Illness

A diagnosis of an advanced illness can be devastating. If you’re the patient, anxiety and pain can make it difficult to focus on the many choices you need to make. If you’re the family member or close friend, stress and sorrow can impede your search for the caring services that your loved one may need.

UJA-Federation of New York seeks to ensure that New York’s Jews and their loved ones struggling with advanced and life-limiting illness receive the support of the Jewish community to gain access to care that eases their pain and takes care of body, mind, and spirit.

The Challenge in Receiving Quality Care when Facing Serious, Chronic, or Life Threatening Illness

• Too many Jews in New York, like many Americans, are not able to access adequate medical, emotional, practical, or spiritual support because they and their families do not know where to turn when faced with serious illness.
• At a time of already heightened stress, it can be burdensome and overwhelming to navigate the fragmented and complex healthcare system, access entitlement benefits, locate practical resources that are geographically accessible, or receive emotional and spiritual counseling. 
• Hospice — both in the home and in a residential setting — is not always well understood as an interdisciplinary, holistic, patient-centered approach to quality end-of-life care.

UJA-Federation’s Response

UJA-Federation of New York has formed the Jewish Healing and Hospice Alliance which provides streamlined access to quality patient care — and to peace of mind — with an integrated network of knowledgeable and compassionate resources to people coping with illness.

Three regional care centers provide services throughout the course of the illness, including: information and referral; practical assistance and advocacy; Jewish spiritual and pastoral guidance; individual, family, and group support; connections to palliative and hospice care; and bereavement counseling.

When you learn you will be dealing with a serious illness, please call one of our centers:

• The Shira Ruskay Center of the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services in New York City
• Partners in Dignity of F•E•G•S Health & Human Services in Syosset on Long Island
• Pathways to Care of Westchester Jewish Community Services in Hartsdale in Westchester

The Mollie and Jack Zicklin Jewish Hospice Residence of MJHS (Metropolitan Jewish Health System) offers 24-hour medical care and nursing attention, kosher kitchen, chaplaincy services, observance of Jewish holidays, and caring staff and volunteers in a comfortable home-like setting.

Every Dollar you Give Counts for the Neediest

• $400 can pay for electric candlesticks for Shabbat observance for 10 patient rooms at the Mollie and Jack Zicklin Jewish Hospice Residence of MJHS.
• $360 can provide a kosher Shabbat meal for all of the patients at the Mollie and Jack Zicklin Jewish Hospice Residence of MJHS.
• $400 can buy 18 hours of home care.
• $150 can buy a social work home visit to a dying isolated elderly Holocaust survivor.