Jewish songs and prayers offer comfort to individuals nearing the end of their lives and their grieving families. That’s just one of the impromptu services offered by Rabbi Benjamin Shalva, a Jewish musician and chaplain at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Baltimore.

He oversees the care and support for Jewish patients and families who come into hospice through Gilchrist, a nonprofit provider of serious illness and end-of-life care. He also manages rabbinic services.

“We help guide families and patients on how to approach the end of life in a meaningful and Jewish way,” said Shalva, who joined Gilchrist two and a half years ago.

The 48-year-old Pikesville resident said he brings a guitar and the practice of meditation and mindfulness to patients and families.

“It really provides a sphere of comfort and healing in a space that might otherwise be very difficult for folks,” Shalva said.

A dying person with dementia may not be speaking anymore, but when Shalva plays guitar, they sometimes sing with him. During Passover, one patient lifted her head from sleeping, sang Dayenu, then closed her eyes and rested afterwards.

“She was not having a good day,” the aide said. “But that taught me that music is a key to connection that would otherwise be difficult to make.”

Gilchrist offers services to people of all backgrounds, but with a Jewish community as vibrant as Baltimore’s, a significant number of Jewish patients and families exist.

The hospice organization has four rabbis who fan out to patients and families in the city and Baltimore, Howard and Anne Arundel Counties.

They visit homes, nursing homes and Gilchrist hospice facilities.

“We’re really focused on providing counseling and spiritual support in person, by Zoom or over the phone,” Shalva said.

The individuals and their families may be unaffiliated or lacking a strong Jewish background. “They might not know exactly how to approach end-of-life issues, end-of-life care. They may not understand a funeral or mourning observance through a Jewish lens.”

In addition to hospice care, Shalva freelanced as a rabbi in Baltimore and around the DMV area for eight years prior to joining Gilchrist. He still does, specializing in leading music at Jewish services.

Though Shalva trained at the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, he now considers himself non-denominational: “I feel like I interact with people from all these different movements. I move around [spiritually] depending on where I’m needed.”

He has studied mindfulness and meditation for 30 years and taught at the Soul Center in Baltimore and the Jewish Mindfulness Center of Washington.

“I noticed that meditation and mindfulness was a powerful tool to help Jewish individuals and communities work with anxiety, grief, trauma and other strong emotions. It works seamlessly with other parts of Jewish practice, like prayer, holiday and Shabbat observance.”

A Milwaukee native, Shalva grew up in a Reform Jewish household. Before retiring, his father was a state appellate judge and his mother a marriage and family therapist.

Shalva’s interest in Judaism found an outlet at overnight summer camp. He trained to be a song leader at Camp Sabra in Missouri. He worked as a counselor and led the theater program.

“I felt really inspired by the Jewish experience that I found at summer camp. It embodied a beautiful Jewish life where everyone came together to do Shabbat and there was song and dance and celebration. It was full of Jewish joy surrounded by nature.”

Working there summers while at Vassar College, Shalva observed, “There’s a lot to this Jewish life that I don’t know about and I’d like to learn more. That’s really how things got started.”

Shalva has returned to Jewish summer camp in Michigan as a rabbi. His children, Lev, 18, and Avital, 15, attended the same camp, called Tamarack.

His wife Sarah brought him to Baltimore to be near her family. She is the chief arts officer for the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore. The family belongs to Congregation Chizuk Amuno, a Conservative synagogue.

Shalva is also a book author in the self-help genre. “Spiritual Cross-Training,” and “Ambition Addiction” were published in 2016 by Grand Harbor Press. His poetry has been published by literary magazines.

His work with hospice patients inspires him to write.

“I sometimes use feelings from hospice care and share that in my poetry.”

“Spiritual Cross Training” offers a guide to developing spiritual practices for Jews and non-Jews. “Sometimes people feel like they don’t fit in just one spiritual community. They want to mix and match.”

He refers in the book to yoga, meditation, drum circles and dance, among other practices.
“Ambition Addiction” focuses on ambition not as a way to achieve goals, but as an attempt to outrun something.

“Whatever it is: fears, anxieties, traumas, insecurity, this book helps folks find ways to slow down to work with their own ambitions, whether it’s professional or ambition for their kids,” Shalva said.

In “Ambition Addiction,” he wrote about the idea that compulsive ambition is related, ultimately, to a fear of mortality.

“My work now as a hospice chaplain involves helping individuals and families find courage and peace in the midst of being mortal, in the midst of confronting death.

Ellen Braunstein is a freelance writer.