What do you need right now?” is the way most of my educational or ritual plans begin. As a mikveh guide, trained by ImmerseNYC, this question is usually followed by, “And what would you like to avoid having happen?” asked over email and then again in person. As a consultant, mentor and educational director this question arises before preparing a pre-curriculum or individual class lessons. While we always have set curricular goals, the question that makes our curriculum specific to our students in their milieu and leads us to tweak our lesson plans every year is the question: “What do our students need right now?” as Judaism is a religion meant to connect us to our past, our present, our community and ourselves.
“What do you need right now?” was one of two transformative questions that led to the creation of Survivor’s Shiva. My answer at the time made no sense to me. I said, “I don’t know what I mean, but I want to go to a beach and sit shiva for all I’ve lost.” My friend said she would be there, whenever and wherever there was a place and time.
The other transformative question came from my dear friend and fellow Bring Back Our Girls activist (following the kidnapping of 276 school girls in Nigeria in 2014), Rev. Dionne Boisserie. She asked, “What do Jewish women do to remember Jephtah’s daughter?” And despite a preschool – 12th grade Yeshiva education, and four years of graduate-level pluralistic and denominational Jewish education, I did not know what she was talking about. When I returned to the story of Jephtah’s daughter, that I barely recalled, I discovered the passage she referred to at the end of Judges Chapter 11: “So it became a custom in Israel for the maidens of Israel to go every year, for four days in the year, and chant dirges for the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.”
In my research I found very little mention in Jewish history of this ritual. In the Israeli and American Jewish communities I lived in throughout my life I had seen no tradition pertaining to Jephtah’s daughter. In speaking to my monthly interfaith women’s text study group, “God Conversations,” I realized that women have much to mourn that is often hidden and un-ritualized. Jephtah’s daughter helped me realize that I needed to make more spaces for female rituals around loss, both for myself and for my 17 other chevrutot/spiritual study partners. I also saw this need for the growing communities of trauma survivors, mainly women and non-binary folks, who I was discovering in different pockets of my personal and professional life.
“Survivor’s Shiva” was born to utilize Jewish ritual and prayer to support trauma survivors. The project was born from these two transformative questions and over a dozen interviews with trauma survivors. Nameless, Jephtah’s daughter, was bereft of comforting or intervening mothers and aunts. Her story ends with a call to her “sisters” (friends) to witness and mourn with her.
“Survivor’s Shiva” was born to utilize Jewish ritual and prayer to support trauma survivors.
To mourn, and honor Jephtah’s daughter, “Survivor’s Shiva” gives survivors space to ritually seek witnessing and opportunities for ritual intending to transform or shift the specific areas where their trauma still pains them. Survivor’s Shiva is only appropriate for survivors already in a therapeutic process for their trauma. Integral to the process is a ritual guide, like those at the mikveh or a life-cycle ritual or prayer service. Ritual guides work with the survivor utilizing the basic template of “Survivor’s Shiva” to explore and confirm the goals they have for the ritual. Then the ritual guide offers a menu of options for ritual, space, dates and witnesses, all determined by the survivor. Built into the process is an emphasis on the survivor and choice. At the end of the ritual, the guide conducts a debrief session with witnesses and a follow-up survey, after over 24 hours have passed (for those of us who process over time). Prior to the ritual, the guide and survivor schedule a one-on-one debrief for whenever the survivor believes it will be best.
There is a tremendous interest in “Survivor’s Shiva.” Some come from people who have experienced abuse, miscarriage, sudden loss of a loved one at a young age. Many have experienced trauma that psychologists call “little t” trauma, that is often overlooked as being “mundane.” This includes workplace severe mistreatment, or insecurity that comes from a sudden job or relationship loss or other financial hardship. While interviewing over 150 individuals in the Jewish communal world for a different project, the Ethical Workplace Research & Network Weaving Project, trauma experiences in Jewish spaces kept rising to the surface. The majority of interviewees discussed traumatic Jewish space and workplace encounters that were never addressed.
“Survivor’s Shiva” is a project part of a larger intention to have Jewish spaces be trauma-informed. We are witnessing a season for progressive Jewish spaces to talk about trauma and somatic experiences. This is a fantastic moment for the Jewish people who carry intergenerational trauma as well as their own personal trauma. It is also a moment to dedicate ourselves to learning what trauma-informed spaces and lenses look like so that we create spaces that cause less trauma and attend to trauma, without creating new trauma out of ignorance.
Our next stage for this model is to teach and train ritual facilitators the skills and content they need so that we can open to survivors in the numbers that need us. We will also seek funding and partnerships with organizations dedicated to being trauma-informed and trauma-attending.
The Jewish community is rich in trauma experiences and, unsurprisingly, we are rich in rituals and prayers for attending to healing, witnessing, guiding forward. The Survivor’s Shiva project is part of Wonder and Repair, an organization that imagines a Jewish educational and ritual world that is trauma-informed, survivor centered, child and family centered, and works to create more shalem/whole communities and communitas comprised of individuals who can experience more shalom/peace in their lives.
