, no." So I wasn't going to see too many patients that day.
Over time, they saw what I could do. Two years later—and this is really where the story begins—two years later, my last day, there was a family where the patient didn't want to see the chaplain. So the same woman who before had crossed off chaplain with X's said, "Bruce, Mr. Peloni—of course that wasn't his actual name—Mr. Peloni doesn't want to see a chaplain, but he needs to see you. So please, just go in and say, 'I know you don't want to see the chaplain; I just want to check in and see how you're doing.'" And that's exactly what I did, and I ended up talking with them for 30 to 45 minutes.
Then later, when he was in a different hospital, not IU Health, my supervisor said I could go and meet him there as part of our spiritual care. I went in and talked to him, and he was delighted to see me. When he died, the family was so thankful for what I had done for him.
Rabbi Scott Klein: That is a powerful story. Thank you for sharing, Bruce.
You've also been on the cutting edge of clinical research, serving as an interventionist using tools like SCAI—Spiritual Care Assessment and Intervention—at IU Health during the COVID-19 pandemic. As professional chaplaincy continues to advance its evidence base and validate board certification standards across health systems, how do you see research tools complementing the spontaneous, soul-to-soul holy work that happens when a chaplain pulls up a chair?
Rabbi Bruce Pfeffer: I'm very excited about this part, okay? Because, and that's again, it fell in my lap because I was available to help out with this study. It was before the pandemic; they'd already had a few chaplains before me. This was a randomized study, a single-blind study, because the people who enrolled, the family members, did not know if they were going to be in the control group or the intervention group.
The intervention group was not with the patients. The name of this paper that was published is Effects of Spiritual Care on Well-Being of Intensive Care Family Surrogates: A Clinical Trial. If a person was in the hospital and could not communicate, then they were eligible to be enrolled—the surrogate, meaning a family member or friend. And if it was randomized into that I would meet with them, then I would meet with the person by phone about once a week for several weeks.
And we used the SCAI—Spiritual Care Assessment and Intervention process—which I didn't really know much about, but now I do. And it's a flexible program; you still do your own work as a chaplain, but what happens is you ask one question in each of four different dimensions. They're great questions, such as: "Everyone's known for something. What are you known for?" I love that question; it gets people to just talk about themselves. Another question is: "Who's your go-to person?" That also opens up doors like you wouldn't believe. And, "How do you help center yourself?" That's another one; I think I'm going to hit all four dimensions. Then there are a few about God, too, which escaped my mind. Some people say God is my go-to person. Whatever you say, they're going to talk about God, and then you know something about that person.
It was just such an incredible experience, and that tool doesn't stop you from following up in your own direction, but it gives you good questions. The people I worked with, I never saw them, but they were in pain a lot of times, and I was able to actually work with them by telephone. I never thought I would be able to do that.
Rabbi Scott Klein: That's very, very powerful. Again, we've been chatting with Rabbi Bruce Pfeffer, Chaplain Bruce Pfeffer, and as we've discovered in the course of the conversation, Industrial Engineer Bruce Pfeffer as well! So many different titles, but Bruce, you bring so much passion, innovation, and so much Torah and wisdom into your work as a chaplain.
In keeping with our NeshamaCast tradition, as we celebrate Spiritual Care Week with colleagues serving in hospitals, hospices, elder care, and military bases around the globe, what is a piece of Torah, a Jewish teaching, or grounding spiritual practice that keeps your soul steady at the bedside and that you'd like to offer to our listeners today?
Rabbi Bruce Pfeffer: I'm going to bring you a few, okay?
One is from Shem Tov ibn Falaquera, and he said—I only have the translation in English of this one: "Why do we have two ears and one mouth? So we can listen twice as much as we speak."
And this is similar in some ways to what Shammai said. Everyone—I love Hillel, but he gets quoted all the time, so I'm going to give Shammai a chance: "Make the study of Torah your primary occupation. Say little, do much." And this is the part that I'm focusing on, the next part: "And greet each person with a cheerful countenance, a cheerful face." So sometimes smiling gets you very far. You can't always smile, but you often can.
And Rabbi Tarfon: "You are not obligated to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it." That's also a piece of advice I give to people. We can't finish everything, but we can do our bit.
Rabbi Scott Klein: Beautiful. Rabbi Pfeffer, thank you for your vision, your mentorship across our profession, and for sharing your wisdom and energy to launch Season 4 of NeshamaCast with such power. Yasher koach and chazak u'varuch for all the sacred work that you continue to do.
Rabbi Bruce Pfeffer: You're welcome. I really enjoyed it.
Rabbi Scott Klein: And thank you for joining us for the premiere episode of Season 4 of NeshamaCast! NeshamaCast is a proud production of Neshama: Association of Jewish Chaplains. Be sure to check our episode show notes for more information about Rabbi Bruce Pfeffer, his presentations, and his work at Indiana University Health.
A special thank you to our audio producer, Steve Lubetkin and Lubetkin Media Companies, for producing and engineering this episode.
A tremendous thank you goes once again to Rabbi Ed Bernstein for his vision in developing NeshamaCast, which is continuing on once again for Season 4 thanks in a huge part to Rabbi Bernstein's leadership.
We also give additional gratitude to Rabbi Arnie Samlan, NAJC Executive Director; Rabbi Mira Rivera, Chair of the NAJC Social Media Committee; and the entire committee for their dedicated logistical support and leadership.
Our spiritual theme music is "A Niggun for Ki Anu Amecha," written and performed by Reb-Cantor Lisa Levine. Transcripts for this episode are available automatically in the Apple Podcasts app.
Please help us amplify the vital reach of Jewish spiritual care by taking a moment to rate and review NeshamaCast on your favorite podcast app, especially Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and be sure to follow NAJC on Facebook and LinkedIn to stay connected to the sacred work happening across our communities every single day.
And finally, please consider making a contribution to NAJC to support NeshamaCast and the vital work we do nationwide. We are so grateful to Dr. Shahrad and Ruth Mabourakh for sponsoring today's premiere, and we warmly welcome generous gifts to sponsor upcoming episodes throughout Season 4. We also encourage institutional sponsorships from hospitals, hospices, and organizations where NAJC chaplains proudly serve. If you or your organization would like to sponsor an upcoming episode in honor of a loved one, a colleague, or a milestone, please write to us at neshamacast@gmail.com, or simply click on the donation link in our show notes.
I'm Rabbi Scott Klein, and as we mark Spiritual Care Week, may we all continue our work together in bringing presence, comfort, and healing to our world. And we'll see you next month on NeshamaCast.
[Audio: Theme music swells up and plays to the end of the recording]