Picture: Sacred Spaces

A Decade-Long Friendship – Paideia and Shira Berkovits

In 2015 Paideia invited 20 promising young Jewish leaders from New York and Europe to gather in Sweden for the annual Paradigm Program. Always an exciting and iconoclastic group, 2015 would be the start of a beautiful friendship. Dr. Shira Berkovits was one of those participants and her memories of that extraordinary week with the Paradigm Program are vivid and instructive, ten years later. Shira began by saying, “A decade later I still think about Paideia and how it changed me so much – and how I see the world. Until that time, my life as a NY Jew entailed going to Israel and coming back to NY. But what the Paradigm experience really did for me was expand my sense of the Jewish world in a very profound way. Culturally, it was incredibly challenging and even occasionally uncomfortable for me in the beginning to realize all the cultural differences among our group.” Shira went on to recall with fondness one of the mantras of Paradigm – Don’t react right away, just take it in. What she began to realize from heeding that mantra as the week went on was that these ‘cultural’ moments were more than interpersonal exchanges. “They contained within them decades of interactions between Diaspora Jewry and Europe and Diaspora Jewry and the US and Israel.” In fact, she credits one of the program’s scholars – noted Polish intellectual Konstanty Gebert – with presenting such new ideas and perspectives to her that “it felt like someone was re-writing for me modern Jewish history as I had known it.”

Shira recalls another conversation during the program in which she and a participant from Poland were discussing antisemitism and the many young Americans who visit Europe on organized trips. They are often exhorted to yell Am Yisrael Chai and other well meaning  slogans as they march in the streets, intending to show support for the Jewish local population. But when her companion turned to her and provided her own perspective as a resident of the city, she described a somewhat different scene – the students marching through the streets holding banners and yelling Am Israel Chai, while the Jewish residents stay uneasily in their homes. She asked Shira, What do you think they are feeling? What do you think happens when the students go home? Do you think this is helping antisemitism or hurting it? Do you think it’s helping the Jews who live here once these kids have gone? Shira recalls, “Again, it totally changed my perspective. It marked a defining line for me of entering a more complex understanding of post-war Jewish European life.”

Today, Shira is Founding Director and CEO of the international nonprofit Sacred Spaces which she created shortly after the Paradigm Program. As a behavioral psychologist with a background in creating large-scale organizational change, and an attorney specialized in criminal law, Shira has spent years focused on the topic of sexual offending in faith-based communities and today partners with Jewish leaders to help reduce, prevent and heal the trauma of sexual abuse and build safer communities with accountable institutions. Asked about the relevance of Paradigm for professionals, Shira swiftly replies, “Two things stand out to me. First is relational aspects – considerable time was devoted to our developing empathy for each other as individual human beings; without that, we cannot take the first step to understand and heal, individually or organizationally. I see this every day. Second isability to engage with core issues. Today, when I find people so politicized that theycan’t talk to each other, I often come back to the substance and ask myself if there isenough in the substance that we can agree upon to allow us to do the work? The answer is almost always, ‘Yes’”. At Sacred Spaces we deal with fraught issues of abuse and power and this approach, focusing on individuals and engaging on core theological issues with them, is what I have found is needed to move a community.” Shira shares that more than once over these years she has consulted her original Paideia notes and Shabbat table cards on the importance of making Jewish text universally accessible and how to go about that.  “So Paideia is still with me, and I draw on it in many ways. The most profound being that it shifted my outlook on life and how I relate to world Jewry and my place in it.”

Dr. Shira M. Berkovits, PhD, JD   

Shira Founded Sacred Spaces with the goal of bringing Jewish and other faith-based organizations individually tailored policies and programs to address specific needs, risk factors and cultures. Her work is considered seminal and the impact of Sacred Spaces spans organizations on five continents, keeping our sacred spaces safe. Over the last 10 years Shira finds the time to be a devoted alumna of Paideia, participating in Paradigm activities, recommending candidates for Paideia programs and keeping up with her fellow alumni around the world, whenever possible.

Selected Publications

“Institutional Abuse in the Jewish Community” by Shira Berkovits, Esq., PhD

https://traditiononline.org>Summer 2017 Issue 50.2

“Preventing Abuse in Jewish Organizations that Serve Youth: Ten Policies to Create

Safer Environments” by Shira Berkovits, Esq., PhD

“Vayikra as a Model for Transparent Communal Governance” by Shira Berkovits, Esq.,

PhD and Rabbi Steven Exler