A 1999 article in Washington Jewish Week on domestic violence prompted two women to approach the leadership of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, asking for solutions.
The article detailed a professional’s experience in a physically and emotionally abusive relationship.
“I remember reading it and being really shocked,” Barbara Zakheim, the co-founder of the Jewish Coalition Against Domestic Abuse, said. “It just really bothered me.”
‘No One Had Really Addressed the Issue’
Zakheim researched and found that many other areas home to “decent-sized Jewish communities” had Jewish organizations that dealt with domestic abuse. One is CHANA Baltimore, and another is the Shalom Task Force in New York.
“I got in touch with both of them and found out that domestic abuse was a real problem all over the place, but also, unfortunately, in the Jewish community,” Zakheim recalled.
She did more research on emotional abuse, finding that there was “nothing” going on organizationally within the Greater Washington Jewish community to combat this issue.
“No one had really addressed the issue or formed any kind of agency that had specialists in working with domestic violence survivors,” said Amanda Chorowski, JCADA’s executive director since 2019.
Zakheim got in touch with Liza Levy, a Potomac resident who co-founded the Federation’s Tikkun Olam Women’s Foundation.
“[Members of TOWF] weren’t aware of [the issue],” Zakheim said. “So I called a meeting.”
Gathered in Zakheim’s Silver Spring living room, a group of women discussed what domestic violence looks like in other major American cities and brainstormed what they wanted to offer in the D.C. area.
Zakheim and Levy co-founded JCADA, a nonprofit organization that aims to support victims of domestic abuse, in 2000. JCADA provides free trauma-informed services to victims of intimate partner violence and leads “robust education and training programs” in the community.
“[It] became a two-pronged program; one is preventing and educating, and the other is supporting [survivors],” Chorowski said.
Starting Small
Housed in the Federation building before obtaining its Rockville office, JCADA began with one part-time trauma counselor.
“The rumor was that this person sat in a closet at Federation,” Chorowski said. “[JCADA] really started small and eventually grew to employ more folks, not just to do the counseling piece.”
The co-founders’ early work was complicated by widespread denial of the issue.
“People didn’t believe [domestic abuse] was happening,” Chorowski said.
The 1999 Washington Jewish Week article was a start, but Zakheim and Levy had to build on that with more research and show the community that an agency’s services were needed — that people were actually experiencing abuse.
In a video commemorating JCADA’s 25th anniversary, Zakheim and Levy recalled that at first, even some rabbis of local synagogues claimed domestic violence “wasn’t happening here.”
Part of JCADA’s work involves educating clergy members, social workers, parents, teens and “everybody in the community” about what domestic abuse can look like and what to do when someone reports it, according to Chorowski.
“Once rabbis start to speak from the bimah and openly in their congregations, people start to come forward when they know that you’re a safe person,” she said.
The agency began accepting government grants in the mid-2010s, allowing JCADA to expand its services.
“Before that, [JCADA] only started out seeing Jewish women, and then when [we] started taking grants, [we] started to see everyone and anyone who needed help in the region,” Chorowski said.
That move was the start of JCADA’s presence as a larger entity within the network of domestic violence support agencies. In 2016, JCADA established a victim advocacy department to help clients seek safety.
“Someone can’t really access trauma healing if they’re not sure where their next meal or safe sleep is coming from,” Chorowski said.
Understanding a Community’s Needs
Although domestic abuse may not be widely discussed, it can uniquely affect the Jewish community. Jewish Women International, one of JCADA’s main partner organizations, has published studies about the stigma around reporting abuse.
Chorowski cited multiple factors within the Jewish community that can complicate the ability to leave an unhealthy relationship.
“One is the shalom bayit concept — keep things calm and pleasant in your home — but it ignores the abuse” that may occur, Chorowski said.
Another is the tight-knit nature of the Jewish community.
“Word can travel quickly,” Chorowski said. “Rather than the abuser feeling shame, it was often the victim who felt ashamed that these things were happening in their home.”
Traditional Jewish law requires a woman to get her husband’s approval to end a marriage.
“Men not giving their wives Jewish divorces was a big, big problem,” Zakheim said, adding that the issue is now “much better than it used to be.”
Yet another factor is the lack of knowledge about power dynamics in a relationship. When survivors reported domestic abuse, their clergy would often recommend they “try to work things out” with a professional.
“You can’t do couples counseling when one person is terrorizing the other person,” Chorowski said. “It’s not an even playing field.”
She added that until JCADA began educating area rabbis, that lack of understanding was sometimes a “stopping point” for survivors seeking help.
“In the Jewish community, we have our own culture, and when you have a specific agency that is particularly made for one culture, the folks who work there understand all of the rituals and the spirituality around the religion,” Chorowski said. “It’s important to have folks who understand all the language around the specific needs of the community.”
‘Earning the Trust of the Community’
Even though JCADA serves the community through a Jewish lens, its doors are open to anyone.
“A lot of folks who are in more traditional patriarchal families — usually a more traditional side of a faith, like a more traditional Catholic or Muslim — will also come to us because we understand better in general,” Chorowski said.
A major achievement is “earning the trust of the community” and being a trusted partner to the federal government, she said.
Chorowski sees the impact of JCADA’s work firsthand. She and her colleagues visited 21 local synagogues for “Purple Shabbat,” where JCADA raises awareness about the organization.
Lauren Glazer and Tova Zimm, both JCADA staff members, spoke at Kehilat Pardes – The Rock Creek Synagogue.
“Afterwards, people came up to them and said, ‘I never had the words around it, but this is what I’ve been experiencing,’” Chorowski recalled.” We have to keep talking about it because there’s always someone new to hear our message.”
Twenty-five years since its founding, JCADA employs 17 staff members plus a facility therapy dog. The nonprofit served more than 1,300 clients through educational programming and assisted nearly 300 clients with legal needs in 2024.
Zakheim said she never expected the organization to serve as many survivors as it does.
“Thank God [JCADA’s] still around and it’s grown,” Zakheim said.
