My name is Esther Bistricer and this summer I am interning at Shalom Task Force, a nonprofit organization that supports survivors of domestic abuse and aims to build safe families and communities. Their work primarily focuses on providing culturally sensitive programming and services to the Jewish community through a confidential hotline and chatline, free legal services, and preventative education workshops.
My work day starts at around 9:15 when I check in to the WeWork office building in midtown Manhattan. On the 8th floor, there is a nice shared space to sit on one of several couches, at a long table or booth, and take advantage of the free coffee offered to employees made by a barista. This is the point of my day when I ask myself why I don’t drink coffee and make my way up to the 14th floor where I meet with the other four college interns in a glass-enclosed office space and wait for our internship coordinator and Shalom Task Force Director of Communications and Program Operations, Jeffrey Younger, to welcome us and go over the agenda for the day.


Every day looks slightly different but generally consists of meeting with a member of the staff to discuss ideas and ways to develop education workshops in schools and summer camps, how to properly conduct outreach in communities so more people are aware of the services the organization provides, or marketing for the upcoming ping pong fundraiser. Another interesting meeting we participated in recently was hosted by the United Jewish Appeal, a philanthropic organization that funds hundreds of nonprofit organizations such as Shalom Task Force. The UJA gathered a group of social services agencies to connect and engage in a presentation led by a psychologist about family functioning in the Orthodox Jewish community. I found this particularly interesting because, before this meeting, I hadn’t had any exposure to empirical research on this topic. In the research conducted by Dr. Steven Pirutinsky, it was found that Orthodox families display high degrees of enmeshment or emotional closeness and rigidity in lifestyle and relationship dynamics. While this may not be “average” as compared to results in other studies, I took away from this presentation the importance of understanding cultural differences and the idea of cultural competency. This can apply to learning about and understanding different cultures and using that to assess what is accepted behavior and what can be considered unhealthy based on cultural context.
Along with meetings that I have the opportunity to sit in on and participate in, I am working with the other college interns to develop educational materials. Currently, Shalom Task Force gives presentations to 12th grade Jewish day school students on the “fundamentals” of domestic abuse which includes information about what a healthy, unhealthy, and abusive relationship can look like, types of abuse, and “red flags”, or unhealthy behaviors in others or yourself. Moreover, Shalom Task Force speaks to 9th grade students about boundaries and digital safety in their “Virtual Reality” workshop. One of the projects the group of college interns and I have been working on is creating a workshop to add to the curriculum about communication and conflict resolution with interactive activities, relatable clips from the media, and actionable steps we can take to be a supportive friend and community member. We are also thinking about marketing for their upcoming fundraiser, doing independent work where we research media about domestic abuse, healthy and unhealthy relationships, or conflict resolution, as well as compiling a list of synagogues and other community spaces into a directory.


So far in my experience I’m learning a lot and enjoying getting exposure to what work in a nonprofit organization looks like, where there are a variety of tasks and meetings to participate in and everyone’s contributions make an impact and move the programming in a slightly different direction. I am looking forward to seeing the progress I will continue to make alongside the other interns with the workshops, the directory of synagogues and communal spaces, as well as the projects that will come up along the way, and learning and personal growth that will occur over the next few weeks.