From the time he was a small child, David Helfand was told he would be a rabbi someday. But for many years the now 27-year-old said he stubbornly refused to accept it. Finally, in his early 20s he acknowledged his fate happily and willingly.
Having just completed his first year of rabbinic school at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at The American Jewish University in Los Angeles, Helfand is temporarily back home in Overland Park as a rabbinic intern at Congregation Beth Shalom, as well as summer chaplain at Research Medical Center on Meyer Boulevard in Kansas City, Missouri.
“It’s been an incredibly busy summer; there’s not much down time between working in a hospital as well as doing things in the synagogue,” Helfand said. “But it’s been a really unique and rewarding summer and I’ve had great people to learn from and with. And being back home in the community for the first time in almost 20 summers is also very nice.”
From his early experiences, it would appear Helfand was indeed on a path toward the rabbinate. But he said for a long time he leaned more toward being in the Jewish professional world. He was interested in Jewish education and Jewish communal service such as youth work, camp and travel.
It was in his second or third year of college that he heeded the call.
“The rabbinate specifically kind of called me and it was the best of both worlds,” he explained. “I would be able to teach and learn and give back and make what I was doing accessible to everybody.
“There were so many experiences along the way that got me thinking, this probably hasn’t been changed in 50 years; why not think about it differently, think outside the box and bring a creative approach to the different components of community life.”
He has been thinking outside the box ever since. A year after Helfand graduated from The American Jewish University with a degree in Jewish studies, he worked at Congregation Har Shalom in Potomac, Maryland, for two years as director of youth engagement. In that capacity, he created a new Shabbat program for pre-B’nai Mitzvah, elementary and middle school students called STAR Shabbat (Shabbat, Torah and Ruach).
The program began with just a couple of kids and finished with around 45 kids and their parents. The little community they created gave them an opportunity to learn, to grow and to experience the beauty of Shabbat Helfand said.
He also created a confirmation curriculum based on the pillars of a Jewish LGBTQ organization and wrote a mission statement for the synagogue as a whole that promoted inclusivity.
“It’s taking relevant and meaningful topics that were important to the people I was working with and in the world as a whole and bringing them to the table, addressing them, finding meaning in them, having conversations about them, struggling with them, and then actually doing something with them,” Helfand said.
A 2009 HBHA graduate, Helfand believes the Academy had a huge impact on his decision to become a rabbi. That’s where he formed his Jewish identity. Students were pushed to find their voice among the Jewish people and develop an initial love of being Jewish. They were encouraged to volunteer, to be active in the synagogue, to be active in youth groups.
Growing up, Helfand was a member of Beth Shalom but said he left there after his Bar Mitzvah and went to Ohev Sholom. Ohev was seeking people to read Torah and lead services because Rabbi Daniel Horwitz had just left, so they reached out to HBHA B’nai Mitzvah kids. Helfand, among others, agreed to help.
But Helfand continued his involvement with USY and other youth programming through Beth Shalom.
Throughout his life Helfand has taught in religious schools, taught in Hebrew high school programs, tutored B’nai Mitzvah students and worked with youth groups. While at the synagogue in Maryland, he was also getting rabbinic mentoring from the rabbi who “helped me along the path to make sure this is really what I wanted to do and reaffirmed and supported me throughout that,” he said.
After graduating from college, he spent a year in Israel as a staff member on Nativ, a project of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. While on Nativ, he volunteered in Yerucham in southern Israel.
Helfand said he was experiencing lifecycles of his own as well as through family and friends and realized as a rabbi this was something he would be able to do professionally. He would be able to cultivate and foster relationships with people, to spearhead, reinvigorate and innovate what Jewish communal programming and Jewish communal service could be like for people his own age as well as those both younger and older.
He posited that throughout his years doing volunteer work, he was taking things that were important and timely and helping others learn about them and experience and grow together.
