Abstract
Chaplaincy, traditionally a Christian concept, has evolved into the interfaith practice of spiritual care. This article describes how Jewish chaplains, the first non-Christian religious minority group in the United States to work as chaplains, adopted and adapted chaplaincy as a distinctly interfaith form of religious leadership. Jewish chaplains paved the way for other religious minority groups to serve as chaplains—a key part of the broader transition to today’s interfaith practices of spiritual care. Today, chaplains and spiritual care providers come from a range of spiritual and religious backgrounds, including none. Despite these changes, the challenges of interfaith work persist. We examine Jewish chaplaincy as a case study that illustrates how a religious minority group adopts and adapts aspects of dominant Christian culture while continuing to grapple with Protestant-infused aspects of that culture, simultaneously translating and interpreting such aspects as their own.