In July, 1992, here on the San Francisco Peninsula, as part of a larger public peace process we invited American Palestinians and Jews to begin a long-term dialogue together to discover common ground and improve the environment for reconciliation and change here in America. We had been inspired by others including blacks and whites of Koinonia Southern Africa who met in homes and in public during apartheid 1980s to share meals and stories, sometimes at risk to their lives. We continued meeting and learning to offer humankind best-practices and inspiration, while preserving increasing hundreds of success stories of others in Palestinian- Jewish and interfaith relationship building worldwide. Today we are about 20 Palestinians and Jews, and 10 "others." Many participants have come and gone from our group, taking the experience with them. (Here is a photo.) In 2017, after 294 meetings and 25 years, with a clear mission and vision, we continue moving from caution to integrity, from alienation to familiarity, from ignorance to understanding, from resistance to response, from confrontation to collaboration. As a result, we have:
• Learned about listening, integrity, persistence, and dedication.
• Wrote joint letters to leaders in the United States and the Middle East, including over 90 leaders and opinion formers in Washington. The final contents of these messages were hard-won after much conflict, dialogue, then agreement, before we all placed our signatures.
• Attended synagogue together, and placed a ground-breaking display of Palestinian art in a local temple.
• Participated in our local Palestinian Cultural Days, and presented an educational table to inform and invite new Palestinians to participate.
• Gave public introductory presentations for new people. Typically 50-80 attendees sit at round tables, eating home-made Palestinian and Jewish food and becoming acquainted. Several of us give talks about our personal dialogue group experiences, before the people at tables began moderated, sample dialogues of their own.
• Helped the local Israeli Consulate, at their invitation, with recent Jewish-Palestinian cultural activities which they have begun to initiate.
• Sent $1,300 cash and $20,000 worth of medical equipment to help two hospitals, one in Gaza, and another in western Jerusalem.
• Helped launch three new "spin-off" dialogue groups here in the Bay Area.
• Were interviewed in April 1994 on a local TV talk show "You Didn't Ask Us, But. . ." for 30 minutes about the history, principles, and activities of our dialogue group and about the public peace process.
• Raised $10,000 for schools in need, equally, in Netanya, Israel and Ramallah, Palestine. For their part, the two faculties began meeting in their own new face-to-face dialogue process.
• Co-sponsored an educational fundraising event for Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam (Oasis of Peace), a model village where Jews and Palestinians live and learn together. Two hundred attended.
• Published editorial articlesOn Passover and Peace and To Build a Common Future, A Missing Step in the Peace Process, and Palestinians, Jews can unlearn old habits in major metropolitan newspapers.
• Sponsored "Building A Common Future", a 1997 historic, relationship-building dinner near San Francisco for 420 Jewish and Palestinian Americans, and others, to begin changing the nature of their relationships and invigorate the public peace process. About 100 attendees signed up to continue with in-home mealsharing groups.
• Recorded a 1998 radio interview for the international broadcast of "Unofficial Channels: Dialogue for Middle East Peace," by MAKING CONTACT: Radio Stories and Voices to Take Action. (Audio)(Transcript)
• Provided a guest panel for University of California, Santa Cruz, students' first "Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Workshop."
• Helped educate high school classes studying Palestinian-Jewish conflicts and the value of dialogue in the public peace process.
• Presented a workshop on dialogue, trialogue, and conflict resolution to teen "Future Leaders of the Jewish Community." (Syllabus available upon request.)
• Assisted a synagogueFriday evening dedicated to peace -- Jewish-Palestinian dinner, Shabbos services, exhibits, and panel presentation.
• Helped the 1998 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival with audience development for their North American premier of "AL NAKBA: The Palestinian Catastrophe 1948."
• Provided a "Lunch and Learn" program for the Montefiore Senior Center of the Jewish Community Center.
• Helped YES! Magazine publish an article, "Living Room Dialogues."
• Co-sponsored with the World Affairs Council a public presentation for 350 by M.K. Dr. Yossi Beilin and Palestinian leader Faisal al-Husseini.
• Provided an interview about our Palestinian-Jewish dialogue process for Planetary Dialogues on the Internet.
• Sponsored and facilitated the First All-Bay-Area Meeting of Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue Groups.
• Participated as panelists in "Dialogue Is Action," a 1999 conference of Stanford University Office of Multicultural Education.
• Helped financial donors identify worthy projects that join Palestinians and Jews in dialogue, and in activities that help change enemies into partners.
• Mailed dialogue guidelines and relationship-building ideas to 1,295 individuals, including 717 institutions, 501 cities, 41 states, and 34 countries.
• Used the Internet to forward encouraging news about successful Palestinian-Jewish collaboration, here and in the Middle East.
• Organized a Spring dinner-ceremony: "A Celebration of Freedom for All the Children of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah."
• Provided press interview platform for travelling Jerusalem relationship builder. (article)
• Helped students in high schools, universities, and graduate studies, by providing printed materials and personal interviews about principles and results of citizen relationship-building.
• Celebrated our Third Annual Jewish-Palestinian Dinner in May, 2000 with music and dancing from both cultures, equally.
• Held a quilting workshop to create squares for the travelling Middle East Peace Quilt of Elizabeth Shefrin, Vancouver, Canada, a fabric artist who teaches "Stitching for Social Change."
• Helped a new San Francisco Dialogue Group get launched then, after two years, co-sponsored with the Jewish Community Center an evening Reception for 100 Arabs and Jews.
• Provided media interviews, during the Fall, 2000, violent outbreaks and new Intifada, for local newspapers, radio, and TV, for CNN, and for Canadian radio, to communicate alternative ways of thinking and responding. Watch CNN and also ABC and
NBC
• Helped a new dialogue group to begin in Silicon Valley, despite Middle East violence.
• Offered program development assistance for the Christian Science Sentinel - Radio Edition broadcast, "Common ground for peace-building in the Middle East."
• Provided invited panelists for the Sugihara "Do the Right Thing" Essay Contest sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League for San Francisco Public High Schools.
• Provided a panel for a November, 2000 "Teens-only Middle East Forum" sponsored by the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco at the request of youth to expand their views.
• Spoken at "Coming Together to Bridge Racial Differences", a community forum sponsored in part by the National Education Association.
• Helped host a "Palestinian-Jewish Introductory Evening" at the Arab Cultural Center of San Francisco, to help begin a new dialogue group.
• Made panel presentations, "Jews and Palestinians in Dialogue" on campuses: two at Palo Alto High School's "Worldfest 2001 -- The Worlds We Come From, The Worlds We Make," at Lincoln High and Piedmont High, and at San Francisco State University.
• Supported students in presenting their first Palestinian-Israeli Awareness Week at the University of the Pacific.
• Were radio talk show guests on a KGO-AM call-in program about listening, dialogue, and healing relationships in the Middle East.
• Provided interviews for "Arabs and Jews Discover Each Other" published August, 2001, in the the Daily Star (Beirut, Lebanon), a first-of-its-kind article in the Arab press.
• Published a post-9/11 editorial article -- Listen To Terrorists -- requested by the Hartford (Conn.) Courant.
• Helped fund and promote PROMISES, the award-winning 2001 film depicting the difficulty and possibility of Palestinian and Jewish youth meeting face-to-face around Jerusalem. This film is a must-see.
• Were guests on a TV public forum and live call-in broadast on "Voices from the Village," Community Television Channel 27, Santa Cruz, California.
• Used videoconference technology to communicate between dialogue participants in California and Tennessee.
• Contributed to "Jews and Palestinians Begin to Talk, in America" published Januray 19, 2002, in National Journal, a trusted Washington, DC, professional resource for Members of Congress and their senior staffs, the Executive branch, federal agency executives, government affairs professionals, corporate and association leaders , and the political news media.
• Were featured in the front-page article, "Making Peace in the living room", published Januray 25, 2002, by the Jewish Bulletin of northern California. (front-page PHOTO #1)(front-page PHOTO #2)
• Inspired new Dialogues across North America, including in San Diego, California, where Palestinians and Jews are "seeking understanding... one dinner at a time," reported February, 2002, in the Christian Science Monitor.