“Those are things I wanted to do as a whole that will only help me in rabbinical school and later on as a rabbi, and I’m doing a lot of that now as a chaplain in a hospital,” he said. “It’s stepping outside of my comfort zone and remembering that I’m not the only person in the world. Remembering there are other people who need support, who need prayer, who need someone to just be there for them, and this is an opportunity for that.”
As part of his chaplain training, Helfand chose to focus on the ER and triage area at Research Medical Center, so he sees everything from gunshot wounds to motor vehicle accidents to burn victims — anything trauma related. He also deals with patients admitted to the hospital who are post-traumatic.
When he’s on call, he sees anybody in the hospital who calls for a chaplain. He prays with and counsels patients and their families, and works with families who have just received the news that their loved one is going to die or has died and supports them through the grief process.
He’s also a notary public for the state of Missouri and in that capacity works with families on advance directives and durable powers of attorney and helps them make end-of-life decisions.
On Sundays he runs a non-denominational religious service for anyone in the hospital — staff, patients or families — who would like to attend.
Helfand said chaplains also care for their internal family at Research, which this summer had to face the death of a key member of the senior staff of the hospital.
“We jumped right in to talk to or care for the entire hospital team,” he said. “So the chaplains are an integral part of the hospital at Research. They respond to every trauma and every code.”
He said he can spend anywhere from five minutes to four and a half hours with a patient.
Research is in the 64130 zip code, the highest crime area in the state of Missouri, so Helfand sees the best and worst of the city. “But we’re able to give families a better quality of life knowing that their loved one is getting great care and that we are supportive of them as a chaplain,” said Helfand.
In addition to the ER, he is a chaplain at the Research Psychiatric Hospital, dealing with patients suffering from mental illness, ones who have attempted suicide or have been admitted because their families deem them emotionally or mentally unstable so they’re put on a 96-hour watch, or people trying to kick a drug addiction.
He said he is the only Jewish chaplain at Research and the number of Jewish patients he has seen he could count on one hand. They’re not his clientele, “which is even more reason why what I do is important and why I wanted to be at Research. I wanted that exposure. After so many years of living in my so-called Jewish bubble, this is an opportunity to really escape that and learn that there are other people out there besides me.”
As a rabbinic intern at Beth Shalom, Helfand is leading Shabbat services on Friday nights with Hazzan Tahl Ben-Yehuda; Saturday mornings, he gives the d’var Torah and Mincha teaching or singing; and leads the weekday minyan on Sunday and Monday evenings.
He’ll also be around for the High Holidays, leading Yamim Noraim services.
“My time at Beth Shalom keeps me rooted and grounded in the Jewish community after really putting myself out there in a non-Jewish environment. Beth Shalom kind of re-centers me and I’m able to re-immerse myself into the Jewish world every day,” he said.
For now, Helfand has four more years before being granted smicha (ordination) in 2022. When asked what kind of rabbi he wants to be, he said his answer is always, “I want to be a good one.”
“While I think the pulpit is what I’m kind of called to, I recognize that right now it doesn’t really matter where I go to be a rabbi as long as I can be a good one because I don’t know what the options are going to be when the time comes,” he said. “I’m drawn to the pulpit, but I’m open. Having this experience at Beth Shalom is great because now I get pulpit experience and being a summer intern chaplain at Research I get chaplain experience, so there’s a lot to choose from.”
The bottom line for Helfand is having people excited about the opportunity that they can be Jewish in their own ways; they can practice and connect however they want, that there’s a place for them inside the synagogue or the community and also as a people as a whole.
“We have to be able to meet them where they want to be and if that’s learning about the portion of the week at a bar and having a beer, then that’s that. If it’s something different, we have to make it acceptable; we have to make it engaging. But it’s got to be something that’s appealing to people,” he said.
“That’s one of the challenges as well as the curses of the business, but it’s an exciting challenge and curse as far as I’m concerned.”
Helfand is the son of Richard and Vicki Helfand of Overland Park, and the brother of Rabbi Corey Helfand and Ethan Helfand.