Overview and History
The Shofar Coalition is a group of Baltimore-area Jewish community partners, first convened in 2004 by The Sidran Institute. The Coalition is made up of service agencies (both Jewish and secular), rabbis (all denominations), Hebrew day schools, private practice therapists, survivors and family members, advocacy organizations, and lay community leaders.
The name Shofar was chosen as a symbol of a community-wide Call to Action to recognize and address the traumatic effects of abuse in the Jewish community, and especially on Jewish children and adolescents.
The Shofar Coalition's vision is to create and sustain a strong coalition of diverse talents and to foster the development and implementation of a truly collaborative campaign to address the needs of Jewish children and families exposed to physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and neglect. Rather than "reinvent the wheel," our approach is to better coordinate the rich programs already in place by Coalition partners and build only when gaps are identified.
The Shofar Coalition's target populations to be served include:
- Child and adolescent victims of physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse (both intra- and extra-familial)
- Children exposed to domestic violence
- Children of alcoholic, addicted, or mentally ill parents
- Adult survivors of childhood trauma
The Shofar Coalition's objectives are:
- To impart a sophisticated understanding of the scope of the problem and the long-term effects of childhood trauma to Jewish spiritual and social action leaders; Jewish health, mental health, education, and agency decision-makers; and secular agencies serving Jewish clientele.
- To build the capacity of service providers, clergy and other stakeholders to collaboratively identify, intervene, prevent, and heal.
- To identify gaps in existing resources and services, and collectively implement strategies to fill those gaps, by applying individual and combined expertise to more effectively address the multidimensional needs of Jewish victims of interpersonal trauma.