JEWISH CHAPLAINCY OF THE UPSTATE
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
WELCOME TO JEWISH CHAPLAINCY OF THE UPSTATE
Non-affiliated Jews of Upstate South Carolina who are suffering from family or personal crisis now have access to a free ministry of pastoral care and counseling.
Jewish Chaplaincy of the Upstate is a non-profit, no-fee service directed by Rabbi Marc Howard Wilson. It addresses the most critical needs of Jewish people who are not affiliated with a particular synagogue – illness, hospitalization, visits to the homebound and nursing home residents, death, bereavement, and family or personal crises.
Rabbi Wilson comments, “Non-affiliates still have critical needs that demand our attention and compassion. Our nonjudgmental presence and assistance in their times of greatest need is a sacred obligation that is at the core of the Jewish heritage.”
“We are not creating a new synagogue,” Rabbi Wilson states in the strongest terms. “If anything, we will encourage the people we encounter to affiliate with a local congregation, and we will encourage the congregations to invite their membership. Nor are we a ministry that distributes charity. The sole focus of this ministry is helping people spiritually and pastorally in times of personal and family crises.”
For additional information or assistance, contact Jewish Chaplaincy of the Upstate at (864) 271-3715 or marcwilson1216@aol.com.
ABOUT RABBI MARC HOWARD WILSON
RABBI MARC HOWARD WILSON is a pastoral counselor and caregiver, speaker, columnist and a consultant specializing in organizational development, community relations and communications for congregational, corporate and non-profit clients.
He has served as a congregational rabbi for three decades, holding pulpits in Chicago, Atlanta, Charlotte and Greenville, South Carolina. His essays have been published in the Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune, Charlotte Observer, San Francisco Examiner, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Greenville News Asheville Citizen-Times, Jüdische Allgemeine (Germany) and New York Jewish Week. They have been distributed by Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, BeliefNet and Religion News Service. He has been the monthly back-page columnist for Greenville Magazine and writes a regular column for the e-zines Jewsweek (“Wilson’s Wisdom”) and eGullet (“Cardiac A’fressed”).
His speaking engagements have brought him to such diverse venues as church and synagogue scholar-in-residence programs, keynote addresses at Clemson University’s Institute on Community Development, Furman University’s Institute on Religion and Public Life, South Carolina United Methodist Church Convention, a variety of civic and religious groups, and numerous Jewish communities under the aegis of the United Jewish Communities’ Speakers Bureau.
As a rabbi, Wilson’s areas of expertise are in community advocacy, interfaith relations, organizational design/development and adult education. He is a summa cum laude graduate of DePaul University (Chicago) and was ordained by the Hebrew Theological College (Chicago), from which he also holds a Bachelor of Hebrew Literature degree and Hebrew teacher and principal certificates. He has also served as a Graduate Fellow at the Chicago Institute of Pastoral Care.
Wilson is the founder of two synagogue-based homeless shelters and has served in a variety of organizations, including Charlotte Area Clergy Association (Chair), Urban Training Organization of Atlanta (Co-Chair), Mayor’s Religious Advisory Committee (Co-Chair), Metrolina AIDS Consortium, Joint Urban Ministries, Bioethics Resource Group, Presbyterian/Mercy Hospitals’ Clinical Review Committee and advisor to two Clinical Pastoral Education programs. For his efforts and work with the homeless, he was named Community Servant of the Year by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In Greenville, he is the founder of Faith Communities United, the first interfaith-interracial coalition in the Upstate of South Carolina and the Jewish Chaplaincy of the Upstate. He has been named one of Greenville’s 50 most influential leaders. He co-chaired the city’s first interfaith/interracial service to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and is working with Greenville County Council on declaring Dr. King’s birthday an official holiday. For these efforts, he received the African American Charity Coalition’s annual Human Relations Award, the first non-African American to be so honored.
Wilson's wife, Linda, is Program Director of the Upstate Homeless Coalition. He is exceptionally proud of their blended family of eight children and children-in-law, who include physicians, an IBM technologist, an MBA candidate, and a seminary student in Jerusalem/New York. None of this overshadows his boundless pride and love for his granddaughter, Sophie, named for his late mother, and his grandson, Simeon, named for his late father.
