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Seed Stories: Reflection on the Tree of Life shooting

Nov 9, 2018 / No Comments

The shooting that occurred at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh felt personal to many. But for one Seed, the event truly hit close to home.

I think I heard gunshots.

When I texted this to my mom, my first thought was that a robbery had gone badly. Or maybe a drug deal. A robbery seemed more plausible, but neither scenario made sense in my quiet, tree-lined Squirrel Hill neighborhood in Pittsburgh.

Then I heard the sirens. The wailing got louder and louder as ambulances, SWAT vehicles, and patrol cars careened down my street as I watched from my window. My friend texted me that there had been a shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue at the end of my block. I am Jewish. I know people there. My friend lives across the street. I searched the Internet for confirmation. A lone British website was the first to report that, yes, there had been a shooting there—many shots fired, not just one. I soon learned that a man armed with several guns had gone into the Synagogue to kill as many Jews as he could, people who were gathered there for services.

I was in shock. How could this be happening in a country built on the principles of religious freedom and the right to peaceful assembly? How could it be happening in my city, Pittsburgh, ranked as one of America’s most livable? How could it be happening in my neighborhood, one of the most vibrant, diverse, and welcoming Jewish communities in the United States? I am young, but not so naïve as to believe that history has no contradictions or ironies. It is a pattern of zigzags, of forwards and backwards. But this—in 2018, at the end of my street—did not seem possible.

The truth is that this incident was a kind of robbery—a robbery of life, of 11 good people’s identities, of their dignity and potential for doing good, of their right to gather in their synagogue and study scripture. It was a robbery of humanity committed by one man whose ideological and political views were rooted in hatred and prejudice. At first, I felt sick and stunned. Then I felt sad. And then 
 angry. And then back to sad for all the police officers who got hurt. Then I felt horrified by the faces on TV–family members, friends, and neighbors of the victims whose lives were all torn apart by one man with an assault rifle.

But then as the hours went by, I felt emboldened. Several candlelight vigils were held in Squirrel Hill that first night; I went to the first and witnessed incredible support from all of Pittsburgh’s communities and religious denominations. I did not go to the second vigil; instead, I went to hear the powerfully positive speech of Magda Brown, a Holocaust survivor, sponsored by the Chatham University Women’s Institute and the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh. Her message was clear: we will survive in the face of any type of hatred. She had survived the worst of it.

This past week, I have had far more questions than answers in my head. Did Robert Bowers ever know any Jews personally? Had he ever had a conversation with a Jewish person? Where had he learned his hate? Who were his teachers? Did the Internet play a role? What was he so afraid of that he would feel called to violently destroy so many lives, including his own? And what’s going on across our whole country these days as people separate themselves into camps of Left and Right, “us” and “them?” Can political extremists ever reach a middle ground?

In 2017, at the Student Diversity Leadership Conference in Anaheim, California, I was introduced to the power of dialogue in a safe space as a bridge to understanding, a means of connecting people across race, culture, religion, identity, and socioeconomic divides. There, selected high school students and faculty engaged in free and open discussions about politically divisive topics. Assumptions were challenged; opinions were evolving. Inspired, I applied to the Seeds of Peace Camp.

By special permission, I was the first person from Pittsburgh to be accepted into this competitive program. I spent three weeks in Maine in daily dialogue with other participants, talking about our cultural identities and learning to share and listen in equal measure. The goal of the dialogues was not to convert anyone to a different position or angle on any issue, but simply to listen and understand different points of view. The goal was to give each of us the opportunity to hear other kids’ personal stories and experiences, and then reevaluate our own viewpoints. I realized that only by being exposed to another person’s story can we begin to truly understand our own. By learning the reasons for others’ differences and opinions, we begin to make sense of them and even respect them.

My experience at the Seeds of Peace Camp cemented my view that dialogue is essential to solving the misunderstanding and fear that underlie so many of our conflicts. Robert Bowers was on a social media platform called Gab, where white supremacists talk to each other in their own sealed echo chamber, never engaging in dialogue with people “outside” or hearing other people’s stories and experiences. Seeds of hate are sown on that site. I’m reminded of Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s powerful TED talk, “The Danger of a Single Story.” The danger of talking or listening only to those who agree with you was shockingly apparent in the shooting in Squirrel Hill on Saturday. Bowers had cocooned himself in an airless space of ignorance, fear, and confusion. He brought death and destruction into the Tree of Life—and all for nothing.

When Bowers was admitted to the ER at Allegheny General Hospital for his own gunshot wounds, he shouted “I want to kill all the Jews.” He was being treated by a Jewish doctor and nurse.

I don’t believe that President Donald Trump has single-handedly caused this rise in hate speech. I do believe that his failure to call out hate speech for what it is—a fomenter of extremism—has encouraged white supremacists and anti-Semites to be more vocal. When Trump came to Tree of Life, I stood on my friend’s front lawn in front of the synagogue and held up a sign asking for hatred to stop. He saw me and my sign. I hope he got the message.

