Holding Hands, Healing Hearts The Life of a Chaplain

By Malkie SchulMan

“In the prime of his life,” Chaplain Rabbi Mendy Coën, director-general of the USCC (United States Chaplain Corps) shares, “my 56-year-old father-in-law, a pillar of the community, died of cancer. There was 90 days between his diagnosis and his passing. That shook me up.”

It was after his father-in-law’s untimely death that Mendy decided to enter the field of hospital chaplaincy. He began working in Kings County, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Florida hospitals as well as other segments of the New York healthcare system, often aiding seniors at rehabilitation centers and nursing homes.

Unfortunately, Mendy is no stranger to heartbreak.

“I have used the chevra Kadisha three times for my own children,” he explains.

Nevertheless, Mendy has turned his stories of personal tragedy into hope and healing for our community and the larger world community.

Mendy claims his goal as a chaplain has always been “to do what I can to emotionally support people through pain.” But it was not until Covid hit, when Mendy was busy constantly attending funerals of people he knew that his idea for furthering the outreach of chaplains took root.

When Mendy was the only one attending the funeral and the only other car was the hearse, that’s when he had his breakthrough and realized something had to change. At that time, he continues, no one was allowed in the hospitals.

“I was one of the only guys with a badge going into the hospital providing information to patients. The New York State government had taken over security, and no other organization was allowed to be active. There wasn’t one agency that you could rely on with consistency to be deployed to trauma events or emergencies,” he recalls.

So, at the time the world was falling apart, Mendy reached out to attorneys, professors, cur riculum developers, mental health workers, and scientists to assist him with his vision for the type of chaplain training he sought to offer to the wider public. Until then, though there were chaplains in healthcare settings, the bulk of chaplaincy consisted mostly of male army chaplains servicing U.S. army soldiers. Mendy’s dream included men and women of all backgrounds and religions to service all parts of the world community.

Within a few months, he put together his chaplain training manifesto, submitted and incorporated with the state department.

“On December 11, 2020, while I was fighting for my own life in the hospital with Covid, I received approval from the state department,” he says. “In January of 2021, we held our first training, and today, two years later, we’ve trained over 500 chaplains.”

A Ministry of Presence

Contrary to common misperception, the United States Chaplain Corps is a private organization, not a federal government program.

“The goal and mission of our training is to teach chaplains how to diffuse pain and ease tension by means of language, psychology, and emotional support,” explains Mendy. “This means to find ways to ease the suffering individual’s pain – it may be little ways, little gestures or what is called in chaplaincy ‘ministry of presence.’ The idea is that you can support someone just by being quiet in an active listening mode. Learning to simply listen attentively without jumping in with words of any kind is the ministry of presence. This is not easy to do in today’s world of beeping cellphones.

“Studies show,” Mendy shares, “that people are interrupted 1,400 times a day on average! We are unable to focus and pay attention for than a few seconds. It’s hard to listen in this kind of world.”

Nonetheless, this is USCC’s aim: to take individuals of both genders, train them properly in social and emotional intelligence, and then bring them back as chaplains to the community – working in schools nursing home, hospital, YMCA, prison, disaster site, etc. settings. These individuals are the first responders, healthcare chaplains, and chaplains who provide support to police, firefighters, youth, seniors and people in the workplace.

There is a rigorous process to see if the applicant is suited to chaplaincy, continues Mendy. It’s not an easy field, although it’s extremely rewarding for the right individual. The appropriate candidate has to be emotionally and psychologically healthy. If someone doesn’t have his or her life together, then how can they be of service to others, especially to be a first responder chaplain, which is the “navy seals” of the chaplains?

USCC’s first responders are trained in the use of PSA – psychological first aid (as opposed to medical first aid). One of the most important skills (if not, the most important skill) Mendy stresses to his chaplains is the ability to be emotionally present in the face of severe trauma.

In addition to the emotional support USCC offers, they’ve also built up a premiere medical referral system through recruiting members from different medical referral organizations with varied areas of medical knowledge and backgrounds. Because of the diverse sources of information, within two or three hours, Mendy claims, USCC can come up with a list of top doctors around the world for any diagnosis. USCC will also help to expedite appointments.

