Opening on Jewish Ground
9am PT / 12pm ET

Keynote: When the Work Comes Home With You
9:15am PT / 12:15pm ET

Jessica Zitter, MD, MPH, in conversation with Rabbi Melanie Levav

Now We Talk
10:05am PT / 1:05pm ET

Our first networking opportunity in small group breakout conversations, inspired by what we’re taking from the keynote presentation.

Break
10:20am PT / 1:20pm ET

Stay in your breakout to keep schmoozing, or join us for some music recommendations to use at bedside.

This Is How We Do It: Tips & Strategies from the Field
10:30am PT / 1:30pm ET

Two conversations, one underlying question: how does this actually happen in a community?

• Before Death: Advance Care Planning, Jewishly.
  Facilitators from What Matters and Dorot on what it takes to get people talking — before a crisis forces the conversation.

• After Death: Preparing Your Community to Show Up.
  Shiva guides from across the country on what changes when a community knows how to show up for mourners.

Come with your own questions; you'll leave with tools you can use immediately.

Now we Talk
11:25am PT / 2:25 ET

Another networking opportunity in small group breakout conversations and a chance to envision how death can look different (and better) for the communities you serve.

Jewish Death Doulas: The Missing Piece
11:50am PT / 2:50pm ET

Whatever your role — rabbi, chaplain, educator, social worker, funeral director — you know you are just one part of the support needed to talk about death Jewishly. This closing session names what the work of a Jewish death doula actually is, and how you can collaborate for better outcomes.

Close & Next Steps
12:20pm PT / 3:20pm ET

Wrap up our time together with steps to continue learning and connection.

Post-Convening Schmooze by Region
12:30pm PT / 3:30pm ET

Region-specific breakout rooms stay open until 1pm PT / 4pm ET after close. No agenda, just connection… and a dedicated directory for Convening participants to keep the conversation flowing long after we meet.

When the Work Comes Home With You
Jessica Zitter, MD, MPH, in conversation with Rabbi Melanie Levav

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Dr. Jessica Zitter doesn't just study mortality – she lives it, in both the hospital and at home.

As a critical care and palliative care physician in Oakland, Dr. Zitter has spent her career at the bedside of the dying. But it was a different kind of urgency that drove her recent New York Times piece, "My parents are in their mid-80s. Why won't they plan for the end?", where she shares that the tension of mortality is not contained only to her professional work of death and dying. That same tension – between clinical expertise and vulnerability, between what she knows and what she can't control in her own family – runs through everything she does.

Dr. Zitter is the founder of Reel Medicine Media, a nonprofit using story to humanize medical culture, and the filmmaker behind three documentaries on death, caregiving, and care itself: the Oscar- and Emmy-nominated “Extremis (2016)”, the award-winning “Caregiver: A Love Story (2020)”, and “The Chaplain & The Doctor (2025)”. Her book, Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life (2017), traces her own evolution from a doctor trained to extend life at all costs to one who learned to ask what a "good" death really looks like.

Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, and JAMA, and she's spoken with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, on CBS Sunday Morning, and elsewhere. Named one of Next Avenue's "Influencers in Aging," Dr. Zitter brings a rare vantage point to this year's Convening: someone who has spent decades helping others plan for the end, and is now, personally, trying to have that same conversation with the people she loves most.