This Is What Intergenerational Trauma Looks Like

I was born into a Jewish home where we reached out to kiss the mezuzah as we entered doorways, but just as often reached for healing and to be heard under the weight of unspoken pain. We kept kosher, lit candles on Friday night, and went to Young Israel each Shabbat. My mother sang the Shema with me like a lullaby—even as she battled addiction, mental illness, and grief.

On the outside, we were a Modern Orthodox family trying our best. Inside, trauma echoed from one generation to the next.

By the time I was born, our wounds had new names: depression, addiction, poverty, emotional neglect. And for my mother, sexual abuse.

My great-grandparents fled pogroms in Russia, Romania, and the Ottoman-controlled Land of Israel. Their escape was one of necessity and hope—running from violence with Torah tucked in their hearts. But like many Jewish families, the journey didn’t erase the pain. It only repackaged it.

By the time I was born, our wounds had new names: depression, addiction, poverty, emotional neglect. And for my mother, sexual abuse.

She was abused by a close relative during her childhood—a truth her family refused to hear despite the fear and pain it caused her. Only my father believed her, seeing the visceral fear she showed when she entered certain rooms. This trauma wasn’t just hers—it was inherited, compounded, and tragically unhealed.

She died of an overdose on her 58th Hebrew birthday almost eight years ago.

The pain she left behind wasn’t only about what she did. It was about what she couldn’t do: keep herself safe, keep me safe, or trust a world that had too often failed her.

And still, she passed me faith. A broken, flickering faith—but faith nonetheless.

As a child, I would recite prayers in shul, at school, and at home with perfect intention—all while living in the chaos in our home. I whispered words I was learning to understand, using prayer as a lifeline.

Intergenerational trauma doesn’t always look dramatic. Sometimes it’s hidden behind a smile, a perfectly braided challah, a child who always follows the rules because she’s afraid of what happens if she doesn’t.

It took years of therapy from childhood—where my truth was hidden because I was told not to speak it or too scared to say anything—to adulthood, when at age 20 I could finally open up freely. Lifelong learning of Jewish wisdom helped me understand that healing doesn’t mean walking away from faith. It means reclaiming it. Not as a badge of perfection, but as a path forward.

People don’t heal through shame. They heal through presence, patience, and dignity.

As a social worker and observant Jew, I’ve learned that healing is not separate from faith. People don’t heal through shame. They heal through presence, patience, and dignity.

I became a social worker because I learned to grow from my pain. I have served the homeless, undocumented immigrants, survivors of domestic violence, and trauma victims. I’ve sat with people on the edge of despair and told them what I once needed to hear: You are not broken. You are carrying too much alone. And yes, we can begin again.

The Torah commands us again and again to protect the vulnerable. “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 22:20). We are told to pursue justice justly—not selectively or only when popular (Deut. 16:20). These are not optional values; they are the fabric of our people. They guide us to heal those with trauma.

In therapy, we are trained to look for intergenerational patterns—unhealed pain passed silently through behavior and expectation. The Torah tells us God “visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children” (Exodus 34:7)—not as punishment, but as a reality: what we don’t face, our children inherit.

But we are also told that “the kindness of God endures for a thousand generations” (Psalms 105:8). In trauma language, that’s intergenerational resilience. We can change the story.

I come from generations of Jews pushed out of every place they tried to belong. My family carried the weight of that displacement, and it showed up in their parenting, coping, and silence. But even in her pain, my mother made sure I knew how to pray, that God is always with us.

I held onto that—even in hospital waiting rooms, even when she was arrested, even when I buried her.

God doesn’t ask for silence. He asks for honesty, courage and persistence.

Intergenerational trauma is real. And so is intergenerational strength. We are maaminim bnei maaminim—believers, children of believers. And in my work, I have seen that belief can be a lifeline—for the client afraid to speak their truth, the woman sitting alone at the fertility clinic, the child mouthing Shema with a heart full of confusion.

I lived it. I still live it.

God doesn’t ask for silence. He asks for honesty, courage and persistence.

When I light candles on Friday night, I’m not only honoring my mother—I’m breaking a cycle. The days when I go to shul beside my husband—who didn’t grow up with these rituals and chose to become observant as an adult—I remember that spiritual legacy isn’t only what we inherit. It’s what we build.