Inspired new Dialogues across North America, including in San Diego, California, where Palestinians and Jews are "seeking understanding... one dinner at a time," reported February, 2002, in the Christian Science Monitor.
• Provided a Palestinian and Israeli speaker, and printed Dialogue guidelines, for students of the San Francisco Community High School Havurah.
• Supported youth participants of PROMISES,, the Academy Award-nominated documentary about Israeli and Palestinian children imagining meeting in real life, then actually crossing the border to meet face to face. (PHOTOS)
• Gave 2-hour panel presentations, with printed Dialogue guidelines for each attendee, for Sonoma Congregation Shir Shalom, San Francisco Congregation Emanu-El, and for the Ramallah Club, Portola Valley Presbyterian Church, Mendocino Coastside Jewish Community, and New Leaders Project of the J.C.R.C.
• Provided a Palestinian and a Jewish radio broadcast interviewee for The Morning Show of KPFA-FM. (Listen)
• Helped MSNBC with a 3-hour living room filming for their April 30, 2002 broadcast segment, Learning to Listen, on Ashleigh Benfield's "Region in Conflict." A free, 10-minute videotape of that broadcast is now available. You can also see and hear it online in streaming video.
• Contributed to NPR's "All Things Considered" in May, 2002 about how Americans are responding to the Middle East conflict.
• Taught about Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue for a class, The Ethical Analyst, in the Public Policy Program of Stanford University.
• Conducted an international half-hour teleconferencewith the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, on the occasion of our Dialogue's 10th birthday and 123rd meeting, to discuss both government and public peace processes.
• Taught Dialogue workshops for the 2002 annual meeting of 1,600 Jewish educators at CAJE, the Conference on Alternatives in Jewish Education, the first time Jews and Palestinians participated together there. (response)
• Presented two workshops, "Hearing the Other Side: Palestinians and Jews in Dialogue," for 220 Jewish community leaders at the Israel Summer Institute all-day, at the invitation of co-sponsors Jewish Community Federation, AIPAC, AJC, and New Israel Fund. (photos)(JCRC response)
• Initiated a Jewish-Palestinian Dialouge All-Day workshop near Washington, DC, with a preceding dinner, for participants from 14 states, with roots in Israel, Palestine, Canada, and the U.S. (PHOTOS)
• Gave a Dialogue presentation for 80 students at Georgetown University, co-sponsored by the Jewish Student Ass'n (JSA), Muslim Students Ass'n (MSA), Young Arab Leadership Alliance (YALA), Georgetown Israel Alliance (GIA), and the Students for Middle East Peace (SMEP). (photos))
• Presented an October, 2002 Palestinian-Jewish Dialogue model for 200 students at the University of California, Berkeley, where their new campus Dialogue -- Salaam Shalom -- has begun, then at U.C. Santa Cruz.
• Exhibited an educational table at Palestine Day.
• Modeled Dialogue for the annual 2002 Shabbaton for Jewish university students, and for students at Mercy High School, Stuart Hall High School, and at St. Ignatius College Preparatory School.
• Gave the lead-off presentation on "Dialogue As Activism" for FOSTERING DIALOGUE AFTER 9/11: CHANGES, OPPORTUNITIES & LESSONS LEARNED, a workshop co-sponsored by The Coexistence Initiative (TCI) and Transforming Violence.
• Contributed to a February 2004 comedy presentationOne Arab, One Jew, Two Funny Guys! by Rabbi Bob Alper and Ahmed Ahmed, to an appreciative, thoughtful audience of Jews and Palestinians, sponsored by the Arab-Jewish Dialogue of the South Bay, in northern California's Silicon Valley. (photos)
• Partnered with "Breaking the Ice," the historic Israeli-Palestinian Antarctica expedition to offer four March, 2004 presentations on relationship-building in Washington, DC.
• Encouraged and advised organizers of STEAMM -- Soulful Teens Exploring the Arts thru Music & Movement - Muslim and Jewish teens bridging to one another through story and the arts two months in Spring, 2004 (newspaper story), and helped Berkeley high school students who created an "Israeli-Palestinian Relations Workshop" for their community (Article: TALK THERAPY).
• Co-sponsored a World Affairs Council presentation, Israel and Palestine: the Strategic Value of bringing Compassion into the Fire, initiated by the Compassionate Listening Project.(photos)
• Created a new Dialogue T-shirt to communicate "Palestinians and Jews LISTENING in Dialogue" and "An enemy is someone whose story we have not heard."
• Contributed exemplars and facilitators to the June, 2004 First Annual Northern California Dialogue and Deliberation Conference with a participation experience, "Story As Entry to Dialogue."
• Modeled and facilitated for U.S. and allied military officers "Story As Entry to Dialogue," for the new program "Security Building in Post-Conflict Environments" of the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, Calif. (photos)
• Provided interviews for "Unidos por la paz" in the October 2004 issue of Al Damir, published in South America by the Palestinian community of Santiago, Chile.
• Helped plan and facilitate the September 2004 Second Annual Oseh Shalom~Sanea al-Salam Jewish-Palestinian Family Peacemakers Camp in the northern California mountains near Yosemite National Park.
• Convened in MinnesotaThe First Midwest Palestinian-Jewish Dialogue Weekend for participants travelling from five states, concluding with attending together "The Children of Abraham Project" -- a stunning, uplifting stage performance by Muslim, Jewish, and Christian youth from Detroit, Michigan.
• Conducted a featured workshop, "Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue: A How-to of Beginning, Sustaining, and Outreach" in October 2004 for the Second National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation, Regis University, Denver, Colorado.
o Created and published in November 2004 the first-of-its-kind cookbook, Palestinian and Jewish Recipes for Peace, a beautiful, illustrated 100-page volume of recipes for the meal table and for building human relationships at home and between peoples.
• Presented to university students"A How-To for Story as Entry to Dialogue on Campus" for the Israel Student Leadership Retreat 2004, for the Israel Center of San Francisco's "Shabbaton."
• Responded to requests for Palestinian and Jewish media interviews, upon the death of Yasser Arafat, for the San Mateo Times, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, KRON-TV, KCBS-Radio, and NPR's "Weekend America."(Listen to streaming audio)
• Provided panelists, then in-depth student Dialogue and listening experiences, for San Francisco's Lick-Wilmerding High School students studying "The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: Understanding the Tensions and Envisioning Solutions." (photos)
• Celebrated two Season of Light Palestinian-Jewish Dialogue Evenings in December, 2004 for the (1) combined San Francisco Dialogues (photos) and (2) joined San Mateo-Silicon Valley Dialogues (photos), with ethnic food, reflection, and ceremony.
• Participated in a statewide all-day exploration --Collaborative Governance in California: A Discussion Among Practitioners and Scholars on December 13, 2004 by invitation of the sponsoring William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Menlo Park, Califorhia.
• Initiated and facilitatedAn Assimilation Weekend:
North American camps for the Middle East public peace process -- to discover new social intelligence from the collective experience of conveners and counselors of camps that bring together Middle East youth learning new skills of communication and leadership. (First-of-its-kind 71-page illustrated Summary Report)
• Invited concert musicians of "Art to the Nations" to demonstrate for the first time in the midst of Palestinian-Jewish Sustained Living Room Dialogue the profound power of music to further unlock the humanity of both peoples - increasing the desire and ability of Jews and Arabs to connect with their own depths and with one another. (photos)
• Wrote and mailed letters to government representatives asking to "consider both peoples equally" and encourage an "expanded citizen face-to-face public peace process" needed to "allow a treaty to succeed." (.doc format)(.pdf format)
• Helped launch with Dialogue practices the Arab-Jewish cast of BLOOD RELATIVE, the leading-edge, created-from-the-ground-up ensemble theatre drama depicting the Palestinian-Israeli human conflicts and our capacity to embrace the various narratives -- thus simultaneously healing ourselves and our political conflict. (printed program excerpts) (KQED-TV streaming video report)
• Spoke about Dialogue for a 15-minute KCBX-FM public radio interview in advance of a "weekend action" trip to San Luis Obispo for presentations at the public library and for Cal Poly university students, faculty, and administrators reported in The Tribune and Cal Poly's Mustang Daily and a local citizen's Web site. (Password: memories)
• Humanized the Middle East conflict for students, with May 2005 panel presentations of stories, followed by room Dialogues, in five separate World History classes - a whole school day - at George Washington High School, Fremont, Calif.