“We save lives like this every day,” Mendy shares. Today, the USCC also boasts a women’s division. Part of this separate program includes a women’s only monthly Zoom call. Guest speakers of many different professions – from top executives in the fashion industry to parenting experts – are brought in to talk about their areas of expertise. Recently, Deborah Lipstadt, the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, with the rank of Ambassador, spoke for the female chaplains. As she explained to the chaplain who invited her, “I agreed to speak with you because I remember how the chaplains were there for us when my mother passed away.”

The women’s division is comprised of 150 women ages 20-75 years old, 80 of whom are Orthodox Jews. These women also work or have worked in a variety of professions. One of the members is a State supreme court justice.

“Personally,” maintains Mendy, “I think women do better work than men in this field because a great part of chaplaincy has to do with emotional intelligence. Women’s EI [emotional intelligence] is usually more highly developed than a man’s EI. Women go much further and quicker in this line of work.”

Rachel Weingarten, a lifestyle writer, weekly style columnist, award-winning author, and co-founder of the RWR network (a national nonprofit organization that advocates for the vulnerable through education, outreach and resources), joined the USCC as a volunteer chaplain in 2022 .

“I’d always been looking for another angle from which to help people,” says Rachel. “As a child and grandchild of Holocaust survivors, I was raised to help people, but it was during the pandemic that I was feeling especially helpless. There were so many people in need, but we were all isolated while in lockdown and it was hard to connect.”

Rachel explains that she wanted to be able to help from a position of authority, without being intimidating.

“When I realized I could be a chaplain, something clicked, and a beautiful light went on inside me. This was my answer.”

The Often Heartbreaking Work

Being a chaplain often means facing heartbreaking situations. The chaplain has to be emotionally and psychologically strong to be able to deal with the harrowing situations he or she is confronted with.

Mendy brings up the Champlain Tower, Surfside, Florida, disaster of 2021. In twelve seconds, a 12-story building collapsed, killing 99 people. USCC deployed thirty chaplains to work with FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and the IDF (Israel Defense Force) to provide care both for the families of the victims and for the rescuers.

“Every day, rescuers were recovering remains of the individuals who had tragically died when the building collapsed. After a 40-minute shift, sifting through the rubble for bodies, some of the rescuers became traumatized,” Mendy maintains. “Our job was to emotionally prepare the rescuers to go back home to their families with peace of mind so they could return in the morning to continue their search efforts.”

Mendy describes the mayhem at the scene when he first got there.

“I heard the first responders say that when they arrived at the disaster scene, they had no idea where to start, what stone to turn over until Golan Vach, the commander in the IDF’s Search and Rescue Brigade, led his unit of ten in to assist them.” The IDF with their search and rescue expertise showed the American rescuers where to start digging on the “pile.” First, however, they required intelligence information. They requested extensive floor plans of the building detailing where each apartment was located, where the bedrooms were, the living rooms, where the beds were, so they could simulate how it would have fallen. Once this information was transmitted to their devices, they knew where to dig.

One of the many tragic situations Mendy was concerned with at the Surfside disaster involved the story of a family of five that was missing – two grandparents and three children. In the beginning of the search, the rescuers had only recovered the daughter’s remains. At that point, shares Mendy, a social worker approached and asked him if he was a rabbi. After replying in the affirmative, she said that the extended family of the daughter had flown in from their country and wished to speak with him. The daughter explained that the family (who was traditional) had asked their rabbi in their home country if they could wait until the bodies of the whole family that had perished were recovered and do one big funeral for all of them before they buried the young girl. The rabbi responded, no, the daughter’s funeral should be done immediately. Half the family agreed, and the other half did not. They were calling Mendy in to weigh in on his rabbinic opinion.

“I knew I was entering a horrifically challenging situation,” Mendy shares. “So first I went into a corner and prayed to G-d for the right words to say and then I walked into the room. It was surreal – people crying, others looking like they were in a trance. I just began to talk.” body buried in the earth. Once that happens, the soul is appeased and is willing to surrender and move on. One more thing, he added, is that Kaddish cannot be said until the body is buried and Kaddish, too, is a prayer that appeases the soul.

