End Of Life Planning Guide: Appendix
Recommended Books
Maurice Lamm, The Jewish Way in Death & Mourning. Jonathan David Publishers. Rev. Ed. 2000, Originally published in 1969.
Ron Wolfson, A Time to Mourn, A Time to Comfort: A Guide to Jewish Bereavement. Jewish Lights Publishing. 2d ed. 2005.
Ari L. Goldman, Living a Year of Kaddish: A Memoir. Penguin/Random House. 2006.
Anita Diamant, Saying Kaddish: How To Comfort the Dying, Bury the Dead, and Mourn as a Jew.Penguin/Random House. 1999
Jack Riemer and Dr. Nathaniel Stampfer, So That Your Values Live On: Ethical Wills and How to Prepare Them. Jewish Lights Publishing. 2013.
Section I: Advance Planning
The Rabbinical Assembly offers learning and guidance to encourage family discussion and set out health care preferences and funeral practices. It also offers a downloadable document, Medical Directives and Living Wills, with detailed guidance from its Committee on Jewish Law and Standards on death and mourning. Check online for any revisions or updates to this guidance.
In an article that is available online, Moment Magazine in 2013 published “Ask the Rabbis: In counseling end-of-life care, what Jewish principles are most valuable?” by Amy E. Schwartz (2013). The author presents Humanist, Renewal, Reconstructionist, Conservative, Modern Orthodox, and Chabad perspectives on these subjects.
The State of New York offers online information helpful to those engaging in advance planning for advance directives and health care proxies.
The Journal of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Law and Aging, Bifocal, published an article by Megan Richelsoph and Sarah Kolick, “Self-Help Online Advance Care Planning Tools,” introduces five digital platforms for advance care planning.
What should a medical professional do when there is no planning document or surrogate to convey the patient’s wishes? One article with a Jewish focus on this subject is Jason Weiner’s “Jewish Values in Medical Decision-making for Unrepresented Patients: A Ritualized Approach,” published in the Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal (2021) and available through the National Library of Medicine.
Section II: From Death through Mourning
Rabbinical Assembly (RA):
- For more information and guidance on funeral practices, here is a link to the Rabbinical Assembly’s Guide to Jewish Funeral Practice.
- There is also a wealth of additional informational and bibliographic material on the Rabbinical Assembly’s life cycle page on Death and Mourning
- The RA has compiled an annotated bibliography (with links) of books and articles on mourning and grief, along with relevant teshuvot.
- The RA has posted an article, The Shiva Period, by Carl Astor.
Another useful website is Kavod v’Nichum, Jewish Funeral and Burial: Simplicity and Honor, which offers end-of-life education, support, and training for “Chevra Kadisha – sacred communities that come together at the end of life to care for the deceased and comfort the living through Jewish rituals and traditions.”
Shomer Collective seeks to “empower individuals as they plan for and/or confront death for themselves and loved ones”. Its resources include sections on Advance Planning, Grief and Mourning, Traumatic Death, Jewish Wisdom, and Recommended Books.
The International End-of-Life Doula Association examines Judaism’s framework for the end of life, including the dying process, funeral and burial, and the grief journey, and how its rituals and framework can be adapted for modern interaction.
The website shiva.com also has a rich compilation of information on the subject with sections on sitting shiva, visiting someone sitting shiva, mourning, coping with grief, and related subjects.