• Contributed an effective model to the 2005 Shalom Papers, A Journal of Theology & Public Policy, in The Role of U.S. Regional and Local Religous Bodies in Supporting Peacemaking Efforts in Other Countries, published by Churches' Center for Theology and Public Policy. (read it here)(download in .pdf)
• Locally co-sponsored a historic Transnational Internet Town Meeting for Peace called "The Powerful Voices of Religion and Civil Society," with Muslim, Christian, and Jewish citizen-leaders speaking from Jerusalem and Washington, and audiences in over 50 cities including the U.S., Europe, and South America.(view the program)
• Appeared on local Midpeninsula community cable TV in a half-hour program to inform our community about Sustained Dialogue and about our many educational and social outcomes, like the first-of-its-kind cookbook -- Palestinian and Jewish Recipes for Peace -- and the Palestinian-Jewish Family Peacemakers Camp. (TV studio photos)
• Participated as interview guests on RAINBOW, the English-language program hosted by Michael Brand for the grassroots Palestinian-Israeli 97.2 FM and Internet radio station All for Peace.
• Were invited guests on local Arab television in August 2005 in a half-hour program to invite the Arab citizens into the expanding circle of relationship building here and overseas. (TV studio photos)
• Consulted about citizen diplomacy and the public peace process at the request of the International Diplomacy Council of the U.S. Department of State, by meeting with the visiting Director of the Peace Building Institute of Jakarta, Indonesia.
• Helped plan and facilitate the September 2005 Third Palestinian-Jewish Family Peacemakers Camp in the California mountains -- 140 tasted the future -- and the Monday night San Francisco public report-out, "Camp Stories," hosted at beautiful St. Mary's Cathedral.
• Initiated in Louisville, KY the October 2005 Second Midwest Palestinian-Jewish Dialogue Weekend.(PHOTOS)
• Offered "Models of Peacemaking Success" as part of a series -- The Art of Peace: Dialogues for Change -- at Gavilan College, Gilroy, California.
• Presented Dialogue exemplars, showed the 28-minute video, TALKING PEACE, and facilitated audience participation for "Palestinians and Jews in Dialogue Locally and World-wide," the closing session of a month-long Fall 2005 program, "Ramadan/Tishri: Celebrating Muslim and Jewish Holy Months" at Santa Clara University.
• Helped university students from various North California campuses learn to tell personal stories, exercise a new quality of listening, and experience peer relationships at a new depth at the 17th Annual Israel Student Leadership Retreat -- their Shabbaton to strengthen leadership skills.
• Celebrated the Third All Bay Area Palestinian-Jewish Dialogue Season of Light Gathering for Dialogue participants and guests, with film, music, Middle Eastern food, success stories, and composer Lorenzo Toppano describing his creative process for his upcoming Broadway musical about the Palestinian-Israeli relatinship.
• Spoke with an interfaith community on the call of religion to listening and relationship building in the midst of war, for "Waging Peace," a community gathering in Celebration of World Religion Day, January 15, 2006, held at a Catholic church, and co-sponsored by an Episcopal church and the Baha'is of Pacifica, California. ( article: Different creeds speak to same peace)
• Provided living room news interviews for NBC and ABC TV, and local radio stations and newspapers, to reflect on the various meanings of the January 2006 elections in Palestine. ( NBC-TV photos )( ABC-TV photos )(article)(radio news)
• Supported and helped communicate stories for the February Immortal Chaplains Foundation dedicated to honoring the diverse, heroic women and men who sacrifice or risk their lives for others who are often of different religions, ethnicities and nationalities.
• Videofilmed 50 high school students in May observing Dialogue participants in deep listening to one another's personal narratives, before the inspirred students themselves shared their own personal stories in dyads (pairs) with one another at Washington High School, Fremont, Calif. (photos)(article)
• Hosted Voice of America radio in the living room to record portions of the May, 2006 Dialogue for VOA's global news broadcast -- Jews and Palestinians Talk Peace in a Living Room. (VOA audio broadcast and article)(photos)
• Gave the 2006 Commencement Addressfor the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Dentistry graduation ceremony, based on principles and history of Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue, and personal experience with a successful process of social change.
• Provided Dialogue partners for public radio program "Friends Through the Fire" on Weekend America, during escalating Middle East violence.
• Organized a July 2006 picnic for local Dialogue groups with music, food, and stories to celebrate 14 years and the 171st meeting of our oldest local Palestinian-Jewish Living Room Dialogue.
• Gave in-depth, participatory workshop, "Story as Entry to Sustained Dialogue and Social Change" for the August 2006 international meeting of the National Coalition on Dialogue and Deliberation.
• Provided summer 2006 interview guests for local radio and TV programsGod Talk (KGO radio - 1 hour), Community Calendar (KPFA radio - 20 mins), and Bay Area Focus (KBHK-TV - 20 mins).
• Helped convene the 4th Palestinian-Jewish Family Peacemakers Camp Oseh Shalom ~ Sanea al-Salam for 255 Jews and Palestinians of all ages, including 50 from 29 towns in the Holy Land, women and men equally.
• Built new relationships and provided an educational exhibit at Palestine Day in San Franicsco on Sunday in October, 2006. (photos)
• Advertised and supported presentations to local university students by young adult representatives of OneVoice from Palestine and Israel. (photos)
• Traveled to Chico, California for three presentations: (1) "Listening from the Heart" for the Annual Dinner of the Chico Interfaith Council, (2) "Dialogue: A New Way to Communicate" workshop for Chico students and other citizens, and (3) "Camp Tawonga Peacemakers Week" Shabbat morning stories for Congregation Beth Israel. (news article)
• Hosted the Third Season of Light Gathering at San Francisco's beautiful St. Mary's Cathedral for 100 Muslims, Jews and Christians -- including Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, and Jews and Palestinians from Israel and the United States. (photos)
• Welcomed into a living room Palestinian and Jewish Israeli women of Beyond Words in December, 2006,to launch their two-week deepening experinece together in California. (photos)
• Provided interviews for The People Speak Radio, hosted by Basima Farhat.
• Helped volunteer-facilitate Challenge Day for middle school students to explore their lives and relationships, to learn tools and make decisions to improve their quality of communication at home and on campus.
• Initiated and produced two new 2007 films -- DIALOGUE AT WASHINGTON HIGH (43 min - DVD) and PEACEMAKERS: Palestinians & Jews Together at Camp (83 min - DVD), to be gifted to educators and others who help build relationships among diverse citizens, communities and nations.
• Published in The Jordan Times -- "Face to Face" calling in March, 2007, for citizens to engage one another and cooperate in this "Citizens' Century," and to move beyond being only passive spectators to governments.
• Gave interviews for Peace X Peace ("peace by peace"), connecting women's groups ("Circles") in the U.S. with women's Circles everywhere in the world - directly via the Internet - for the exchange of information and personal experiences that typically result in mutually supportive actions. (audio interview)
• Provided a table of Dialogue resources and personal support to engage both Jewish and Palestinian students and faculty, at an April, 2007, noon rally sponsored by the Stanford Israel Alliance.
• Facilitated Dialogue among Muslims, Christians and Jews in Chicago for The Jerusalem Project of The Global Reconciliation Conference 2007.
• Hosted Palestinian & Israeli Students Learning Each Other's Historical Narrative: A NEW KIND OF SCHOOL TEXTBOOK, a May 2007 public San Franicsco educational evening for 125 educators, students, and other citizens. (PHOTOS)
• Created and hosted an educational booth at the June 2007 Book Group Expo in San Jose, Calif., to engage face-to-face large numbers of citizens about social change, and to disperse the Dialogue's two new educational videos.
