For Tova Zimm, Judaism is “kind of [her] life.” The third-generation Holocaust survivor and active member of her synagogue and community has always seen herself working in the Jewish communal world.
Zimm serves as the victim advocacy director at Jewish Coalition Against Domestic Abuse, where she has worked since 2018. She was JCADA’s first victim advocate and now oversees a team of four.
A self-described ardent Zionist, Zimm holds a bachelor’s in Jewish studies and history from Indiana University Bloomington. She lives in Gaithersburg with her boyfriend, where she belongs to Kehilat Pardes – The Rock Creek Synagogue.
At Kehilat Pardes, Zimm coordinates an annual Purple Shabbat, a JCADA program that aims to raise awareness about intimate partner violence. She recently gave a d’var Torah on the subject at her shul, and next month, plans to organize a Purple Purim for the upcoming holiday.
“I think there’s an aspect to the Purim story that we all often overlook, which is the domestic violence side of the story or the abuses that happen in the Purim story,” Zimm explained. “We’re going to take a moment to highlight that and raise awareness for [JCADA’s] work.”
Read more about the often overlooked aspect of Purim here.
Tell me about your Jewish upbringing and background.
I grew up pretty observant in Florida; I grew up in the Cocoa Beach area. Being the grandchild of Holocaust survivors is one of the most significant and proudest aspects of my identity. I grew up listening to my grandparents share their incredible stories of trauma and survival, but most importantly, their resilience. My grandparents, Halina and Alan Zimm, taught me so many powerful life lessons from as early as I can remember.
I have family up here [in the DMV area], so after I graduated college, I ended up relocating here and found this amazing community. I always knew I wanted to do Jewish communal work, so this was also a great area [for that].
What are your responsibilities as the victim advocacy director at JCADA?
I’ve been with the agency for about seven years now — it’s gone by super-fast. I oversee the victim advocacy department. The role of our victim advocacy department is to help survivors meet their basic needs and help empower them to live safely and live independently. It’s a lot of case management: we help survivors through trauma-informed case management, we help them secure resources to help them meet their most pressing needs, and we work collaboratively with the survivors we serve, creating a personalized individual plan to help improve their safety while they’re experiencing abuse, living in a dangerous situation or preparing to leave the abusive situation.
We help clients apply for public assistance programs; we do a lot of applications for [the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program], helping survivors enroll in Medicaid and making sure survivors know what benefits they’re eligible for as survivors of abuse. We help survivors enroll in the address confidentiality program, which is an address building program for survivors who’ve experienced extreme levels of stalking. Sometimes we also do court accompaniment if clients don’t have an attorney when they’re looking to file for a protective order against their abuser or just need someone to help them navigate the judicial process.
How did you get into victim advocacy work?
I majored in Jewish studies and history, and I was always really passionate about criminal justice and social work. My last few years of school, I took a lot of criminal justice and criminology classes; I got really interested in working with victims of crime, something I always felt really passionate about, particularly in relation to domestic violence. After my junior year of college, I came here and got an internship at JCADA with the education program, and I just really fell in love with the work. It was a life-changing internship. It opened my eyes a lot and I strengthened my passion even more.
After I graduated, I came back and interned again. At the time, JCADA only had a clinical program for survivors and the education program for the community, so they didn’t have any victim advocates yet, but they applied for their first grant to hire a victim advocate; I was lucky enough to apply and get the job. It was just me doing this advocacy and case management work, then we realized how high the need was for victim advocacy support for survivors. I’ve grown the program since then and now we have four full-time victim advocates. When I started, I was providing victim advocacy for survivors in Maryland, and now we have advocates working in Maryland, D.C. and northern Virginia, so it’s really amazing. The program has grown a lot.
What do you enjoy most about your work?
I love what I do; I love it so much. One of my favorite parts of the work is we have a therapy dog at JCADA; his name is Tahoe and he’s part of the victim advocacy program [as a] facility therapy dog. He’s my dog and I bring him to the office every day. I really love that JCADA incorporates animal-assisted therapy into our work. We bring Tahoe to victim advocacy meetings; we bring him to the hospital to visit clients who are hospitalized as a result of abuse, to add another layer of support, which is really, really special. That’s an amazing piece of the job.
My other favorite piece is that I get to work for a Jewish organization. I love that I can support survivors especially in my community. I think JCADA is such a unique place; I love the holistic approach that we have, where we incorporate all different types of support.
How does your identity as a third-generation Holocaust survivor inform your work and life?
I’m very involved with 3GDC, and I did a presentation for them a while back about generational trauma, [which] intersects with the work that I do and the way that child abuse and witnessing domestic violence can impact our lives later on. [There’s] a similar connection to people who are descendants of Holocaust survivors and how symptoms of trauma are passed down. I’ve been able to connect the two passions.
Everything I do, I do through the lens of being a descendant of Holocaust survivors. My grandma is 97, she lives in Richmond [and is] very involved with the Holocaust Museum in Richmond; she just had a hologram set done of her through the Shoah Foundation. I’m very, very connected with her and go to every single event she has [as a] full-time speaker.
