Rabbi Ephraim Karp has served as community chaplain for the Jewish Federation of Monmouth County since 2001.
Photo by Jill Huber
June 24, 2008
The Monmouth federation’s community chaplain is going west. Rabbi Ephraim Karp will take up his new position as new director of religious services at the Menorah Park Center for Senior Living in Beachwood, Ohio, in July.
Karp, who has been with the Jewish Federation of Monmouth County since 2001 and founded its Joint Chaplaincy program, “has done a wonderful job,” said federation executive director Howard Gases. “He will be missed, but will do an outstanding job in his new position. We are actively looking for our next chaplain, and we know this person will continue to grow the valuable program Ephraim began.”
While in Monmouth County, Karp worked in the area of acute care in the county’s five hospitals and within the Jewish community. His chaplaincy at the Menorah Park Center — which has 1,000 residents and comprises a skilled-nursing facility, an assisted-living facility, and independent-living apartments — will focus on long-term care.
As he becomes more familiar with the center and its residents, and they with him, Karp said, he would like to expand some of its programs.
“I’d like to continue the regular prayer services and classes, but I’d also like to work with those residents who are at a lower level of functioning,” he said. “For instance, there are verses in the Torah that encourage movement and motion exercises, and this therapeutic recreation is a way to engage this part of the residential population.”
As a trained chaplain, Karp said, he has gained a strong understanding of how spirituality adds meaning and dimension to life.
“I’ve learned how to engage people in different ways that meet their spiritual needs,” he said. “Finding out what makes them feel worthwhile is a process of discovery for all of us. I hope to bring this skill to Menorah Park.”
He said he also hopes to use the center as a base for seminars and workshops on issues that affect the geriatric Jewish population.
“I want to provide programs for the center’s residents that have different levels of ability,” he said. “I’d like there to be spiritual assessments of the residents that will tell us what gives their lives meaning. And I’d like to engage the community outside Menorah Park.”
In Monmouth County, the chaplain reached out to rabbis, community leaders, and community organizations and created cultural in-service programs in local hospitals. Several years ago, he went to Israel with the National Association of Jewish Chaplains on a mission to promote clinical chaplaincy in Israeli healthcare facilities.
He also wrote “The Chaplain’s Comments” column for New Jersey Jewish News.
Karp, who will move from Lakewood with his wife, Sarah Raizel, and their two children, Baruch, 16, and Ari, 15, said a chaplain in the United States provides spiritual care and helps facilitate the subjects of life’s meaning and purpose.
“As a chaplain, you engage with someone who is dealing with trauma, crisis, and suffering,” he said. “If religion is one of the resources they use to define meaning and purpose, then my job is to facilitate that resource. If they are not religious, then my job is to facilitate whatever their resources are. As a chaplain, my beliefs are irrelevant; it’s not about me. It’s the patient’s needs and beliefs that are relevant and need to be explored.”
Karp grew up on Long Island and was ordained at the Ayshel Avraham Rabbinical Seminary in Spring Valley, NY, in 1998. He received two years of clinical training at the Healthcare Chaplaincy in New York City and was a supervisor-in-training in clinical pastoral education at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick. He received his master’s degree in social work from Monmouth University in West Long Branch in 2005.
“I hope I’ve established a solid foundation in the area of chaplaincy, so that my successor can build on it,” Karp said. “But I know this for sure — the hospitals in Monmouth County now know that the Jewish community has had, and will have, a chaplain; the federation will continue to have a chaplain to represent the Jewish community; and the Jewish community will know that a chaplain is available to them. I will always be proud of these accomplishments.”
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