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Spiritual Care and Chaplaincy

Staff Biographies

Joel Berning

Joel Nightingale Berning 

Joel Nightingale Berning, MDiv, BCC, ACPE, is the Director of Spiritual Care and Chaplaincy for NewYork-Presbyterian. He has been a chaplain at NYP since 2010 and now supports spiritual care across NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian Hudson Valley Hospital, and our contracted services at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Gracie Square Hospital. His undergraduate degree is from Pomona College. His Master of Divinity is from Union Theological Seminary, where he is now Visiting Assistant Professor of Chaplaincy Studies. His board certification is by the Association of Professional Chaplains, and he has served on its Board of Directors and its Commission on Certification. And he is a Certified Educator of ACPE: The Standard for Spiritual Care & Education.

Rabbi Mychal B. Springer

Rabbi Mychal B. Springer

Rabbi Mychal B. Springer is the manager of Clinical Pastoral Education at NY-Presbyterian Hospital. She founded the Center for Pastoral Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in Manhattan in 2009. Over a ten-year period she oversaw an intensive hospice chaplaincy training program in collaboration with Metropolitan Jewish Health System’s Hospice. She began her career as a hospital chaplain in New York City, and in the 1990s became the director of the Department of Pastoral Care and Education at Beth Israel Medical Center. Mychal was the first Conservative rabbi to be certified as an Educator by ACPE: The Standard for Spiritual Care & Education. Mychal served as The Rabbinical School at JTS’s associate dean and director of Field Education. Her publications include Sisters in Mourning: Daughters Reflecting on Care, Loss, and Meaning (Cascade Press, 2021) with Dr. Su Yon Pak and “Presence in a Time of Distancing: Spiritual Care in an Acute Care Setting” in Jewish End-of-Life Care in a Virtual Age: Our Traditions Reimagined, Friedman D, Levin D, Raphael SP ed. (Albion Andalus, 2021).

Mychal received her BA in Judaic Studies and Religious Studies from Yale College magna cum laude. She was ordained a Conservative rabbi and received her Master’s in Judaic Studies and Doctor of Divinity at JTS. Mychal is a certified Jewish chaplain in Neshama: Association of Jewish Chaplains.