• Partnered with and advised Six Billion Paths to Peace of the Shinnyo-en Buddhist Foundation to inspire people everywhere to focus on interconnectedness and encourage daily contributions by citizens to create a more harmonious world..
• Recorded a Sky Radio Network news interview for "America's Innovators" Talk Radio Show of American Airlines. It is the world's largest carrier of over 4 million business and leisure passengers each month. (Listen)
• Provided three interviewees for a one-hour public radio broadcast about the history of the Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue, and about civic engagement, communication, and the process of change in the public peace process for KOPN 89.5 FM Community Radio for mid-Missouri. (HEAR podcast)
• Gave telephone interviews for a public radio broadcast in August, 2007, on Deena Kolbert's "City Watch" of WBAI-FM New York about the Dialogue's two new videos and the October 2007 Fifth Oseh-Shalom ~ Sanea al-Salam Palestinian-Jewish Peacemakers Camp for Muslim, Christian and Jewish older teens and adults. (LISTEN - 18 min.)
• Hosted a 4-day educational booth for 14,000 attendees of the 2007 annual conference of the American Psychological Association. (SEE PHOTOS)
• Presented a four-day educational and relationship-building booth
among 40,000 Muslims at the 44th Annual Convention of the Islamic Society of North America, who screened our DIALOGUE AT WASHINGTON HIGH at their Islamic Film Festival, in Chicago, Illinois. (SEE PHOTOS)
• Helped plan and convene the 5th Palestinian-Jewish Peacemakers Camp Oseh Shalom ~ Sanea al-Salam in October, 2007, for 150 Jews and Palestinians of all ages including 45 women and men -- Muslims, Jews and Christians from 32 towns in the Holy Land.
• Provided facilitators for Engaging The Other: The Power of Compassion 2nd Annual International Conference, in Dearborn, Michigan, and were part of a panel -- The Energy Of Fear in Our Relationship With The Other.
• Supported Crossing The Faith Line with a participatory 90-minute workshop -- Story As Entry To Dialogue -- during the Chicago, Illinois by gathering of 550 young adults and other interfaith leaders and educators by the Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) in October 2007. (PHOTOS)
• Created a classroom educator's guide -- STORY AS ENTRY TO RELATIONSHIP: Teachers Guide -- to be downloaded by teachers and facilitators worldwide. It is a companion teaching aid for our new, 2007 video DIALOGUE AT WASHINGTON HIGH.
• Provided consultants and educational materials for "Preventing Trauma and its Effects" a November, 2007, Baltimore, MD conference for 1,000 practitioners, educators and researchers of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
• Contributed story content to NPR's "Olive Oil Season: A West Bank Kitchen Story" in cooperation with Kitchen Sisters, broadcast Thanksgiving Day, 2007.
• Contributed a Palestinian and a Jewish kitchen recipe to the November, 2007, issue of Trinity News Magazine -- an interfaith dialogue on religion and violence untangling the roots of conflict.
o Provided facilitators for local Muslim and Jewish students to assimilate together their experiences of the exhibition "Coexistence Through Art" and community gathering planned in partnership by the Islamic Networks Group and Jewish Community Center of Silicon Valley to model peace through religious literacy and mutual respect.
• Were radio interview guests for "Living Room Diplomacy" produced by American Public Media and broadcast December 1, 2007 on National Public Radio stations.
• Staffed an educational booth for the National Council on the Social Studies to engage hundreds of U.S. and international educators face-to-face while gifting instructional DVDs, a Teacher's Guide, and other curriculum materials at "Crossing Borders, Building Bridges," their 2007 87th Annual Conference in San Diego, California. (Photos)
• Created a year-end "Season of Light" progressive dinner-ceremony evening beginning in a Palestinian home with Middle Eastern food, then travelling down the street to a Jewish home for ceremony to celebrate a year of deepening and public outreach. (Photos)
• Appeared on local Midpeninsula cable TV channels in the half-hour program Spirit Talk to inform our community about Sustained Dialogue and about the most recent educational and social outcomes, like the 2007 Palestinian-Jewish Family Peacemakers Camp, and the free, how-to videos, Teacher's Guide, and graphics of the Process of Change we offer to peacebuilders worldwide.
• Provided radio talk show guests for 90 minutes on "God Talk" for San Francisco's KGO-AM, northern California's most powerful broadcaster -- an opportunity to talk about the process of change with a new quality of face-to-face citizen communication and not simply waiting for governments alone to re-direct history.
• Contributed information to the Culture of Peace News Network to help expand the power of the Internet to build relationships and share useful experiences, resources and events that build a culture of peace.
• Cooperated with BBC TV World News via Webcam and Skype to help create a global TV news broadcast to report the first anniversary of Radio Salaam Shalom: Muslims and Jews talking together, the Internet radio station in Bristol, England.
• Facilitated the 3-hour opening session of the 2008 Beyond War annual national conference in Portland, Oregon, with the deepening workshop experience "Story As Entry to Relationship & Change."
• Planned and presented a San Francisco public educational evening of the Israel~Palestine Center for Reaearch and Information (IPCRI) featuring Hanna Siniora and Gershon Baskin, the co-directors from Jerusalem, and hosted at beautiful St. Ignatius College Preparatory high school.
• Exhibited how-to materials and served as panelists for "Demystifying Dialogue" as part of "Imagining A More Civil Society" a Washington, DC, national "summit" sponsored in March by Hillel for diverse university administrators, organizers, and students. (Photos)
• Provided guest interviews for World Talk Radio on their weekly broadcast, Fix Your Conflicts.
• Facilitated resident senior citizens in telling their life stories in solidarity with the First International Day for Sharing Life Stories, at The Carlisle, San Francisco.
• Taught diverse De Anza College students of "Facilitating Collaborative Communication" how to deepen their class and campus relationships by sharing personal stories. (Photos)
• Convened Crossing The Line for Santa Clara University students, staff, and outside community, as a student-driven event to begin a new tradition of sustained Dialogue across social and political divides on campus. (Photos)
• Contributed to a panel of Conversations About Universal Peace Education May 2008 in Honolulu, Hawaii,as guests and partners of the sponsoring Japanese Buddhist Shinnyo-en Foundation with their program, Six Billion Paths to Peace.
• Facilitated Engaging The Other for Santa Cruz, California Jews, Palestinian, and others to help their quality of listening and communication about the Middle East, preceded in the day by a 20-minute NPR interview about the Dialogue, the process of change, and the event. (Photos)
• Provided an exemplar for "Remembering 1948" a Berkeley, California evening program of personal narratives by Palestinians and Jews about events surrounding the founding of Israel. (Press article)
• Hosted a public presentation by a Palestinian Muslim and Israeli Jew, exemplary participants of the leading-edge Arava Institute for Environmental Studies that brings together Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian and American young adults to care for Earth and build relationships in the Holy Land. (Photos)
• Welcomed Arabic-language television broadcasting to the Middle East and North Africa for the 16th anniversary - 194th meeting - of the Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue of San Mateo. (Photos)
• Provided an exhibit and a panelist on "Interfaith Activism Which Doesn't Divide the Community" for the July, 2008, annual conference of the National North American Interfaith Network (NAIN) whose theme was Embracing an Interfaith Future.
• Produced and recorded a short radio program for international broadcast at the September, 2008, request of Radio Saalam Shaolm: Jews & Muslims talking together, transmitting on the Internet from Bristol, United Kingdom.
• Gave an updated interview for "Voices from the Frontlines," an educational activity of Peace X Peace: Connecting women for peace.
• Created the CNN featured story"Palestinians, Jews engaging and creating" for their Anderson Cooper 360 blog.
• Presented an educational booth at Palestine Day in San Francisco to engage new people and strengthen ongoing relationships.
