San Diego, CA (special) -- Rabbi Rafael Goldstein, the Jewish community chaplain of San Diego County, says his job is filled with shehekeyanu moments -- a reference to the Jewish prayer thanking God for bringing us to a special occasion.

Retained since last October by the Jewish community to bring solace and comfort to patients in hospitals, to shut-ins in nursing homes and to a variety of other Jews feeling sick or isolated, Goldstein has become deeply involved in the lives of the people he serves -- perhaps even more deeply than most chaplains. In many cases, other hospital chaplains don't see patients again after they are discharged, whereas "I find out where they were discharged to and then go to their house or to the nursing home. I graduate with them, as it were. Some go on to full recovery; others do not. In the event of a death, I stick with a family at least through the shiva (seven day intense mourning period) and generally will check in with them after the sheloshim (30-day mourning period) to see how they are doing."  Confidentiality precludes Rabbi Goldstein from mentioning any names of patients he encounters as a chaplain, but in an interview with HERITAGE he

Rabbi H. Rafael Goldstein on chaplain rounds

was able to describe some of those situations where he felt a shehekeyanu was more than warranted.

He told of a woman who was hospitalized with a chronic illness for six months, who all the time worried about her frail mother who was in a nursing home with a serious heart condition. The mother meanwhile was worried about the health of her daughter.

"I established a relationship with the daughter and the mother and saw them separately for months and months," Goldstein recalled. When the daughter was released from the hospital, it was in time to celebrate her mother's 90th birthday. For the first time "the three of us met all in the
same room, and I said the shehekeyanu at that time because we had lived to see the moment when we would all be together." 

Another day, after speaking with the daughter by telephone in the morning, she called back in the afternoon to say that her mother had just died in a hospital emergency room. "I spent the rest of the day with her," Goldstein recalled, and helped the family through the funeral and beyond. "That was a holy experience in having made that connection, in being there for her, and for her mother as well, and being able to help her interpret the timing of her mother's death." 

He remembers helping the daughter to understand that when her mother died, it was with a sense of peace that the daughter "was well enough to be able to survive on her own now."

To be able to bring such comfort was "an incredibly wonderful experience" -- another moment for a shehekeyanu prayer, Goldstein said.

As we ate lunch at Pizza Nova, Goldstein recalled one shehekeyanu experience after another. There was the time that a woman who had been bed-bound for months at a convalescent facility finally felt strong enough to sit up in a chair. Instead of lying there doing nothing and
being depressed, she was wheeled to a music class.

"It was another shehekeyanu moment, which I said the first time I ever saw her sitting up, Goldstein related. "It was proof that her life was not over, which I had been saying to her again and again."

The rabbi also told of calling on an 89-year-old man who was isolated in a psychiatric facility, far from his family who lived on the east coast. "He was a little depressed, more than a little, but other than that there was nothing wrong with him that he couldn't be out in the world," Goldstein said. 

"Ultimately after six months of him being in this locked up facility and working with him, and working with the staff, and working with intake folks, he is now at a nursing home where I see other people as well. And now he is with community. Another shehekeyanu moment!"

* * * 

Goldstein said that he often is asked by people if walking into people's tragedies day after day is depressing. "I don't like it, but I don't have a problem doing it in terms of me," he replies. "Mainly because I always ask myself the question 'Would they be in the same tragedy whether I
am there or not?' The answer is yes, obviously. 'So if I can't change the tragedy, can I change something about how they feel about it?' And the answer to that as well is yes. That is what makes it an incredibly rewarding holy experience. I can walk into this drama, as it were, and touch a life at the time of crisis."

The chaplain said when a family is wrestling with issues like "why are we alive?" or "why is God doing this to me?" or other such questions often voiced in times of severe sickness, he considers his job to be first and foremost to be a listener. 

"My job is to look at and assess where people are at -- emotionally, spiritually, psychologically -- and working with them in whatever their need is," Goldstein said. "If people say 'why did God do this to me?' I know then I have an opening about talking about God, how God works in the world, that God doesn't use illness as a way of punishing.That is not the way the God I relate to works."

But suppose the patients demand more than empathy, suppose they want answers about God? What can Chaplain Goldstein say at such a time? Referring to a situation in which he prayed with a mother whose unborn child had just died inside her, he responded: "If I pretended to
have an answer for why that baby was dead I would have been a liar and a fake. Death happens. I don't have an answer for why.

"I think we have to give people an opportunity to express their grief, to express their own existential questions and to help guide them perhaps, push them on the way, to finding their own answers. My answers to those questions are no better than anyone else's."

But don't patients sometimes demand to know his opinions?

In such situations, "I may answer with my own answer, but more often than not they are not looking for my answer; they are looking to be able to express their opinions," Goldstein said. "I avoid 'lollipop chaplaincy' which is where you go in, you hear grief, and you give
them a 'lollipop,' in effect, by saying that 'everything will be better.'

"That is not the case all the time: sometimes things aren't better," he added. "Sometimes it is not honest to say to someone, 'there, there, it is all better now' or 'he will be better now' or 'he is in a better place.' I hate that line! No he's not. We don't know that. All we know is that he
is not here, and that is what bothers people: that he is not here. So that is really the key issue, expressing the grief, not for me to give him a lollipop."

While he can't offer definitive answers, he says he "can reframe things in ways that help people make sense out of stuff." Before he came to San Diego, Goldstein served as the chaplain for an AIDS center in Los Angeles. There was one AIDS patient who had gone blind, and
who understood his prognosis well enough to know that he would not survive beyond six months. 

