Sky(pe)’s the Limit

Communicating via voice and video. Jewish Home resident Ahuva Gershater (above) catches up with Craig Gershater, the nephew she never knew – until volunteer Helen Luey (center) connected them across the continents.

Helen, a volunteer spiritual care partner in the Home’s Kol Haneshama (Jewish end-of-life/hospice) program, has been visiting with Ahuva for several months. In their many conversations, Ahuva spoke about her beloved older brother, Ben, who, for unknown reasons, became disconnected from the family. Ahuva knew very little about Ben’s adult life, except that some time after leaving their Nebraska home, he had married an English woman and they had a son.

Last May, recalls Helen, “Ahuva suddenly said to me, ‘I wish that somehow, just once before I die, I could have contact with my nephew.’ ”

How, Helen wondered, could she possibly help Ahuva fulfill this wish?

The answer materialized when she learned that Ahuva had a younger brother in Ohio. A phone call to him yielded the name and e-mail address for Craig Gershater, Ahuva’s nephew, now 62 and living in England.

Through her own e-mail account, Helen sent a letter, dictated by Ahuva, to Craig. “We had no idea if Ahuva’s message would reach him, and even if it did, how it would be received,” Helen says.

The next morning, Helen found “a spectacular, warm response,” and photos, in her mailbox. Craig had grown up with not much knowledge of his father’s family and was eager to learn about his heritage.

Craig and Ahuva (via Helen) exchanged e-mails, filling in the outlines of their lives. “Ahuva wanted to know everything about Craig, and Craig wanted every detail about his father’s early life and family,” Helen relates. “He’d only recently learned that his father was Jewish, and he was full of questions of what it was like growing up Jewish in pre-World War II Omaha.”

But Helen believed she could do more. She was familiar with Skype, a technology that provides both voice and visual contact through a computer connection, and thought it might be a tool to bring Ahuva and Craig together, virtually. With help from Mark Friedlander, the Home’s director of Resident Programs & Services, who purchased the camera and microphone needed for the connection, and volunteer Arnold Kleinerman, a date was set for the virtual meeting.

It took place on June 21 at 11:00 a.m. in San Francisco and 7:00 p.m. in England. At the end of their 45-minute conversation, Ahuva’s exhausted but emotional response was, “I love him.”

Helen has facilitated several Skyped conversations since then and notes, “When you watch Ahuva and Craig talking to each other, it’s wonderful.” There was a particularly poignant moment after their second conversation. “Craig began the call with, ‘So, Aunt Ahuva,’ and Ahuva was delighted,” Helen says. “She looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, “No one’s called me aunt before.’ ”

Recently, Helen has uncovered even more about Ahuva’s past for her. Sorting through a box, they found part of a phylactery set, small black leather boxes containing scrolls inscribed with verses from the Torah, which are worn by observant Jews during weekday morning prayers. Ahuva did not think her father or brothers used these religious items, but then a childhood memory came back. As World War II was coming into full force, Ahuva’s mother had received a package from her sister in Lithuania. The phylacteries are another recovered part of Ahuva’s family’s history.

Helen relishes each part of her work with Kol Haneshama, but connecting Ahuva with her nephew was, she says, “a bonus I never would have imagined possible.”

If you would like to explore serving as a Kol Haneshama volunteer spiritual care partner, please call either Rabbi Elliot Kukla at the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center, 415.750.4197, or Rabbi Sheldon Marder at the Jewish Home, 415.469.2254. Volunteers receive ongoing support and education that deepens both their personal experience and their service to others.