A community campaign hosted by The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles

Mobilising Jewish volunteers for hospital chaplaincy support in Australia

Across Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth, Jewish families have long turned to each other in moments of illness, grief and recovery. Hospital chaplaincy offers a way to formalise that instinctive care, and a volunteer team rooted in Jewish tradition can extend its reach without asking busy rabbis to absorb every bedside visit. The Next Big Jewish Idea invites proposals that strengthen Jewish life and support people in need, and building a structured chaplaincy volunteer programme fits that brief precisely.

Australian public hospitals welcome faith-based visitors, provided volunteers work within the established spiritual care framework. A Jewish volunteer team brings familiar liturgy, Hebrew prayers and the quiet comfort of shiva and Yom Tov observance into wards where patients might otherwise feel linguistically and culturally adrift. With the right coordination, such a team can become a dependable extension of professional chaplaincy services across the country.

Understanding the chaplaincy landscape in Australian hospitals

Public hospitals in Australia operate under state health services that each employ professional chaplains or spiritual care practitioners. In Victoria, services such as Spiritual Care at the Royal Melbourne and St Vincent's have long welcomed volunteer visitors from faith communities, while in New South Wales, Local Health Districts run similar programmes through partnerships with organisations like the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies. Western Australia and Queensland maintain smaller but committed chaplaincy teams, often relying on rotating clergy from the local Jewish congregations.

Volunteers complement rather than replace paid chaplains. They sit with patients, offer a sounding board for anxiety, and bring practical Jewish knowledge such as when to recite the Traveller's Prayer, what to do during Yom Kippur when fasting may conflict with medical advice, and how to navigate Shabbat in a hospital setting. Understanding how each state's health department frames spiritual care is the first step towards designing a programme that fits local protocols.

Australian palliative care guidelines, informed by the National Palliative Care Standards, encourage interdisciplinary support. A Jewish volunteer team can sit comfortably within those standards by recording visits, respecting confidentiality under the Privacy Act 1988, and liaising with the hospital's spiritual care coordinator before approaching a patient. This grounding in local policy gives a volunteer initiative credibility the moment it approaches hospital administration.

Defining roles and spiritual boundaries for volunteers

A clear role description protects both volunteers and patients. In Sydney's eastern suburbs, where many Holocaust survivors live in aged care and frequently transfer to nearby Prince of Wales or Royal Prince Alfred hospitals, expectations have to be calibrated carefully. Some patients want a friendly face, others want someone who will recite Psalms or lead them through vidui. Volunteers need to know which they are being asked to do on any given visit.

Equally important is recognising the limits of the role. Jewish volunteers are not clinicians, and they should not give medical, legal or financial advice, even when asked. They are also not a substitute for a patient's own rabbi, though they can liaise with rabbinical authorities when patients request specific rulings. Boundaries around end-of-life conversations, mental health crises, and family disputes must be set during training, not improvised at the bedside.

Documenting these boundaries in a simple volunteer handbook reassures hospitals that the team understands professional boundaries. The handbook should cover confidentiality, infection control procedures required by each health service, dress codes, and how to escalate concerns. Australian hospitals expect the same documentation from volunteer faith visitors that they receive from secular volunteer organisations such as the Red Cross or the Hospital Auxiliary.

Recruiting volunteers from existing Jewish networks

Melbourne's Caulfield, Glen Eira and St Kilda East suburbs hold a deep well of potential volunteers, many of whom already give time to Jewish Care Victoria, the B'nai B'rith Montefiore Society, or local Hebrew congregations. Sydney draws from congregations in Double Bay, Chatswood and the Northern Beaches, while Perth and Adelaide rely on tighter-knit communities where word travels quickly. Brisbane's small but growing Jewish population in the inner suburbs offers committed volunteers willing to travel.

Recruitment works best when framed as a meaningful commitment rather than a casual interest. A recruitment evening at a synagogue hall, a community centre, or a Zoom session for regional members lets prospective volunteers ask questions and meet the leadership team. Personal invitations from rabbis, doctors and community elders carry particular weight in Jewish communal culture, where endorsement from trusted figures opens doors that cold outreach cannot.

