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NIJH was established in 1985 to help alleviate suffering in serious and terminal illness. Its 52,000 members comprise business and professional leaders, and a consortium of endowing foundations. It communicates with hospices, hospitals, family service, medical organizations and all health-care agencies alerting them to the plight of the Jewish terminally ill. A 24 hour toll-free number counsels families, patients and care-givers, and provides locations of hospices, hospitals, health professionals and clergy of all faiths. NIJH helped launch 55 Jewish hospice programs in the United States and Canada assisting facilities in planning conferences, training staff and designing appropriate workshops to better serve the Jewish terminally ill.
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Give the gift of Perpetuity The Jewish Hospice Times The National Institute for Jewish Hospice Newsletter. Contains helpful news and information. Email us and let us know you'd like to be included in our email list to receive the Jewish Hospice Times. More news articles and information for journalists.. A
significant breakthrough on the Jewish Hospice front is becoming a
reality. A Letter from Haven Hospice of Florida on Accreditation Training:Rabbi & Mrs. Lamm, I just wanted to share with both of you what it has meant for Haven Hospice of Florida to be accredited by the Nat'l Institute for Jewish Hospice. After receiving our initial training last year, our team put together an entire education package for our staff. Since we have teams covering most of North Fla, we traveled to every site as we wanted to be sure every employee received the information on how to properly care for terminally ill patients of the Jewish faith. We received only positive comments from the staff. They learned proper care for our Jewish patients both before & after death. They became fully engaged as we taught them about Jewish customs & beliefs. The written material provided by you for the course served as an excellent resource for us this past year as we have cared for more Jewish patients. We have also been able to positively collaborate with local Jewish organizations to better serve our patients. May I say thank you for allowing us this opportunity to lean and grow as we better serve our patients. Linda Scaz, RN, PhD. Reprint from
The Jewish Press NIJH Conference: Learning the Jewish Ways of Mourningby Tova Stulman There was the Jewish World War II veteran in a hospice in Florida who was afraid to die because he was not proud of his actions while a prisoner of war. He was only comforted when Rabbi Maurice Lamm told him that, as a prisoner, he was certainly in dire circumstances.
And there was an 11-year old boy who
blamed himself for his older brother’s cancer and called a hospice
care hotline, telling Mrs. Shirley Lamm that he had skipped Hebrew
School, and G-d was surely punishing him. He asked Mrs. Lamm for
prayers that he could say.
In her introductory remarks at the
recent National Institute for Jewish Hospice (NIJH) conference,
Mrs. Shirley Lamm, the executive director, recounted these
touching stories and more.
Hospices from many cities around the
country, such as Fort Worth, Texas, and Arlington Heights,
Illinois, sent representatives to the conference, which had a
roster of sterling speakers. They ran the gamut from Southern
Baptist ministers to Orthodox rabbis, but all who attended had a
vested interest in learning more about all the laws and
intricacies involved in Jewish death and burial.
Aside from the many speakers, the
eight-hour conference included a buffet breakfast and catered
lunch, and a wrap-up ceremony where those who attended received
their accreditation certificates.
Rabbi Dr. Maurice Lamm established
NIJH in 1985 in order to help alleviate the suffering of seriously
and terminally ill Jewish patients. Rabbi Lamm is a noted Yeshiva
University professor and author of,
Consolation: The Spiritual
Journey Beyond Grief,
and The Jewish Way in Death and
Mourning,” among other
books.
NIJH currently has more than 50,000
constituents, including hospices, universities, and laypeople.
Since its inception, it has helped launch over 50 Jewish hospice
programs throughout North America, and provided immeasurable
comfort and advice to those in need.
Mrs. Lamm then introduced her husband,
who began his speech by defining an
onen – the status of a
bereaved person from the time of death of a close relative until
the burial. He discussed the
onen’s obligations, explaining that he is freed from doing
positive mitzvot during
that time, and then addressed religious concerns having to do with
the casket, type of service, choice of rabbi, etc.
Borrowing from his identity as a
college professor, Rabbi Lamm prompted the audience to participate
throughout his speech, having them call out answers to his
questions while reminding them that he would not let them fall
asleep. He also explained the week of
shivah and other
concepts, and spent some time on the differences between Christian
and Jewish mourning processes.
Despite the seriousness of the
subject, Rabbi Lamm kept it lighthearted. At one point he received
a phone call and launched into mimicking, the now infamous call,
Giuliani received during a campaign speech. “It’s my wife,” he
told the audience, though his wife was really sitting merely a few
feet away.
Rabbi Lamm was also emphatic in praise of
his wife, saying, “Without her, there’d be no NIJH.”
Finally, Rabbi Lamm made sure to note
that besides caring for the body, caring for the family of the
deceased is just as essential.
The next speaker was Rabbi Dr. Earl
Grollman, a well-known rabbi, writer, and lecturer who spoke about
the grief process in a session entitled “Good Grief: The Role of
the Professional.” In his speech, full of witticisms and humorous
quips, the dynamic Rabbi Grollman explained how he became well
versed in counseling the bereaved.
In rabbinical school, he says, nobody spoke
too much about death, especially with how to deal with loss. When
he became an assistant rabbi in Boston, he quickly had his first
encounter with death, from a mother who called to say that her son
had drowned in summer camp. That was the first funeral he ever
attended, and the first he ever conducted.
Wanting to find out how to explain
death and offer comfort, he went to the library to read up on the
subject, but found a dearth of literature on the subject. This
prompted him to begin writing about the subject, earning him the
nickname “Malach HaMavet”
(“Angel of Death”) by his peers.
“I wrote,” he said, “because I wanted
to find answers for myself, not because I wanted to give answers.”
He learned the answers, not from books, but from people. “Instead
of asking, ‘How can I help you?’ I always ask ‘How can you help
me?’”
Since then, Rabbi Grollman has been
invited to speak and counsel the bereaved at many national sites
of mourning, such as Oklahoma City and Columbine. He also related
the story of how he was present at the death, now featured in the
book “A Death in Belmont,”
about the murder of Bessie Goldberg by the suspected Boston
Strangler.
In his work counseling mourners, Rabbi
Grollman said that he often comes across people who argue about
whose loss is worse. “The worst loss is when it happens to you,”
he says.
Giving advice to the numerous
professionals gathered in the room, Rabbi Grollman emphasized that
it is best not to offer platitudes and meaningless words to
mourners, but to offer them silence, indicating a willingness to
listen. “Take cues from them,” he urged. “You don’t always have to
fill silence.”
After a break for lunch, Dr. Barry
Kirzbrunner spoke about Jewish medical ethics, Lori Finkel, a
nurse, and Susan Conceicao, a social worker, spoke about different
case histories involving Jewish patients at their hospices, and
Mrs. Lamm wrapped up the day before distributing the accreditation
certificates.
If you are interested in attending an NIJH conference, please visit nijh.org to see the upcoming dates.
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