By Elyse Cohn
of The Chronicle staff
We shared a bagel with Milwaukee mensch Randee Zitelman, dedicated caregiver to those in need.
When Randee Zitelman enters a hospital room for the first time, she is ready for anything. “You never know how people will react” when you knock on the door, said Zitelman, a volunteer with the Jewish Chaplaincy Program.
She must first ask permission to come into the room. She then asks whether the patient is affiliated with a synagogue, and if so, whether she can let someone from the synagogue know he or she is in the hospital.
“If the answer is no, that’s it — it’s very private. I’ve learned a lot about privacy,” through volunteering, she said.
Zitelman talks with the patients and offers them the opportunity to pray, sometimes through song.
“It’s still difficult going that first time,” she said, because she never knows what will happen.
But, she said, “It’s the gift I get that I go for.”
By volunteering, “I feel honored, I feel incredibly valuable — all the things you want to feel out of life.”
But her hospital visits at St. Luke’s and Aurora Sinai Medical Centers provide a valuable gift to patients.
Zitelman, 55, has volunteered for the JCP for about six years, two as a hospital visitor. She shared her experiences over bagels and coffee in her colorful, contemporary Glendale home.
Before she started visiting patients, Zitelman took a class and underwent a lengthy interview with Rabbi Leonard J. Lewy, director of the JCP, which is a program of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation in cooperation with Jewish Family Services.
She tries to make visits every week. A patient visit can last anywhere from five to 40 minutes, Zitelman said.
But they can run deep. One of her first patients was a woman who was dying and whose children lived out of town. Zitelman became the “stand-in,” allowing the woman to practice what she wanted to say to her children. Zitelman visited her weekly over several months; and after the woman died she went to her funeral and met her children.
What Zitelman enjoys most from her volunteer work is “listening and communicating, making the connections,” she said. “You’re talking about real feelings, things that are important to people.” In talking with people she says “there’s always something that connects you.
“You’re creating intimate moments,” she added. “That’s what I’m there for.”
For Zitelman, a native of the Washington, D.C., area, visiting patients allows her to give the love that she is unable to give to faraway adult family.
Volunteering has also helped her outlook on death and dying. Raised a “protected Jewish princess,” Zitelman didn’t attend a funeral until she was in college. With no experience, she “had issues” with death. She knew she would face it someday and admits she still has “a lot of work to do,” but she finds herself “compelled to look at mortality and death.”
Amid the voices
Zitelman’s work with JCP started in its Special Needs Program, which organizes monthly meals and events in conjunction with the Jewish holidays. Her first event was a seder at Congregation Sinai.
“I went again the following year, then I asked how I could get more involved,” she said.
Now, Zitelman drives people to the programs, and if there is no cantor available, she leads the group in song. She has also taken program organizer Vicki Ganeles’ place when Vicki is unavailable. “I’m Vicki’s right-hand helper,” Zitelman said, adding that she tries to go to every program.
What she most enjoys is “seeing that people who aren’t always included in mainstream synagogue life have the opportunity to participate with friends, who are actually sort of their family.”
Zitelman’s volunteerism extends to her synagogue, Congregation Sinai. She has served on the chesed [good works] committee for about seven years, writing letters to members who are in the hospital or ill, offering a speedy recovery and any help.
She’s also cooked for the special needs program when it visits Sinai and has created mishloach manot (traditional holiday gift baskets) for Purim.
Zitelman has participated in Sinai’s weekly Saturday morning minyan for about 10 years, providing her yet another way to “feel valuable to people in mourning who need a minyan.”
About five years ago Zitelman joined Sinai’s choir. She joked that she needed “a personal invitation from the cantor” to join, because although she loved to sing, she didn’t feel her voice was good enough.
Joining the choir serves another purpose — drawing her into the congregation. Because her husband is not Jewish, she often attended services alone and felt “like an outsider.”
Singing in the choir solved that dilemma. “I love being in the middle of all of the voices,” she said
Zitelman had an especially busy spring at Sinai. She served on the search committee for a new cantor, and she participated in the adult b’nai mitzvah program, which she described as a “great experience.” For her it was “the next step along the path” in her Jewish life.
In addition to all her volunteer pursuits, Zitelman also runs a business. For nearly seven years she has owned Paladin, Inc., which performs closings and refinancing on homes across southeastern Wisconsin.
Husband Bill Domer is her sole employee. Working with her husband is great, but “it can be hard when I try telling him what to do. But I can’t fire him,” she joked.
Zitelman credits Domer with helping her accomplish her goals. “I could never be doing any of this if I didn’t have Bill. He encourages me to do the things that fulfill me,” she said.
Married in 1988, Domer and Zitelman have raised four children together, two of whom attend Nicolet High School and two adult children from Domer’s first marriage. She is proud of them all.
“I’ve been able to make a life for myself and for my family that I think is a win-win,” she said. “I organize my life in the manner I want, and at the same time I am serving as a role model for my kids.
“As I go forward, my goal is to be my best self,” Zitelman said. She hopes that this goal will impact her children as they go forward in their lives.
“To imagine your own ‘win-win’ in life and then to actually do it — that’s a wonderful accomplishment.”
Zitelman and her husband were gracious hosts in their home. Zitelman had a lightly toasted cinnamon raisin bagel with butter, and coffee.