I will always wonder if safe and rational dialogue at home, at school, at a house of worship, or at a workplace might have saved Robert Bowers and his 11 victims from their tragic fate. We will never know. What I do know is that it couldn’t have hurt and might have helped.

What really happens in dialogue? A peek behind the curtain

Nov 7, 2018 / 1 Comment

Down a dusty path marked by a hand-painted sign reading “Dialogue Alley,” a cluster of pine-needle green wooden structures sits like a chain of islands: similar in appearance from a distance, but a busy ecosystem plays out within each.

As anyone who has attended Camp knows, what takes place within these buildings—facilitated dialogue—is at the core of Seeds of Peace.

While most summer camps offer immensely bonding experiences, Seeds of Peace realized from the beginning that this wasn’t enough: if profound and lasting transformations were to take place, then people from across lines of conflict or difference also needed a way to engage with one another on deeply personal levels.

“If Camp had been only about singing, dancing, sharing a bunk, I don’t think we’d enjoy the same special friendships that we do now,” said Jiya (Indian Delegation, 2008). “It’s dialogue that made us Seeds, and dialogue that will keep us Seeds.”

In broad terms, dialogue sessions give Seeds a safe place where they are able to listen and to be heard; to experiment with conflict in ways that don’t tear communities apart, but might actually bring people closer together; to understand what needs to change in society, and cement a desire to work for those changes.

But for those who are not Seeds, dialogue can hold a bit of intrigue. The 110-minute daily sessions are completely off-limits to anyone who is not a facilitator or a member of that particular dialogue group. This isn’t meant to hide the proceedings, but rather to create a sacred space—one where people who normally wouldn’t be in a room together can feel safe being vulnerable and honest with one another. This privacy is essential for transformation to occur.

Invariably, one of the most common questions we hear from non-Seeds is: “So what really happens in dialogue, anyway?” The answer is as layered as the people participating, and the intricacies change by the year, the Camp session, the group, the day, the minute. But in a series of interviews with Seeds of Peace facilitators and a presentation given to a small group of Seed parents in New York City in October, we attempted to get a peek behind the curtain.

THE SETUP

Dialogue has changed in myriad ways over Camp’s 26 years, and the focus has expanded from primarily confronting the conflict in the Middle East, to developing empathetic leaders and addressing a wide variety of issues on personal, interpersonal, and structural levels.

The process begins each spring, with Seeds of Peace staff members painstakingly assigning campers to co-ed dialogue groups of 15 to 20 members each, which are purposefully different from their bunk and dining table assignments.

During sessions of Camp that focus on international conflicts, campers are divided into Middle East and South Asian groups, with American and British campers sprinkled among the two.

During sessions of Camp focused on divides within the United States, the groups are formed to represent a diverse mix of races, regions of the country, and, when the information is known, religious and economic backgrounds. In all the groups, the goal is to have a variety of voices, experiences, and identities that can each bring something unique to the conversation.

“A central idea of dialogue is that we all have important knowledge about what it means to live in this world, in a particular body with particular identities,” said Greg Barker, Seeds of Peace’s Facilitation Programs Manager. ”And by bringing these pieces of information together, we’re able to paint a much more complicated picture of the world around us.”

There are two facilitators in each dialogue group, and for the Middle East groups, one is always Palestinian, and the other Jewish-Israeli. The facilitators are not there to serve as authority figures, fact checkers, or judges; rather, they act as guideposts to help the Seeds stay on track in their journeys, and often serve as role models as well.

“We don’t pretend we don’t have differences,” said Danny Metzl, Seeds of Peace’s Co-Director of Middle East Facilitation. “The kids see that you can have different opinions and still work together, and that becomes a model for what can be.”

INTO THE HUT

Sitting in a circle of their peers, the first dialogue session usually begins with a lot of nerves and uncertainty. Some campers may be quiet and perhaps only nervously giggle or nod from time to time, while others may ask questions about what exactly they’ll be doing, or spout facts and figures, but be reluctant to speak from personal experiences.

In the Middle East groups, “both sides are very willing to come and speak, but they’re also very afraid. They don’t know what’s OK to say, and how free it is,” said Claire Dibsy Ayed, a Palestinian facilitator. “Some are feeling fear and guilt, saying things like, ‘I shouldn’t be here; they oppressed my people; everything being said by the other side is a lie.’”

For these reasons, the first few days in all of the groups are focused on building trust and community so that campers can become more honest with themselves and one another.

That work begins in small ways, including basic name games and getting-to-know-you exercises, as well as demonstrations from the facilitators of what good listening and bad listening looks like.

Perhaps one of the most important elements in the beginning can be creating group norms that must be reached by consensus, and that the campers agree to follow throughout the rest of the sessions. Common norms include speaking one at a time; agreeing to confidentiality; or “step up, step back,” a phrase meant to encourage those who don’t usually share in groups to challenge themselves to step up, and those who have a tendency to talk often to step back and give more room for others to share.

