2012 Chevra Kadisha and Jewish Cemetery Conference - Chaplaincy Track Workshops

A Sampling of Workshops Includes:

Chaplaining a Community: When an entire community has suffered a disaster, resulting in widespread illness, injury, and death what is the chaplain to do? We will discuss gleanings from experiences in the Gulf South following Hurricane Katrina and the preparations we must make in anticipating communal trauma.

Self-Care for Those Who Care - The intense work with people at the time of their most profound vulnerability leaves a mark on those who perform this holy work. Those who do this work also need care in order to avoid becoming depleted, or from showing signs of compassion fatigue and burn-out. We will discuss the importance of self-care and techniques for self-renewal. But more importantly our workshop will be experiential. Hint: Laughter is the best medicine: Prepare to have fun!

End of Life Chaplaincy as Outreach - When we serve people at the end of their lives or the lives of those to whom they are close, we encounter individuals representing the spectrum of religious denominations, as well as those not affiliated with any faith tradition. How do we speak not only to those who share our beliefs, but to those of other faiths? How might chaplaincy provide an entry point for the unaffiliated into the riches of  tradition and community? How might chaplaincy be a tool within the Jewish community for healing the rifts between the denominations? 

Being with the Dying: Pastoral Care work requires both expertise in bringing comfort to those at the end-of-life as well as inner comfort, on the part of the care-provider, with the flow of life and death. We will address both the skills needed to be present with someone in their last days as well as the personal depth we must cultivate in order to do this work.

Research Findings on End of Life Care - Does Spiritual Support really make a difference? Spirituality and Medicine are a "trending topic" in the world of Research. We review some of the conclusions that have been reached about the effect of our work on those for whom we provide end-of-life care and discuss some of the directions in which current research is headed. 

The Continuing Journey of the Soul - Judaism's teachings regarding the afterlife are profound, well-developed, but not widely known. They can provide hope and comfort for those who face the end of life - both their own or that of one who is close. We will discuss the Jewish vision of the afterlife as well as how we might introduce the topic to those we encounter in our pastoral work. 

Identity Transitions - A text based workshop of stories of the living and the dead.