I have served in the past as the rabbi of the National Institutes of Health where scientists conduct research and provide medical service impartially to individuals of all varieties of faith, nationalities, cultural traditions and every religious stripe across the board. My fellow chaplains and I in the Spiritual Ministry Department of the N.I.H. worked as a team dedicated to addressing the religious and spiritual needs of all patients, their families and loved ones in a health care clinical setting. In times of personal crises and at various stages of a patient’s illness, through uncertain worrisome times and fluctuating degrees of recovery and return to health, as well as at life’s closure, chaplains provide spiritual and emotional support, and an attentive ear.
Over a number of years I have conducted research on the affects of crises, trauma and catastrophe upon individuals who have walked through the valley of the shadow of death. My book, The Faith and Doubt of Holocaust Survivors, is based on an in-depth survey of over seven hundred Jews who endured the devastation of Hitler’s Europe. In that previous study conducted for the most part in Israel, I applied the most rigorous sociological research methodology to examine and determine how, why, where and when, concentration and death camp survivors were spiritually, religiously and in other ways, changed by their ordeal...
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