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