“So now you have a choice,” he told them, “either do what’s good for the soul or what’s good for you.

“After I said that, I left.” Mendy heard later that on the following morning, the family buried the deceased daughter.

The Many Faces of Chaplaincy

While a chaplain has one general mission, providing emotional, physical, mental, or psychological support for those in need, this mission can cover a wide range of services for a wide range of populations. When there are disasters like, for example, a category 5 hurricane, the government agency, FEMA, will call upon the USCC to send individuals skilled in disaster grief work. But not all chaplains go in for that kind of chaplaincy.

“Part of what I do as a chaplain,” shares Rachel, “is art therapy, often with Holocaust survivors and second-generation survivors. Sometimes, as we create paintings together, small snippets of a person’s crisis of faith will emerge.”

Rachel will try to help her clients through their crises in a gentle, relaxed manner. “The entire country is going through a crisis of faith,” Rachel maintains. “Chaplains are needed now more than ever. If people stop finding solace in their houses of worship, then at least let them find comfort and a sense of connection with a chaplain.”

Mendy explained to the grieving family that in our Torah we have the story of our forefather, Jacob, who died in Egypt. The people cried for 30 days for him before he was buried. So, there is a precedent from the Torah to not bury someone right away. Also, we learn that when a person dies in an untimely, tragic event, the soul is agitated and is not ready to depart. However, he continued, we also know that before the soul can find any peace and move on to the higher realm, it has to see its

An important point to understand is that chaplains don’t proselytize, no matter what their faith. Also, they can work across religious denominations. While most chaplains will refer their clients to a chaplain of their own religion if they are experiencing a crisis of faith, Rachel maintains that a good chaplain can help someone even out of their religion. For example, she shares, “I was working with someone raised as a Catholic whose mother was still very observant; she had asked her daughter to pray for her. My client did not believe in the Catholic religion and discussed her dilemma with me even though she knew I was Jewish. I encouraged her to support her mother’s faith as best as she could without offering her own opinions. ‘She’s going through painful treatments,’ I said, ‘if you mock her faith, what does she have left?’

“I know how my faith has gotten me through my own crises. I share that with people. I didn’t tell her to pray to the Catholic saints, I just encouraged her to let her mom believe that her faith could help her heal. This was a turning point for her.”

When someone is going through a family emergency, often the responsibility will fall on one family member to be the final decision maker. Many times, the person feels very alone making these life-altering decisions. A chaplain is an authority figure that can be there not to make the decisions for them but to be there with them as they make these critical decisions.

“It’s humbling to do that for other people,” Rachel acknowledges.

Chaplains are also liaisons connecting with various communities to remind them that chaplains are available to assist should the need arise.

“Some people are not comfortable going to their rab - bis,” shares Rachel, “perhaps they feel they might be judged in some way. There are times when they might feel more comfortable going to a chaplain.”

Dovid Egert, U.S. army and USCC chaplain (who also has rabbinical ordination), works full-time for the United States Army. He stresses that he is available to help anyone from any faith that needs counseling.

“I am a rabbi to some, but a chaplain to all,” he asserts.

As a chaplain, Dovid recalls the time a soldier was so down, he was contemplating taking his own life. “After talking to him for three hours, he felt better, and, today he’s doing very well.”

Of course, as a Jewish chaplain, Dovid organizes the Shabbat services, oneg Shabbat, holiday events and meals and is the logical address for any Jewish faith questions.

“There was a soldier in my unit,” Dovid shares, “that I used to chat with a lot about Judaism. He was secular and never thought too much about religion. Today, he’s enrolled in a yeshiva.”

Dovid also recalls the trust he gained from one of his soldiers who was engaged to a non-Jew. After a number of heart-to-heart conversations, the soldier broke his engagement and is now married to a Jew. Recently, Dovid brought down a mohel to the base to perform a bris on the soldier’s first-born son.

Dovid also shares his experience with a Muslim soldier who would come once a week to schmooze with him.

“He felt comfortable talking to me, he said, because Judaism was the closest to Islam. He ended up bringing four Jewish soldiers from his unit to our Jewish Shabbat and holiday services. They come pretty often now.”