• Explored the effects of classical music in living room Dialogue among Jews and Palestinians, with Philadelphia Symphony cellist, Udi Bar-David, of Intercultural Journeys. (5-min streaming video)
• Facilitated an in-mosque Dialogue training for Muslim teens from the Muslim American Society co-organized by a Jewish and a Muslim teacher from the Unity Program of Abraham's Vision. (Photos)
• Engaged hundreds of U.S. social studies educators in in Houston, Texas, at the November, 2008, convention of the National Council for the Social Studies - NCSS. (Photos)
• Met with the 3-year-old Houston Palestinian-Jewish Living Room Dialogue, to help them plan their first public outreach event. (Photos)
• Facilitated a public Dialogue workshop - CROSSING LINES - for Houston, Texas, adults and youth, sponsored by church participants and the Center for Healing Racism. (Photos)
• Conducted a large, public event - A CALL TO DIALOGUE - in Houston, sponsored by the city's first Palestinian-Jewish Living Room Dialogue. (Photos)
• Provided a newspaper interview, "Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Group: Listening In the Midst of the Storm"
for Houston's Jewish Herald-Voice.
• Pre-recorded a news podcast with six stories of Muslim-Jewish co-operation from around the world, for Radio Salaam Shalom transmitting from Bristol, England. (Listen)
• Welcomed local TV news cameras into the living room at the start of the December 2008 Gaza invasion to clarify in the evening news broadcast that governments cannot change history without massive citizen rejection of violence and widespread, sustained engagement among Palestinian and Jewish citizen worldwide. (NBC-TV - 4 min. video)(NBC-TV photos)(KTVU-TV - 3 min. video)(KTVU-TV photos)(KGO-radio news - 3 min audio)
• Provided a Palestinian and a Jewish radio talk show guest for the "People's Politics" call-in broadcast, a public-forum pilot program to voice citizen solutions to political challenges, during Gaza violence, on Houston, Texas, KPFT-FM - Radio For Peace. (60 min audio)
• Personalized a living, local peace process for the newspaper Palo Alto Weekly for their article, "Finding World Peace in the Living Room: Local Jews, Palestinians have been learning from each other for 16 years."
• Assisted National Public Radio's "Weekend America" with guests for their segment - Living Room Diplomacy - produced by American Public Media in the midst of Gaza violence. (LISTEN - 5 min)
• Welcomed National Public Radio into the living room, with news journalist Hana Baba of KALW's "Crosscurrents" helping to describe and personalize Palestinians and Jews living beyond war. (LISTEN - 12 min)
• Pre-recorded a news podcast about Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue initiatives in the USA, for Radio Salaam Shalom transmitting from Bristol, England. (Listen at 55min 55sec)
• Trained 10th grade youth with Dialogue experiences, including listening to Palestinian and Jewish narratives equally, at their weekend "Kesher Retreat" by invitation from leadership of the Center for Jewish Living and Learning (CJLL) of the East Bay Jewish Community Federation.
• Volunteered four adult facilitators - positive role models for Challenge Day helping students at McCaffrey Middle School in Galt, Calif. increase self esteem and personal power to shift negative peer pressure into positive peer support, and diminish bullying and other violence.
• Participated in creating the new U.S. National Peace Academyat the March 2009 Design Summit in Cleveland, Ohio, which will provide new resources of social science and human experience leading to unprecedented national security and global safety. (Photos)
• Convened 60 diverse youth and adults in Cleveland, Ohio for CROSSING LINES, an evening at Case Western Reserve University to deepen relationships and community-building skills. (Press article)
• Facilitated a one-hour, face-to-face Dialogue for the entire junior class -- 120 students and faculty of Mercy High School, Burlingame, California. (Photos) and (More Photos)
• Provided the feature two-woman program for the American Association of University Women (AAUW) monthly program "Peace By Piece: Twop women share their stories about finding a way to end conflict in the Middle East one step at a time.
• Contributed an informational booth at the American Counseling Association 2009 annual conference where three Dialogue participants educated and dispersed free how-to, inspiration DVDs among the 4,000 professional U.S. and international practitioners, educators, and students gathered in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photos)
• Facilitated a public Dialogue - CROSSING LINES for 97 diverse citizens of Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photos)
• Gave the Opening Inspiration talks of Live The Dream! Day for the full student body and faculty of Mercy High School, Burlingame, California. (Photos)
• Contributed to the Dialogue chapter of Living Beyond War: A Citizen's Guide, an innovative, 200-page book released in April, 2009.
• Helped plan the first conference of facilitators of Arab-Jewish and Muslim-Jewish-Christian sustained Dialogues in the U.S., Canada, and the Holy Land, hosted by The Monmouth Dialogue Project at Monmouth University, New Jersey, April 19-21, 2009. List of 13 participating groupsConference SchedulePhotosArticle 1Article 2
• Provided examplars and film footage for Reclaiming Democracy a 10-minute video by De Anza College students and faculty to encourage citizen engagement and communication beyond debate and argument, and to highlight three partners of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD .
• Cooperated with the San Francisco Chronicle to tell a Dialogue couple's personal story in the Sunday, May 17, 2009 feature "On The Couch."
• Wrote, signed, and mailed a letter to President Barak Obama encouraging him to listen to everyone - no exceptions - and seek the best "for both peoples, equally."
• Were featured on Arabic-language TV broadcast to the Middle East and North Africa on the Al Hurra network. (See viewing instruction)
• Invited and helped host Palestinian and Jewish Israeli citizen relationship builders to the Memorial Day 2009 Lantern Floating Hawai'i of the Shinnyo-en Foundation.
• Created and hosted CHANGING LIVES IN THE HOLY LAND: Stories of loss, vision, and hope - a large San Francisco public evening to illustrate excellence in communication and citizen involvement in creating a successful public peace process. (Photos)(Story)
• Were featured on Arabic-language TV broadcast to the Middle East and North Africa on the Al Hurra network. (See viewing instruction)
• Created Arabic and Hebrew translations of educational graphics about the Process of Change, through coomunication and cooperation among Jews and Palestinians in the U.S. and Middle East.
• Hosted the Israeli and the Palestinian water resource specialist of the 2009 Environmental Leadership Program of the University of California, Berkeley, to celebrate the Dialogue's 17th birthday anniversary at our 207th meeting. (Photos)
• Facilitated Dialogue for the Men's Wisdom Circle at the Brahma Koumaris Ashram spiritual community, with their purpose to "encourage men of all cultures, faiths and backgrounds to come together as brothers. . .in creating a more peaceful, loving world."
• Conceived and facilitated a city-wide public Dialogue, CROSSING LINES: Sharing Stories, Creating Community, at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center for diverse citizens from education, government, and neighborhoods of San Mateo, Calif.
• Facilitated a public Dialogue for 85 diverse youth and adults of Fresno, California -- CROSSING LINES: Story As Entry to Relationship and Change..
• Provided two interview guests for one hour of "Forum For A Better Understanding" for KNXT-TV Channel 49 of the Catholic Diocese of Fresno, California. (PHOTOS) VIEW:(Broadcast #1)(Broadcast #2)
• Facilitated campus Dialogue for diverse students at the University of California, Berkeley in a class studying CONFLICT RESOLUTION, SOCIAL CHANGE, AND CULTURES OF PEACE. (PHOTOS)
• Presented at Seton Hill University a communication skills workshop"DIALOGUE AND STORY: Utilizing Communications Tools from the Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Movement in the Service of Intergroup/interfaith Understanding for the Holocaust Classroom" for the LeFrak Holocaust Education Conference 2009 of the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education for "educating the educators in the hope of reaching the whole of humanity." (PHOTOS)
• Facilitated at the 4th Annual International Conference on Engaging The Other: The Power of Compassion" a workshop, "Story As Entry to Relationship and Change" during Nov. 12-15, 2009. (PHOTOS)
• Created a year-end Season of Light Celebration evening for 50 participants and guests of the San Mateo and the San Francisco Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogues. (PHOTOS)
• Provided guest faculty for the Interfaith Module: Bridging Communities of The Chaplaincy Institute December 2009 afternoon experience -- Creating and Nurturing Interfaith Dialogue. (PHOTOS)
• Digitalized and uploaded historic, educational videos -- eight years of the Beyond War Award (1983-1990) -- honoring great examples of individuals, groups, and nations as humankind moves to build a world beyond war.
