OCTOBER 27 • 2022 | 11
people Bev has helped at JFS have been
Holocaust survivors. She described the
privilege it has been to work with them
and to be let into the unimaginably hor-
rific stories that were part of their lives.
She said when listening, she’d choose
not to cry and often couldn’t “hold it in”
once she got back to her car or office or
home.
Bev “took advantage” of, and was
incredibly appreciative of, the “Jewish”
in Jewish Family Service. In telling me
about her sadness at not being able to go
to Henry’s funeral (because of pandemic
measures), she told me she learned in
Rabbi Levi Dubov’s Journey of the Soul
(a course exploring the Jewish perspec-
tive on life, death and beyond, taught at
JFS) valuable lessons reassuring to her
about Henry’s life and death.
Jewish Family Service does its Adopt
a Family holiday gift program annual-
ly, so that people we serve can have a
proper holiday, gifts and all. Bev would
sign up the people she served for this
if they were in need. She said that her
older adult clients wouldn’t just get gifts,
but she would also be there with them
when they opened them up because part
of the problem for many isolated people
is not having anyone with whom to cel-
ebrate. One Chanukah, Henry received
gifts. He was beyond ecstatic to have
received exactly what he wanted and to
open it up with his trusted Beverly King.
Socks and batteries. Not too glamorous
but exactly what Henry wanted!
Beverly King will be greatly missed by
Jewish Family Service, but she has left
her legacy in the thousands of people
she served and worked with, using all of
her tools, wisdom, experience and com-
passion.
Perry Ohren has been CEO of Jewish Family
Service since 2011. Before that, among other
things, he was Federation’s Director of Supportive
Communities. He considers himself in the category
of the third most important set of people at JFS (i.e.,
arguably the least important) and only can do what
he does because of people like Beverly King, the
most essential JFSers in the equation.
Y
ou live through that little
piece of time that is yours,
but that piece of time is not
only your own life, it is the summing
up of all the others lives that are
simultaneous with yours … What
you are is an expression
of history.” — Robert
Penn Warren, World
Enough & Time.
I read that quote
recently as I was reading
the remarkable book The
Body Keeps the Score,
written by Bessel Van
Der Kolk, M.D. Dr. Van Der Kolk
has devoted his career to working
with survivors of trauma, those who
have been through experiences that
run the whole gamut from war to
abuse to loss and beyond. All of us
live through trauma, to greater or
lesser extents, and all of us carry
the imprint of that trauma with us
throughout our lives in all respects —
mind, body and spirit.
Robert Penn Warren’s quote
struck me, specifically, because of
the shared experience we have all
lived through, and continue to live
through, an experience that has
indeed marked our history, that
period of time I often refer to as the
“COVID era.” I have come to realize,
and believe, that all of us have been
touched by trauma in the wake of a
global pandemic, all of us continue
to hold those emotions and reactions
in all facets of our being.
Trauma survivors are often afraid
and hyper vigilant in certain areas.
They may relive the experience,
waking or sleeping. They see the
world in a way they did not see it
before, as a place that they once
knew to be safe that is safe no longer.
I think all of those descriptions apply
to the impact that COVID has had
on our lives and, specifically, on the
lives of older adults.
Our elders have experienced
COVID as a time of isolation and
uncertainty. They’ve not had the
same access to information that
those of us who are “internet-
enabled” do, those who live in the
community have found access to
transportation limited, have delayed
health care out of fear or lack of
access. Those who live in residential
settings, while having their care and
basic needs met, were cut off from
their families, from socialization,
from necessary stimulation.
The wounds of the last two plus
years run deep. They are wounds
we all carry. The losses we have
experienced of family and friends,
the people we care about who are
still struggling with long COVID, the
knowledge that, for the first time in
memory, we all faced a crisis without
answers and a medical challenge that
could not be controlled, and now
cannot be fully halted.
There are moments in life that
we all remember, 9-11 and the
Challenger explosion. We can tell
you where we were and what we
were doing when we heard the news.
We are, as Robert Penn Warren
writes, “a piece of time” that is “the
summing up of all others lives that
are simultaneous with yours.” In
the case of COVID, this “expression
of history” is deep, profound and
enduring. It is a part of who we
are today and has shaped, and will
continue to shape, who we are as we
move forward.
Carol Silver Elliott is president and CEO of The
Jewish Home Family, which runs NJ’s Jewish
Home at Rockleigh, Jewish Home Assisted
Living, Jewish Home Foundation and Jewish
Home at Home. She is past chair of LeadingAge
and the Association of Jewish Aging Services.
essay
Our Collective Trauma
Carol Silver
Elliott
SOCKS AND BATTERIES from page 8