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Rabbi Joel Levinson on just being there
CPE and Pulpit Clergy – A Rabbi’s Reflection
It is easy for me to be the rabbi, spiritual leader of my congregation during the “good times.” Celebrating an upcoming marriage, a wedding, a birth or bar/bat mitzvah, etc., doesn’t require any great amount of training. Nor do these life cycle events present any real challenge to me personally. What does present a real challenge is walking with a family in crisis. Whether it is a medical challenge such as cancer or a spiritual crisis resulting from a multitude of curves that life has thrown in our way, the lessons and experience learned from CPE have always guided me and helped me to be a more effective rabbi.
I am not frightened to walk into a hospital room without knowing what my congregant will ask of me. In truth, it is liberating to know that I don’t have to speak for G-d. “Why is G-d doing this to me?” doesn’t necessitate my pondering some grand universal plan and trying to explain it to a person suffering. Formulating a pastoral care plan doesn’t require any prophetic skills. It does require that I remain “in the room” and at times be able to sit in silence and allow my congregants to say what is true for them, even if it means questioning G-d’s will or very existence. It isn’t necessary for me to have the answers to their questions. Just being there for them is often more than sufficient.
I have grown as a result of CPE and my work as a chaplain. I no longer get upset over “minor things.” After spending time with a hospice patient, a traffic jam meant that I got to listen a little longer to the CD in my car stereo. Rather than getting frustrated, I figured it was G-d’s way of giving me time to decompress!
Most importantly, CPE has taught me to remember who the patient is. I can “walk with them in their suffering,” knowing that it is their suffering and not mine. I leave their room a little richer for the time that I’ve been with them, grateful to G-d for the blessings in my own life!
Rabbi Joel Levinson, BCC, is an NAJC board certified chaplain. He is the rabbi of Temple Beth El of Patchogue and Jewish chaplain at Brookhaven Memorial Hospital and Good Shepherd Hospice.
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