An interdenominational end-of-life training institute is launching an online course in Jewish end-of-life practice.
The three-year course is set to begin Tuesday.
Sixteen students representing the major Jewish streams have signed up for the inaugural course of the Gamliel Institute, which will be held Tuesday evenings.
According to co-director Rabbi Stuart Kelman of Berkeley, Calif., no North American rabbinical school, chaplaincy, mortuary or thanatology program offers a comprehensive certification course dealing with end-of-life issues from a Jewish perspective. The new project is an attempt to fill that gap.
The Gamliel Institute is a project of Kavod v’Nichum, a North American organization that supports funeral and bereavement work in synagogues and Jewish communities, and holds an annual conference for chevrei kadisha, or Jewish burial societies.
