In 2019, when three people were killed at a kosher market in Jersey City, New Jersey, Chai Lifeline showed up to offer support.
Then, just two years later, after the Surfside condominium collapsed, and 98 people died, Chai Lifeline trained clinicians on how to offer trauma therapy for members of the community.
And after October 7 happened, the organization set up a crisis hotline for Israelis – and anyone else affected by the tragedy – with team members working nonstop around the world.
Rabbi Dr. Dovid Fox, director of crisis intervention, trauma, and bereavement support services for Chai Lifeline International, created these programs to lend a hand to the Jewish community when they need it the most. Fox is a forensic and clinical psychologist and serves as the rabbi of the early minyan at Young Israel of Hancock Park; he has been working with the non-profit for 22 years.
According to Fox, Rabbi Simcha Scholar, CEO of Chai Lifeline, gave him “free reign to develop within Chai Lifeline first response intervention as well as education and trainings for crisis management, which is not for victims or survivors but for schools, the workplace, or the broader community where there has been a tragedy.”
Born in Massachusetts and raised in Los Angeles, Fox is a longtime psychologist who runs a fulltime practice and has been on the faculty of the University of Southern California and California School of Professional Psychology. He also worked as the Associate Clinical Professor at Loma Linda University School of Medicine. He became a psychologist after receiving his first rabbinic ordination in his twenties.
“I enjoy teaching and working with people,” he said. “When I was a rabbinic student, I was playing both of those roles and very interested in counseling and guidance. My late father was a highly accomplished child psychologist in the Jewish world.”
Fox works at his practice, teaches, runs the Chai Lifeline crisis program, and is a dayan in Israel; he travels there to serve on the beit din and help make rulings on religious issues. Additionally, he travels all around the world for Chai Lifeline doing catastrophic trauma trainings to staff in Europe, South America, England, and across North America. When tragedy strikes, the team will go to the site, provide virtual help, or both.
“Once we determine where a tragedy took place, we also determine with whomever is calling how many people have been affected,” said Fox. “We then send out a crisis team and provide face to face intervention.”
The rabbi’s goal is to make sure that Chai Lifeline is there to assist in any way possible.
“I want there to be highly competent, trained interventionists who can be there for their communities.”
“I want there to be highly competent, trained interventionists who can be there for their communities, whether it’s a homicide, assault, pandemic, or another situation,” Fox said. “This is something we need to continue, certainly within the Jewish world and the Orthodox world too. There are many situations where victims need someone who understands their life, world, and culture. For that reason, much of our training is focused on recruiting Jewish volunteers.”
Going forward, Fox is excited to do this work and fulfill his mission to serve others.
He said, “I will continue doing that as long as God spares me.”