• Provided February news interviews for the San Francisco Examiner(Part 1)(Part 2) and the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue, a forum for academic, social, and timely issues affecting religious communities around the world.
• Were guest citizen-peacemakers on "The Doug Noll Show: Fixing conflicts, one caller at a time" on worldwide Internet radio in February 2010.
• Helped launch new Muslim-Christian Dialogue in Africa in February by gifting sixty sets of our how-to, documentary videos to Nigerian relationship builders.
• Produced a new, how-to, 29-minute documentary film -- CROSSING LINES IN FRESNO in March 2010 to illustrate how citizens successfully enter into neighborhood relationships to improve the quality of listening and communication to build true community.
• Facilitated CROSSING CULTURAL LINES: The Berkeley Dialogue , a March 2010 youth-driven coming-together of very diverse students, teachers, and staff of the University of California, Berkeley, who engaged at the beautiful International House auditorium in face-to-face listening to create a communication model to transcend campus polarity. (PHOTOS)
• Convened our Dialogue for one evening on Empathy to create a video for The Center for Building a Culture of Empathy. (WATCH 2-hour living room VIDEO)
• Provided featured public radio interview guests on "Our Times with Craig Barnes" for one hour on KSFR-FM in Santa Fe, New Mexico. (LISTEN)
• Served as panelists for the Fourth Annual Service-Learning World Forum in two sessiuons on Service Learning As A Means To Empower Youth In The Middle East, including with a new quality of communication and listening-to-learn. (PHOTOS)
• Streamed online THE PEACEMAKERS and their pursuit of understanding, a previously-unreleased 2007 35-minute how-to film to inspire others to create a summer camp for the Middle East or any public peace process.
• Provided graphics and interviewees for AN ABRAHAMIC SHOWCASE, a pioneering video program of new ways people are engaging peacefully, to be Webcast then perpetually streamed online by the sponsoring Interfaith Center at the Presidio, San Francisco.
• Created an evening film program with popcorn for Dialogue participants and many guests with 12 very short news videos documentating successes Palestinian-Jewish and interfaith relationship building, to celebrate the group's 18th birthday. (PHOTOS)
• Facilitated long-distance via Skype, for Singapore educators and students, a July, 2010, face-to-face Dialogue experience for the Service-Learning program of Republic Polytechnic. (55-min VIDEO)
• Facilitated a 2-hour "Delis Are For Dialogue" workshop for university student leaders and national staff of FeelGood World -- ending world hunger, one grilled cheese at a time -- at their Summer Training Camp at the Sequoia Retreat Center, Ben Lomond, California. (PHOTOS)
• Facilitated a congregational Dialogue circle called "Food for the Soul: An Interactive Storytelling Experience" on Yom Kippur afternoon at San Francisco's Temple Beth Israel Judea to launch the Jewish community's Year of Civil Discourse. (PHOTOS)
• Provided speakers for "Build A World of Peace", an interfaith community affirmation of the U.N. International Day of Peace in Palo Alto, California, September 20, 2010. (PHOTOS)
• Co-produced a documentary film ABRAHAM'S VISION Graduation Day!, about local Muslim and Jewish high school students who study and grow together for a year in the Unity Program of Abraham's Vision.
• Co-sponsored and provided facilitators in Africa for the 2nd Annual International Conference on Youth & Interfaith Communication, during October 22-24, 2010, in Jos, Nigeria.
• Facilitated overseas via Skype a Singapore auditorium, face-to-face Dialogue among 100 educators and practitioners of Service-Learning gathered at Republic Polytechnic for the Inaugural Experiential Learning Forum "Step Out For A Change" on Monday morning, November 1, 2010. (PHOTOS)
• Invited and hosted a diverse living room audience to view the pre-show then broadcast of WITH EARTH AND EACH OTHER, the November 2010 global Internet virtual videocast rally by the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies to highlight Middle East citizen relationship building. (PHOTOS)
• Provided featured radio guests for A World That Works in a one-hour global Internet broadcast about experiences in successful "Christian-Muslim Interfaith Dialogues," and hosted by Reverend Deborah Olive for Unity Online Radio.
(LISTEN)
• Facilitated "Your Story as Entry to Dialogue: The Shema Brought to Life" for the December 2010 all-day launching of a local Year of Civil Discourse to help the Jewish community engage respectfully with each other about Israel and relationshps with its neighbors.
• Created a memorial Web page, including video reflections, a public place for Dialogue participants and others worldwide to remember the life of our extraordinary, recently-deceased colleague and sister, Gail Ellen Weinstein (1955-2050).
• Teamed up to advise and provide staff and participants for the new Global Room for Women, including featured guests from the Middle East and Africa and the Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue.
• Initiated and hosted local gatherings for education and fundraising related to MEPEACE, "the Facebook of the Middle East public peace process" -- a safe place on the Internet where Israelis, Palestinian, and others can find one another, build relationships of trust, and create together. (PHOTOS)
• Supported hosting and deepening experiences of a Palestinian and a Jewish Israeli traveler of OneVoice -- including OneVoice Palestine and OneVoice Israel -- volunterr citizens building relationships and citizen political consensus for a common future. (PHOTOS)
• Contributed to My Best Friend Is Muslim, a new blog created by one young citizen in March, 2011, to illusrate the importance and ease of building relationships that reduce negative stereotyping of Muslims and everyone.
• Facilitated an experiential deepening evening for 10 Palestinians and 10 Jews, 2010-11 Vision Program Fellows of the year-long leadership training program of Abraham's Vision. (See PHOTOS)
• Initiated a worldwide Call for Music Videos of Palestinian-Jewish Duos or Groups that attracted 13 entrees of artistic expressions to help unite diverse artists and discover new music with its power to make us better people and help change to begin in small circles.
• Provided an educational booth and for 10,000 attendees of Israel In The Gardens to gift communication how-to and inspirational materials, including personal support, for youth and adult members of the local Jewish community.
• Helped welcome young Palestinian Israeli classical musicians of Polyphony, including their Jewish Israeli teachers and visionary director, Nabeel Abboud Ashkar, in concert at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. (See PHOTOS)
• Announced a new Web page of 14 musical videos of Palestinian-Jewish duos or groups, on the occasion of the Dialogue's 19th birthday and 231st meeting in sustained learning and community outreach. (See PHOTOS)
• Continued editing the coming 2012 documentary film, DIALOGUE IN NIGERIA: Muslims & Christians Creating Their Future, about 200 brave Muslim and Christian young adults in their successful 2010 youth interfaith conference co-sponsored by the Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue who provided planning and personal facilitation in Jos, central Nigeria.
• Facilitated "HEART CIRCLES: The Art of Dissolving Walls that Separate Us" for the September 2011 IMAGINE Peace Conference on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley.
• Provided experienced Guest Interviewees for the September online Encounter of the Middle East relationship building network MEPEACE.ORG .
• Shared public peace process principles and practices by telephone conference with leaders of The Northern California Campaign for a U.S. Department of Peace.
• Facilitated an experiential deepening morning for 6 Palestinians and 6 Jews, 2011-12 Vision Program Fellows of the year-long leadership training program of Abraham's Vision. (See PHOTOS)
• Facilitated an experiential workshop, Story As Entry to Dialogue and Change, for a multi-racial circle of youth and adults during the 6th Annual International Conference on "Engaging The Other" at Santa Clara University.
• Video-connected, bridging simultaneously between the Middle East, Europe, and North America with a Muslim Palestinian, Jewish Israeli, and Christian Nigerian -- all citizen bridge builders -- a "first" for the 20th year-end Season of Light dinner gathering of the local Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue Group. (See PHOTOS)
• Facilitated Dialogue experiences for university students from 16 U.S. campuses convened in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado for The Big Cheese summer training of FeelGood: Ending world hunger one grilled cheese at a time.