Volunteers should be asked to commit to a realistic schedule. Some will prefer weekly visits to one hospital; others will be available only for festivals such as Pesach, Yom Kippur or the High Holy Days when Jewish patients feel the absence of community most acutely. A flexible rota acknowledges the realities of working life, school runs, and the long distances that characterise Australian cities. Building the rota around volunteers' lives, rather than asking them to reshape their lives around the rota, is the difference between a thriving team and a worn-out one.

Training, screening, and compliance with Australian standards

Every volunteer who enters a hospital ward in Australia must comply with that state's requirements. In practice this usually means a National Police Check, a Working with Vulnerable People registration or its equivalent state scheme, immunisation records, and completion of the hospital's own orientation modules. These requirements are not bureaucratic hurdles but protective measures, and treating them as such builds trust with hospital administrators.

Training should cover Jewish content as well as clinical awareness. Modules worth designing include:

Pairing new volunteers with experienced mentors for the first months reduces dropout and gives newcomers permission to ask questions they might not raise in a formal setting. Regular debrief sessions, perhaps monthly, also help volunteers process grief, frustration and the unexpected emotional weight of the work.

Building relationships with hospital staff and chaplaincy departments

Hospital spiritual care coordinators are the gatekeepers of any new faith-based initiative. A polite introductory letter, followed by a face-to-face meeting, signals seriousness. Coordinators want to know who the volunteers are, what training they have received, what insurance or organisational backing covers them, and how the team will respond if a complaint is raised. Bringing along a one-page summary and the volunteer handbook does most of the persuasive work.

Once approved, volunteers should introduce themselves to ward nurses and bed managers. Nurses are the ones who identify which patients would appreciate a visit and which would prefer privacy. Establishing a simple referral pathway, whether through a phone call, an email, or a printed form left at the nurses' station, makes it easy for staff to request a Jewish visitor without having to remember names or phone numbers.

Across Australia, chaplaincy departments appreciate programmes that feed back into the broader spiritual care team. Sharing anonymised notes about visits, attending interdisciplinary meetings when invited, and celebrating hospital events such as Spiritual Care Week all help the volunteer team feel part of the wider hospital community rather than a parallel operation. Over time, nurses begin to see the team as a trusted extension of care.

Sustaining the team through reflection and care for the carers

Volunteer chaplaincy work is emotionally demanding. A volunteer who has sat with a patient through a difficult night, or who has attended multiple deaths in a single week, needs space to recover. The Australian tradition of debriefing after critical incidents, common in emergency services, applies equally to spiritual care. Monthly reflective practice sessions, ideally facilitated by an experienced chaplain or psychologist familiar with Jewish community contexts, give volunteers a safe place to offload.

Recognition matters too. Acknowledging a volunteer's milestone visit, marking a year's service with a small ceremony, and celebrating festivals together keeps morale high. Some teams invite volunteers to a communal Shabbat lunch once a quarter, giving them a chance to reconnect with the rhythm of Jewish life outside the hospital walls.

For the team to last, its organisers must model self-care. The Jewish value of shmirat haguf, caring for one's own body and spirit, is a principle worth embodying openly. Rotating on-call duties, allowing volunteers to take sabbaticals, and saying no to requests that exceed the team's capacity are all ways of honouring that teaching. A small, well-rested team delivers far more than a large, exhausted one.

Some practical ways to recognise sustained service include:

Submit your idea for a Jewish hospital chaplaincy volunteer team to The Next Big Jewish Idea campaign, share it with your synagogue board, and speak with the spiritual care coordinator at your local hospital this week. Community initiatives that support people in their most vulnerable moments are exactly what the campaign was designed to surface, and you can be part of shaping what comes next. For an example of another community-driven finalist that brings people together around shared creativity, see how organisers approached a local maker fair for Jewish artisans.