The fight against terror’s trauma

Valley residents Esther and Don Schon, who were in France as part of Jewish Federations of North America’s Campaign Chairs and Directors Mission, wrote this post on July 12. The Schons are the Major Gifts Chars in the 2016 Campaign Cabinet of the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix. 

We are in Paris with a Federation mission trying to understand why we should be here. Jews were expelled from France in 1492, not coming back until the French Revolution. Fully integrated, French Jews identified as Frenchmen who were Jewish.

During and after World War II, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) helped rehabilitate and re-establish a vibrant Jewish community. As Western Europe recovered, evolved and became prosperous, the role of JDC and its sister organization JAFI (the Jewish Agency For Israel) faded away from Western Europe, concentrating on cultures emerging from communism.

Valerie Abraham, whose husband was killed in last year’s terror attack on the HyperCacher market, speaks to the JFNA campaign chairs and directors mission on July 12 in Paris. Photo courtesy of the Schons

Then came the attack on a Jewish day school in Toulouse in 2012, and the Charlie Hebdo and HyperCacher (kosher supermarket) massacres in Paris last year. Terrorism was new to France. Institutions in general and the organized Jewish community in Paris were paralyzed and traumatized. Immediately, the Israel Trauma Coalition (ITC) stepped in to offer counseling and organizational expertise with their Community Resilience Center. These resources had been developed in Israel in response to terror and disasters. They are available and have been used around the world after natural disasters in Haiti and the Philippines and after terrorism in Boston and now Europe. JFNA adopted the concept that any Jew should be able to live without fear in any city in Europe and around the world.

JDC and JAFI receiving funding from the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA). Without this financial support, neither organization would be able to exist. With this funding, trauma support is available immediately.

About 500,000 Jews currently live in France. Anti-Semitism has been on the rise there for 10 years. At first using denial, the French government downplayed the significance of these events. But since the massacres in Belgium and Paris over the past year, things have changed. Jewish schools and institutions now have three soldiers standing guard at all times. Funded with philanthropic dollars from the French community, the Rothschild Foundation and the French government, the Jewish community has and is developing its own security organization. ITC is additionally doing teacher training in Jewish day schools. All of this exists in great part because of North American dollars collected, administered and distributed by JFNA.

We were able to be there when the Jews of Paris needed us because federation-funded programs are there every day. Today we are donors and safe, but tomorrow we could be victims and vulnerable. We are one tribe. We take care of each other. After Sept. 11, 2001,  the ITC sent a team to New York  to help deal with an unspeakable terror and grief. Fourteen years or so later, Israel dealt with Hamas with Operation Protective Edge and invaded Gaza. People trained in NYC in 2001 went to Israel to help them deal with trauma and grief. One day we may be the benefactor, the next we may be the victim. In our tribe, we take care of each other.

 

 

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