Supporting Trauma Victims after the Iran Missile Strike on Soroka Medical Center

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AJMA and Neshama: Association of Jewish Chaplains (NAJC) are proud to host a joint webinar on developing and strengthening resilience after trauma. 

Rabbi Boruch Siris, a chaplain at Soroka Medical Center, will share his firsthand experiences at Soroka since October 7 including after the Iranian missile strike on the hospital in June.

Rabbi Shira Stern, a Disaster Spiritual Care-trained chaplain, will discuss the three-fold Red Cross model of Disaster Spiritual Care: offering support to clients facing overwhelming loss; caring for staff who risk compassion fatigue; providing avenues for communities as they work to regroup after the devastation.

The goal is to identify the inner strengths that will help individuals touched by the event to work towards post-traumatic growth.

Bio for Rabbi Boruch Siris grew up in the New York area and attended Yeshivat Hamivtar (in Efrat) and Harvard University before making Aliyah in 1997. He continued his education at Yeshivat Har-Etzion, Yeshivat Sha’alvim, and Yeshivat Darchei Gemara (from which he has semicha), and then spent six years in Kollel Nachalas Tzvi in Har-Nof, concurrently enrolled in The Practical Rabbanus Halacha Training Program, under the guidance of R. Nochum Borovsky in Jerusalem.

Boruch was married for nine years to Noa Siris a”h, who passed away in 2007 of cancer, leaving a son, Shlomo, who is currently age 24. He remarried a year later to his current wife Tzipi, together with whom there are three additional children: Binyomin (16), Rivka (14) and Aharon (11). Boruch has lived in Bayit Vagan, Jerusalem since 2004 and has been an active member of the Chanichei Ha-Yeshivos shul where HaRav HaGaon R. Ezriel Auerbach shlita is the leader of the community.

Boruch is the author of two books: Noa’s Strength (a testimony to his late wife), and V’tzarich Iyun (a series of essays regarding sugiyot learned during his years in Kollel Nachalas Tzvi).

In 2018, Boruch began to construct a plan for a Spiritual Care Department at Soroka Medical Center, which began to function in full time in September 2019 after he completed his first unit of CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Boruch did another three units of CPE (via zoom) with Lutheran Partners (under the guidance of the Rev. Silvia Misina) while working at Soroka. Soroka’s Spiritual Care provides service for most of the departments at the hospital.

Rabbi Shira Stern was ordained as a rabbi from the Hebrew Union College in 1983 and earned her Doctor of Ministry in 2004. She has served in two pulpits in NJ and has been a hospital and hospice chaplain. She was the Director of the Jewish Institute for Pastoral Care, part of the HealthCare Chaplaincy, providing programs for students, chaplains and clergy in the field. She is a Past-President of the National Association of Jewish Chaplains. She currently serves the ARC as co-lead for Disaster Spiritual Care (DSC) in Massachusetts and Northern New England and is the DSC Division Advisor for the Northeast region. She has responded to the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster,  the Tree of Life tragedy in Pittsburgh, the Boston Marathon bombing, the shootings in Lewiston, ME as well as many hurricanes, wildfires and tornado in her last 24 years of service. She is a Board Certified Chaplain and was a Board Certified Pastoral Counselor in private practice, providing individual and family therapy. 

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