20 Years of Palestinian-Jewish Living Room Dialogue (1992-2012)
• Hosted a December public Season of Light Evening for 120 Palestinians, Jews, and deeply-motivated others at St. Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco. (press article)
• Provided a radio interview for KALW-FM, as a model of future-building, in contrast to the recent violence and a poverty of relationships between Israel and Gaza.
• Facilitated "Cinema Creating Community: Hearing Audience Voices" a face-to-face audience workship for the First World Interfaith Harmony Film Festival in Los Angeles, California, USA.
• Presented "Stories Of Change" of a Palestinian and Jew, with face-to-face audience engagement for Congregation Beth Israel Judea's "Friday Night Feast" in San Francisco. (event flyer)(photos)
• Provided radio interviews for "Pieces of Peace" on KWMR-FM West Marin Community Radio serving Pt. Reyes (90.5) and Bolinas (89.9). (Listen)
• Broadcast a half-hour TV interview for the Community Media Center of Marin "Marinations" program, now viewed streaming on YouTube as Living Room Dialogues for Peace.
• Advised a Creighton University Master's degree student's experiential practicum of three screenings of Dialogue in Nigeria and facilitating participatory audience engagement in diverse communities -- (1) Pt. Reyes Station (event flyer), (2) San Mateo (flyer)(photos), (more photos),
and (3) San Francisco (flyer)
• Facilitated theatrical post-performance audience Dialogue following In Between, the one-man performance of Ibrahim Miari at the University at Berkeley Hillel.
• Mentored and co-sponsored West Africa post-war, face-to-face healing and community building with Dialogue in Cote d'Ivoire - Ivory Coast - among hundreds of citizens from long-alienated tribes, villages, and religions.
• Facilitated film screening and audience engagement in New Jersey for the Monmouth University 12th Annual Global Understanding Convention. (event flyer)
• Convened a public picnic-meeting shared by the 15-year-old San Francisco and the 20-year-old San Mateo Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue Groups. (photos)
• Supported African Albino - Non-Albino face-to-face engagement and healing among women and men in the Democratic Republic of Congo. (photos)
• Provided a filmed news interview for La Voz Weekly to clarify for De Anza College students the value of listening and building relationships on campus like their new Muslim-Jewish Dialogue.
• Created French language Dialogue resources including
(1) Dialogue, (2) Lignes Directrices du Dialogue -- Substituer le mot Confrontation par le mot Cooperation, (3) VRH -- Virus de l'insuffisance Relationnelle Humaine, and (4) Respondre ~ Resister, also linked from the Peace & Collaborative Development Network.
• Mentored and co-sponsored Dozos-Guerre Tribal Reconciliation in Cote d'Ivoire, West Africa, the historic breakthrough-healing and its 64-minute documentary film in Ivory Coast during June, 2013.
Dozos-Guerre Tribal Reconciliation in Cote d'Ivoire (June 2013)
• Facilitated overseas via Skype the Korean-Japanese Youth Reconciliation Dialogue conference-opening experience for The Role of Global Civil Society in Historical Reconciliation in East Asia, at Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Korea. (photos)
• Co-facilitated traveling African interfaith peacebuilders in New York at U.N. Plaza and at the Unification Theological Seminary for combined academic lectures and communication skill practicum workshops on peacebuilding in August, 2013.
• Mentored and helped inspire the beginng of Global Compassion in Cameroon, in western Central Africa.
• Equipped classes in Food for Thought - Cooking for Peace with copies of the Dialogue's illustrated, 100-page cookbook Palestinian & Jewish Recipes for Peace, for their annual, fully-subscribed courses at Merkaz Community High School for Judaic Studies, Bridgeport, Connecticut. (Course catalogue - p. 45)
• Provided interview guests for The Citizen-To-Citizen Public Peace Process broadcast worldwide (beginning at 15:45 min) from ICERM Radio by the International Center for Ethno-Religious Mediation, New York.
• Met with our local U.S. Congresswoman Jackie Speier to illustrate Dialogue activity in her district that was re-defining security, healing from war, and preventing violence by improving face-to-face communication skills. It was in response to her candid public panel on the effects of war on combatants.
• Facilitated CREATING OUR CAMPUS COMMUNITY: An Experience of Being Heard and Face-to-Face Relationship Building for 40 diverse students and faculty, as part of the two-week, student-driven Connect Through Dialogue Initiative of San Francisco Hillel at San Francisco State University. (photos)
• Created French-language Dialogue resources and also Dialogue Communication graphics in Arabic, Hebrew, French, Russian, and English for schools and peacebuilders worldwide.
• Explored comedy in peacebuilding at our December 2013 Season of Light Gathering of the combined Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogues of San Mateo (21 years old) and San Francisco (16 years old). (Photos)
• Created French-language Dialogue resources and also Dialogue Communication graphics in Arabic, Hebrew, French, Russian, and English for schools and peacebuilders worldwide.
• Published PEACE IS INTERCOURSE for Peace is Sexy, online "to tell stories that shift the understanding and practice of peace from something that is dull, idealistic, costly and boring to peace as sexy, possible, profitable, and fun.
• Provided classroom communication experience for the Introduction to Judaism course at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
• Facilitated university student Dialogue for Sustained Dialogue Campus Network at its 2014 annual conference for diverse U.S. and Mexican participants. (Photos)
• Guided campus Dialogue among mostly-Muslim students during the First Peace Week at San Francisco State University, California, USA. (Photos)
• Contributed panelists to "Options and Strategies in the 'Boko Haram' Conflict in Nigeria", at the 2014 Africa Conference of the Center for African Peace and Conflict Resolution, California State University, Sacramento - California USA.
• Published by request The Skipped Step: Human engagement for the Palestine-Israel Journal, in the midst of Middle East violence. (Download PDF)
• Dedicated a meeting for interviews by NPR station KALW-FM for their broadcast of "Crosscurrents" about the San Francisco Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue Group.
• Published in Israeli and U.S. newspapers"Peace requires human engagement" and "Living as one, healing together" to contribute vision in response to Middle East descent into inhumane brutality. (Download PDF)
• Facilitated "Creating Dialogue and Deeper Understanding" at California State University, San Marcos, for 80 diverse domestic and international students, faculty, and community residents. (Photos)
• Provided how-to films and printed materials for reconciliation and democracy-building in Myanmar (Burma) in September 2014, adding to several decades of similar international support including over 17,000 instructional DVDs gifted and mailed globally.
• Spoke before the international 2014 Compassion Week Awards Ceremonysponsored by Empathy & Compassion in Society. (Photos)
• Added to the online 2014 InterFaith Film Festival our 48-minute documentary, 20 Years of Palestinian-Jewish Living Room Dialogue (1992-2012).
• Created the first Season of Light Three Continent Video Bridge applying Zoom technology to connect Muslim, Christian, and Jewish relationship-builders in Israel, Palestine, West Africa, and North America in December, 2014.
• Produced a new hour-long, how-to film documenting the Dialogue's December Season of Light Three-Continent Video Bridge linking face-to-face 38 peacebuilders from 11 locations in the Middle East, West Africa, and North America.
• Traveled to Stony Point Center, NY, to facilitate a foundation's leadership team seeking face-to-face skills for transcending communication breeches within their community.
• Supported "Cross-Cultural Dialogue in Israel-Palestine," a UC Berkeley classroom event by Dr. Manal Yazbak, visiting Arab-Israeli Fulbright scholar and relationship-builder from Sakhnin College for Teacher Education.
• Added Muslim Palestinian, Christian, and Jewish participants to a Passover Sabbath Seder hosted by the San Francisco Hillel community.
• Initiated a four-continent "Listening To the Enemy" face-to-face Zoom Internet video experience, a conference sponsored by women and men of One World Lights (OWL) and preserved online in streaming video..