The man's mother sat with him from 8:15 every morning to 7 o'clock every night. Then he went into a coma about a week before he died, in which he hung on and hung on. "I went in, did a vidui (confessional prayer) with him -- my first time doing a vidui," Goldstein said.
"Although he was not communicative, when I got to the shm'a (profession of faith), he is making noises. I don't know what the noises mean; I don't know how to interpret it, but I said to him 'Relax, you need to feel okay about the fact that you are really in bad shape and may have to leave this body.'"

When the man died, it happened before his mother arrived at the hospital. She felt overcome with guilt for not being there for her son.Goldstein told the mother that he believed the son had chosen that time to die because "clearly he didn't want her to be around to watch that-- it was not something he wanted his mother to see." Goldstein said. He could hear the mother on the phone "just heaving this sigh of relief, that she hadn't abandoned her son, that he had taken his last bit of will in order to spare her and to show his love for her."

Another shehekeyanu moment.

* * *

From his experiences working with AIDS patients, Goldstein wrote Being a Blessing: 54 Ways You Can Help People Living with AIDS. 

Concerning Judaism's relationship to the gay community, Goldstein said he was greatly offended when Jewish commentator Dennis Praeger "had the nerve in referring to rabbis who happen to be gay or lesbian to say that they should choose another job. Clearly these were words spoken by a guy who hasn't a clue what it means to walk a journey with God."

Goldstein, who is gay, said in referring to his being a rabbi, "I didn't choose this. I didn't choose it at all. I couldn't deny it. I couldn't not do this. When people ask me how I became a rabbi, I say I was drafted....I've learned through some hard experience that being there for other
people is a really good thing for me to do, and I may not have a choice anyway."

He was a rabbinical student at the pluralistic Academy for Jewish Religion in New York, when he ministered to his first dying AIDS patient, a friend named Mel, "who was the tallest guy I ever met. He was 6 foot, 300 inches. I would literally stand on a chair to hug him, kiss him 'Good Shabbos' in shul. Mel was the president of the congregation where I became involved in New York and in his last months he got very into a record by Debbie Friedman which had the song "And You Shall be a Blessing. " 

"During his last months, I would visit Mel regularly, constantly, at the hospital," Goldstein continued. "I was the last person to see Mel when he was alive. Mel used to point at me with those big arms-- he would point at me and say 'your life will be a blessing; make your life a
blessing.' I, of course, would say to him, 'Mel shut up. I don't want that on my head.' But he was right: that is really what life is supposed to be about. ...I named my book in part after Mel: Being a Blessing ..."

* * *

Although he is the community rabbi, Goldstein actually serves two employers in San Diego. Half time, under auspices of the United Jewish Federation, he works as the chaplain who visits hospitals and nursing homes and counsels with unaffiliated Jews who have issues they need to discuss with a rabbi.

The other half of his time, he serves as chaplain of the "Jewish Healing Center," which is not a place, but a program, designed by Jewish Family Service, the United Jewish Federation, the Synagogue Council, and the San Diego Rabbinical Association to focus on Jews who are
living with serious illness. 

The two positions blend into each other: "Some weeks it is going to be more than half time" in one; in other weeks in the other, Goldstein said. "It doesn't matter: as long as I am doing the work and the mitzvahs involved, everyone is happy."

Nevertheless, he is only one person and there are a lot of unmet needs out there. Goldstein now is in the process of forming two volunteer groups, corresponding with each half of his job. One is a chesed (acts of kindness) corps, in which volunteers would agree to make regular visits to people who are shut-ins. The other group will be for bikur cholim (aiding the sick) in which volunteers will deal with people who are seriously ill.

First on the agenda will be the chesed corps.

"I think in my experience in this city during this last year, the one biggest, glaringest need that is not being addressed, are those people who are stuck in those nursing homes with nobody really caring about them," Goldstein said.

"Some of the nursing facilities are really wonderful places, really caring places, with wonderful staffs, but if nobody from the outside world visits somebody, it makes a difference," he said. "We have so many people who are transplanted, with their children at the other end of the
country, and they are isolated -- an incredibly nightmarish situation. I want to have volunteers help us address that situation."

Potential volunteers may reach the chaplain through the United Jewish Federation offices at (858) 571-3444.

Besides his work as a chaplain, Goldstein also serves as a weekend congregational rabbi at the Irvine Jewish Community, a 100-member Reform congregation in Irvine which is considering changing its name to Ohr Ami. "I am there three out of four Shabbatot each month on Friday nights," Goldstein said. "I am also there on Sunday mornings. I do an adult education program that is pretty successful."

He said he enjoys serving the congregation partly because "it isn't tragedy work, and I need that balance. Especially in the work I do, it is really important for me to be preparing a sermon every now and then. It is really important to me to be teaching classes."

Goldstein also has begun teaching two "Nosh and Drosh" classes in San Diego as an offshoot of his chaplaincy. One is a Torah study class for people living with serious illness. It is held from 10:30 to noon on Tuesdays at Congregation Beth Israel. There also is a similar Torah
study program from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Beth Israel for people who are recovering from alcohol and drug addictions. . "I need people for those programs," he said.

* * *

When Goldstein visits a family at a hospital, or during some other crisis, he tries to make a point of telling them that it is not just him who cares about them; it is, in fact, the entire Jewish community of San Diego, which has allocated funds just so that there can be a rabbi with people when they most need one.

"I know people sometimes complain about the Federation perhaps not being responsive to some defined need, but this is a real good example of Federation and the community pulling together in a wonderful way," he said. 

He said that fellow rabbis as well as lay Jewish officials have been "consistently supportive and helpful, concerned, involved and caring" as he has set about serving as a chaplain. "I never had an experience of so much support, concern and good will from colleagues like this,"he added. 

And, he said, some people have been so inspired by the community's care for them in a time of need that they have become affiliated with congregations in the area.

Still more shehekeyanu moments.