Rachel shares her different roles as chaplain. “Often, I feel like I’m called on to be a representative for the Jewish people,” she says.

Through working with people of all faiths, Rachel shows by her actions that a Jewish person is not what the media often chooses to portray. For instance, a few weeks ago, an ny PD officer was shot and killed. “I’d never gone to a Muslim funeral, but I did then, proudly wearing my Magen David.” Rachel maintains that she wanted to prove that even though we are from different communities, we can support one another.

“My hope was to create that bond between our faiths and to show that I was there to support them through their grief, an emotion that’s so universal.”

Chaplains are also there on a very practical level.

“We often have the ability to cut through the red tape and get things done where the average citizen can’t or might not be able to at a given moment,” explains Rachel.

“A grandmother called and told me that her fouryear-old grandson had a heart attack. Because of his critical condition, a very limited number of people were okayed to visit him in the ICU because of hospital regulations. The mother of the child was at home with a newborn, and the four-year-old had no one in the hospital with him. I was able to tap into my network and reach out to the hospital chaplain. Within 15 minutes, the grandmother was in the hospital room with her grandchild.”

The big question many ask about this kind of service to humanity is how is it possible to be there for someone in their intense pain and not let it get you down? Dovid explains what works for him.

“I take myself out of the picture. I understand that this is not my life; it’s happening to someone else. I’m there as a life preserver; my job is to be there for them she’s still too mired in that loss.”

Rachel says the survivor gets dressed up, especially when she knows she’s coming.

“Sometimes, I’ll tell her jokes to make her laugh, whatever she needs.”

Inspiration and Takeaway

Often, Mendy shares, he gains inspiration from the individuals he counsels. In the Surfside tragedy, there was a couple that lost their pregnant daughter. The mother was so devastated, she wanted her life to end.

“I was there doing whatever I could to emotionally support them for the next three weeks until after the burial. After the funeral, the father and his son came over to me and said, ‘We want to learn how to do what you did for us. Can you teach us?’ Today, they are chaplains in Los Angeles.”

Rachel shares that last year her mother became an honorary chaplain and her sister later became a chaplain as well. “It means so much to us as a family descended from Holocaust survivors to be able to give back to our communities and do for others. And it was so meaningful to me when my sister and mother joined as well.” to hold onto. I can only do that if, like a life preserver, I keep floating. “

Some chaplains keep themselves from getting dragged under through setting limits on how long they’ll spend talking to someone at a time or through sharing the painful details of what they’ve heard with other trained professionals. Rachel says that she takes the life-affirming part of the conversations with her.

“It doesn’t mean my clients’ pain evaporates when I leave, but it allows me to process it in a different way so I don’t get dragged down. For example, I volunteer at the Boro Park y at Club nissim – a group comprised of Holocaust survivors – everyone a miracle. One of the women survived a series of concentration camps and later lost her son on 9/11. When I come to the Y, I look for her. I’ll try to sit with her and hold her hand and listen while she talks to me about her son. I knew him briefly so I’m able to comfort her in a different way while sharing my own memories of him.

“As a chaplain, I can listen to her grief, as opposed to her family who at this point worry that

A special advantage to being a chaplain, Mendy explains, is that while some secular people are threatened by the idea of talking to a rabbi/priest/imam, they feel no pressure speaking of spiritual matters to a chaplain. Because of this, there is more leeway to impact these individuals spiritually.

Mendy shares a heartrending story of a non-religious man at Surfside whose daughter’s body was not recovered all at once. The father agreed to bury the body parts of his daughter that were recovered but insisted on cremating the rest of the body when it would be found. Mendy had the unenviable task of explaining to the distraught father why, according to Judaism, cremation was not acceptable. The result: a kosher funeral was held for this man’s daughter.

Rachel sees the beauty in her role as a chaplain.

“I am here to help people understand their own value.,” she explains. “As a chaplain, I try to always remind people of their worth and humanity, even when going through the most awful situations. I remind them that they are more than the worst part of their life. When I sit with them through their darkest moments, I am saying to them, not only am I here with you to help you get through this but to let you know that I see you beyond your emergency.”