Understanding Jewish Trauma: The Therapist’s Role in Bearing Witness and Building Resilience

This webinar is presented by Tracy Farber, Ph.D. 
Date: Thursday, March 12, 2026 
Time: 9am PT / 10am MT / 11am CT / 12pm ET 
Webinar length is approx 90 mins, ZOOM link will be sent a few days before the event.

Workshop Overview

Working with Jewish clients who have experienced trauma requires attention to both present-day events and transgenerational legacies. Jewish trauma exists within a historical continuum — from the Shoah to October 7th and recent terror-related events at Bondi— shaping both vulnerability and resilience. Each client carries a unique combination of collective history and personal family experience.

Trauma shatters the self and disrupts psychological defences and leaves a profound sense of loss, terror, helplessness, and “existential aloneness” (Solomons, 1995). The therapist’s role in bearing witness includes offering an empathically attuned and psychologically safe space and this is central to the therapeutic process. The clinician must skilfully decide when to attune, when to encourage agency, and when to interpret, while maintaining awareness of transference and countertransference dynamics. 

Equally important is the therapist’s role as an agent of resilience. Trauma therapy involves a nuanced balance between validating suffering and encouraging resilience. 

Learning Objectives

Participants will:

1. Explore how trauma shatters the self and how therapy becomes a co-creative journey towards resilience.
2. To discuss theoretical perspectives on witnessing and its central role in trauma therapy.
3. Hear a presentation of clinical case material and research with Holocaust survivors to illustrate the integration of empathic witnessing and resilience building in the therapeutic process.

Dr. Tracey Farber is a clinical psychologist, trauma specialist, trainer, supervisor and author. She completed her PhD at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2019. Her doctoral research formed the basis of the co-authored book Catastrophic Grief, Trauma and Resilience in Child Concentration Camp Survivors (Farber, Eagle & Smith, 2023, Academic Studies Press, Boston). This is an academic book on trauma for mental health professionals. Based on her research results, she advocated for the establishment of, and continues to serve as consultant supervisor, to the Holocaust Survivors Project within Johannesburg Jewish Social Services. As a result of her research, she developed a five-step model for building resilience, which she has presented to schools, parent groups, organisations, and psychotherapists.

For 24 years, Dr. Farber worked in private practice in Johannesburg, where she served as a consultant supervisor and trainer in trauma counselling to Jewish welfare organizations and Jewish day schools. She worked extensively with adult and child survivors of violence in the South African context, as well as Holocaust survivors and second-generation survivors.

Since making Aliyah five years ago, she has worked at Tel Aviv University’s Psychological Services and in private practice with adults and children. A psychodynamic psychotherapist specialising in trauma and PTSD, she has, since October 7, provided treatment to soldiers, reservists, Nova survivors, bereaved mothers of fallen soldiers, and evacuees following the Iran attacks. She also supervises psychologists and social workers in private practice. She recently founded IJATT (International Jewish Association of Trauma Therapists). An international group founded to support therapists who work with survivors of Jewish terror attacks in Israel and the Diasporah.