• Zoom video-facilitated overseas Trans-Asian Dialogue , invited by the July 2015 6th International NGO Conference on History & Peace in East Asia, Seoul University, South Korea. (Photos)
• Facilitated diverse university students from China and North America in Dialogue and Story Sharing at The Big Cheese 2015 at Bryn Athyn College, Pennsylvania. (Photos)
• Advised and co-sponsored Muslim-Christian Reconciliation in Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in August after earlier brutality causing local Grand-Bassam deaths and sanctuary destructions.
• Mentored and supported Face-to-Face Burundi Refugee Social Integration in eastern DR Congo, Africa
• Hosted a resource booth for the Parliament of the World's Religions in Salt Lake City, Utah, to engage thousands of global faith-based citizens and gift how-to DVDs and other tools for communication success. (Photos & Video)
• Facilitated international Zoom online video engagement for a Global Wisdom Circle of OWL - One World Lights, people everywhere supporting a course change for humanity by supporting each other.
• Volunteered four inspirational presenters to establish the context for Planting Seeds of Peace, an experiential, youth-created event for the full student body of Mercy High School, Burlingame, California.
• Zoom-hosted the 2015 Season of Light Global Video Bridge, maximizing Internet communication to connect international relationship builders in Africa, Asia, Central America, North America, and the Middle East. (Video of Event)
• Published Pre-deciding About Violence, clarifying the global need -- from child discipline to pushing the "war button" to quickly and often -- to pre-decide about rejecting violent choices in favor of face-to-face communication excellence at home and among nations. (UK publication)
• Helped translate and edit Listening: An underestimated tool for peace, recently published in Norway.
• Guest-instructed online for the Education Peace Team, a United Nations NGO Sub Committee of youth and adults preparing for the 2016 Season for Non Violence Conference in New York.
• Facilitated audience Dialogue for Heartbeat, Israeli and Palestinian youth musicians in concert for 300 attendees during their Spring 2016 North American tour.
• Provided a communication workshop for sixty Muslim students from many nations at the local Granada Islamic School seeking increased community interfaith engagement. (Photos)
• Mentored West African university campus reconciliation between historic violent student rivals of AGEECI and FESCI at Universite Felix Houphouet-Boigny of Cocody, East Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast). (News Report)
• Enabled African Face-to-Face Barza Dialogue with Lake Tanganyika Fishing Community Strengthening in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. (Photos & Video)
• Provided our publication Palestinian and Jewish Recipes for Peacefor the Food for Thought -- Cooking for Peace class for 12th grade students at Merkaz Community High School For Judaic Studies in Connecticut, USA.
• Assisted the creation of Turning Enemies Into Friends for 24 Years , a one-hour documentary based on a filmed interview of Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue co-facilitators and founders.
• Published "Who Are They, Anyway? Finally meeting strangers in our own land" to respond to the famine of relationship poverty of communication skills at home and around Earth, and to help create a Culture of Connection.
(USA)(Europe)
• Convened and facilitated CROSSING LINES IN SAN MATEO: Sharing stories, Creating Community at Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center for 115 very diverse women, men, and youth vigorously seeking communication excellence and a Communication Renaissance.
• Supported Hands Around the Mosque with hundreds of diverse citizens gathering as community, as one.
(News Article)
(Video)
(FOX-2 TV News)(KRON-TV News)(NBC-TV News)
• Utilized Zoom Internet video technology to facilitate two multi-ethnic, transcontinental engagements, an Experiential Learning Session on Zoom for the the New AndaLuz Centre for Authentic Dialogue (NACAD)
• Provided two Commencement Address speakers for STORIES OF CHANGE: Creating a Culture of Connection in The Citizens' Century at Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont, California, in May 2017.
• Supported LISTEN DEEPLY: Post-Tragedy Community-Building Dialogue in Portland, Oregon, following racist and anti-Muslim hate speech killings.
• Contributed to Fostering Connection, Sharing Stories, and Creating Community in the international publication, Engage!
• Overseas-facilitated face-to-face "Trans-Asian Dialogue" at Korea University, using Zoom technology to maximize Internet communication for diverse women and men participants attending the 7th International NGO Conference on History and Peace in Seoul, South Korea. (Photos and Video)
• Provided facilitators for Public Library "Living Room Dialogues" as part of civil Community Conversations, initiated by the local San Mateo County Libraries.
• Created online space for2017 Global Video Bridge for Relationship Builders -- active women and men meeting, speaking, and listening to one another for mutual international learning and inspiration.
• Hosted an educational table at Palestine Cultural Day in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, to create new relationships congruent with their theme -- Building Bridges.
• Provided speakers-assimilation facilitators to conclude a day of city-wide DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS: The Art and Science of Thinking Together, offered by Pop The Bubble and sponsored by The Euphrates Institute, the Chamber of Commerce, and the McConnell Foundation in Redding, California USA.
• Facilitated international Zoom online experiential Dialogue for international Chapter Leaders of the Euphrates Institute. (Video)
• Provided Muslim Palestinian and Jewish Israeli exmplars, while Zoom-facilitating international deep story-sharing for the New AndaLuz Centre for Authentic Dialogue (NACAD).
• Zoom-facilitated Dialogue for Principia College classroom students and faculty studying "Strategies to Global Solutions" and designing global social innovation for wicked global problems. (48-min video)
• Distance-facilitated with Zoom technology in-home Dialogue for women and men of the Seattle, Washington Chapter of The Euphrates Institute.
• Co-facilitated "Roots of Peacebuilding in the 1980s" for local cross-generational, multi-ethnic, interreligious women and men exploring how to once again build international bridges to Russian citizens. (Photos)
• Provided personal stories for a Sunday morning religious service of the multi-racial, interfaith Church of the Fellowship of All Peoples begun in 1944 by Rev. Howard Thurman and Rev. Alfred G. Fisk in San Francisco. (Listen)
• Initiated a Re-dedication Circle remembering 26 years of Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue to champion citizen-driven civil discourse where we live and increasingly globally. (Photos)
• Facilitated student face-to-face Dialogue and civil engagement skill-building for Hillel House participants at San Francisco State University. (Photos)
• Facilitated 70 multi-culture 8th grade students in Dialogue for Sacred Heart Schools, Atherton, California, to assimilate their public service experiences and to improve respectful campus communication. (Facilitation Plan)
• Provided exemplars for UNDERSTANDING AND EMBRACING THE ENEMY to model personal story-sharing and listening, with two Dialogue activists -- a Jewish Israeli and a Muslim Palestinian-Jordanian -- mutually humanizing and dignifying themselves and each other for a public participatory education gathering of 80 women and men in Santa Cruz, California. (Flyer)
• Supported a Chanukah experience for an inter-racial, inter-religious community, The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, California. (Photos)
• Distance-facilitated classroom Dialogue for Myanmar university students, using Zoom video Internet technology over 12,000 kilometers to help build their campus community and communication skills. (Photos)
• Zoom-facilitated multi-faith Kolkata, India women and men with roots in Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and diverse sects of Hinduism, on the occasion of World Interfaith Harmony Week. (Photos)
• Facilitated experiential Dialogue skill-building for the local 15-year-old Multifaith Voices for Peace & Justice (MVPJ). (Photos & Facilitator Resources)
• Distance-facilitated with Zoom video technology Principia College (Illinois) students for applying Dialogue in their studies of Strategies to Global Solutions.
• Created and facilitated LIFE BEYOND TAKING SIDES: Growing from Blame Toward Empathy and Community for women, men, and youth from diverse cultures, religions, neighborhoods and nations. (Photos)
• Provided an exemplar to describe contemporary, inclusive Dialogue -- it's purpose, principles, and power -- for
the online publication of Elders Action Network. (Video)
• We encourage others to begin similar groups •
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Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue Group
1448 Cedarwood Drive, San Mateo, CA 94403
Tel: (650) 574-8303 • Cell: (650) 200-8913 • Fax:(650) 573-1217
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Creating, providing, and mailing thousands of cost-free DVDs and how-to materials, and dedicated all-year personal support
with intensive worldwide communication by this all-volunteer initiative is
supported by needed financial gifts from individual citizens and families.
