‘You have to be able to talk about it’
Published in The Australian Jewish News
November 25, 2019
It was 27 years ago when Naomi Tucker attended a conference held by the National Coalition against Domestic Violence. She had been working in shelters for battered women at the time, and decided to go along, curious to join the Coalition’s Jewish women’s caucus.
“I had never thought about doing this work in a Jewish context or with my Jewish identity – they were two separate things for me. At this conference, women were talking about what it meant to do this work as a Jew,” Naomi recounts from her home base in the San Francisco Bay area.
It moved her, and much to her surprise, at the end of the conference, Naomi was approached to chair the caucus. She declined, believing that she didn’t have enough real experience in working with Jewish survivors of domestic violence.
Her refusal was not accepted.