Beside his children and grandchildren, Wilson considers his greatest accomplishment having put his career on hold for five years to become the primary caregiver to his homebound parents . . . and making a kickin' kosher gumbo.
Read Rabbi Wilson's essays at MARC MUSING.
Thursday, October 16, 2003
JEWISH ISSUES IN PASTORAL CARE
Cultural/Ethnic
The vast majority of American Jews is highly acculturated and upwardly mobile, thus reflecting the lifestyle and mores of the societal mainstream.
Elderly Jews patients may speak Yiddish (Judeo-German) or Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), and may be Holocaust survivors, with related apprehensions and emotional scars.
Younger and middle-aged Jewish patients may be immigrants, speakers of Hebrew, Russian, or Farsi, not yet fully attuned to mainstream culture and “American-style” health care, particularly Russians, who have an entirely different concept of “navigating the system.”
Ritual Concerns
Many Jews observe kosher laws to some extent (specially slaughtered meat and poultry, separation of milk and meat, including dishes and utensils, abstinence from pork and shellfish).
Majority is not particularly strict with all aspects of kosher laws, but may prefer to avoid pork, shellfish, and mixing milk and meat at same meal.
Many Jews abstain from bread and other leavened items on Passover. With physician’s permission, may wish to fast on Yom Kippur and Ninth of Av.
Jews who strictly observe Sabbath and Holy Days prefer to postpone all but the most necessary medical procedures from those days.
Whenever possible, provisions should be made (within constraints of safety) to kindle candles on Sabbath eve and on the nights of Hanukkah.
Pastoral Visitation
Judaism believes primarily in the “ministry of presence,” the act of simply “being there,” listening and responding with empathy, allowing the patient or family member the latitude to set the tone and content of the conversation.
Judaism does not believe in surrendering to illness as “God’s will,” or that keeping “a stiff upper lip” is necessarily the most helpful therapeutic approach to patient and family wellbeing. Permission to grieve, act out, or remain silent is the essence of therapeutic processes. The ancient Jewish sages recognized the necessity of these processes, much in the way that Dr. Kubler-Ross did in our own day.
Note, please, that most Jews are hypersensitive to the notion of having “someone else’s religion” forced on them, and this will chafe at a prayer offered in Jesus’ name. The pastoral visit, however, should include a prayer and/or Psalm (particularly 20, 27 and/or 91), for which the chaplain might underscore the Jewish origin. The traditional Mi She-Berakh prayer states:
May God who has blessed us now bring blessings of healing on. May s/he know no more sadness, no more sorrow, no more pain, no more suffering. Rather, may s/he be at one with the Lord her/his God, walking in God’s ways and pursuing God’s teachings. May s/he be restored to good health, a restoration of body and spirit, that s/he might soon be privileged to offer thanksgiving for the gift of her/his healing. Amen.
Only the largest cities have established Jewish communal chaplaincy programs. Otherwise, the local rabbis eagerly pitch in. If the patient is affiliated with one of the local congregations, his/her rabbi should be alerted as soon as possible. If the patient is unaffiliated or lives in another city, one of the rabbis (or, in the case of Upstate South Carolina, Jewish Chaplaincy of the Upstate) should likewise be alerted.
Ethical Issues
Judaism’s posture on most bio-ethical issues is in relative conformity with most mainstream liberal faith communities. Patient and family should thus be encouraged to draw their rabbi into contemplating a bio-ethical decision.
Note that orthodox and most conservative Jews:
Sanction abortion only under life-threatening circumstances.
Define death as cessation of spontaneous respiration and heartbeat, not “brain death.”
Typically expect a “full court press,” including resuscitation of patients in extremis, withholding life-sustaining treatment in instances in which the patient is irreversibly moribund. Then, only omissive, but never comissive, euthanasia is allowed, treading the thin (imaginary?) line between extending life and prolonging the inevitability of death.
Object to post-mortem examination except under potentially life-saving circumstances. Autopsy is considered a mutilation of the body, and the body must be buried intact.
Judaism does not see illness and death as punishment. Rather, they are time for reconciliation and making peace. Nor does Judaism subscribe to the idea of “God needed another angel in heaven.” Death is part of life’s inevitability. God judges us lovingly and mercifully on the quality of our deeds. Our very finitude and mortality should be the greatest stimulants to living our lives to the fullest today, for tomorrow is always an unknown.
