How has Shalom Bayit evolved?
We were the first Jewish DV program in Northern California and remain the only one in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 17 years we’ve grown from a small, grassroots, all-volunteer taskforce with no budget, to an organization with two offices and four paid staff serving a nine-county area. Whereas in the beginning we focused on raising community awareness and desperately trying to get the Jewish community to believe domestic violence can happen at all, now we provide a range of services – from crisis intervention and spiritual healing for survivors, to teen and adult prevention programs, and clergy training to improve community response. And most importantly, we’ve gone from what was perceived of as a “fringe” group dealing with an issue that was highly contentious, to a respected part of the network of established Jewish agencies. The whole movement has changed over the years. The story I always love to tell people is how 17 years ago we could not get a single synagogue to let us hold a