The only traditional rule that is enforced is no physical or verbal abuse. Beyond that, if they need to go to the bathroom or take a break, they don’t ask, they just go. If they don’t want to talk, they don’t have to do so. The experience is an exercise in anti-oppression for an age group that typically has little control over many of the details of their lives, from curfews, to clothing, to schedules, to whom they can date.

“Here in the dialogue huts, you get to decide for yourself how you’re going to be in this space. And this way, I think part of the power of dialogue is not just the content—it’s also the experiment in how humans can be together,” Greg said. “My experience is that once you have felt what it is like to be a little freer and to share power with each other, it changes how you exist in the world, because you know something else is possible.”

THE TIPPING POINT

After several sessions of setting up the framework, “there is usually a day where the real conflicts come out, and they’re ready to get into it,” said Eliza O’Neil, who has been a facilitator with the South Asia groups for the last two years and now serves as the US/UK Program Coordinator at Seeds of Peace.

In many of the groups, it usually starts to happen around the fifth or sixth day of dialogue, when campers stop worrying about disappointing the adults in the room, stop relying on facts and figures, and start speaking from personal experiences.

“It’s a tipping point,” Eliza said. “They realize that the stories they’ve been told all their lives are not always in alignment with the stories that their peers have lived, and there can be explosions of anger, or sadness, and feelings of being misunderstood.

“But then, we have something to work with—it’s no longer just back and forth trading positions and facts, these are actual stories.”

At this point, the Seeds typically begin to run the dialogue sessions themselves. Sessions may start with journal exercises to help get the kids thinking about different topics, but it usually doesn’t take much to get them ready to talk.

As the Camp session progresses, the campers may go through various exercises, with the facilitators making adjustments as they see fit within the groups—perhaps breaking off into smaller groups to explore issues on a more intimate level before bringing the group back together, or giving campers the chance to act out feelings they are having trouble expressing.

And as needed, facilitators will also push the campers in different ways to help them think more deeply about their opinions. These days can be intense; tears and frustrations are not uncommon. But these can also be the most powerful days, the ones where transformation begins to take place.

OUT OF THE HUT, INTO THE WOODS

There’s nothing quite like dangling together from a wire high above the ground to instill trust between two people.

Twice a week campers participate in Group Challenge, a series of increasingly difficult outdoor activities that serve as the physical component to dialogue.

The work begins on the ground with problem-solving activities, and progresses to low-ropes, then high-ropes courses that build confidence, trust, and cooperation skills. The activities could look like any team-building exercise, but there’s a twist: Working closely with dialogue facilitators, Group Challenge facilitators will often make adjustments to help address issues within the group. For example, two people who are butting heads in dialogue might be paired together on the ropes course, or a soft-spoken teen will be given a leadership role.

“These tools in Group Challenge exist specifically to address and disrupt group dynamics in dialogue,” Greg said. “And they are a major part of the process of transformation.”

THE WAY LIFE COULD BE

The goal of dialogue is not to sign peace accords, to find a solution to structural problems in society, or even to agree. It’s about profound personal transformation that Seeds will carry with them back to their communities and for the rest of their lives. In just three weeks, it begins to show itself in small but meaningful ways: challenging the status quo; asking questions to learn, rather than to make a point; really listening to what a person is saying, rather than just quietly formulating their next point; or seeing that “the other” is actually much like them, with fears and family and funny quirks.

It’s an experience that forever changes their view of the world, their place in it, and their sense of responsibility for improving it.

“We make a big deal here about the phrase ‘the way life could be,’ but I don’t think it’s cheesy or silly. I think it’s very real,” Greg said. “As a society, we’re really good at thinking about bad futures—just look at all the dystopian movies and books that are big blockbusters—but we’re really bad at thinking about what a good future might be like.”

In those humble green dialogue huts, however, there is something like a time machine, Greg explained, one that allows campers to travel to a different kind of future in which they can create the version of society in which they want to live.

“They start out creating a version that they’re familiar with, where they’re fighting each other. But slowly, as they experience life at Camp, and the person they thought was the enemy is now the person they dance and play with, they have to deal with how that goes together,” Danny added.

“And in dialogue sessions, they experiment with how they can live a better life here in this group. If it can be done here in a small group, perhaps it can be achieved outside in the real world.”

Seeds of Peace initiates advanced Palestinian-Israeli coexistence program

Aug 20, 2003 / No Comments

JERUSALEM | Seeds of Peace has launched something at its Jerusalem Center for Coexistence unlike anything ever done before. In fact, what is happening at the Center isn’t happening anywhere else—not at this scale and not with such a variety of groups and projects, in so many locations and with participants from so many places.

Two hundred Israeli and Palestinian Seeds are coming together for weekly meetings throughout 2003 and 2004 as part of the Center’s Advanced Coexistence Program—they are meeting in 12 different groups in four different locations from dozens of cities all over Israel, both sides of Jerusalem, and the West Bank. The projects include:

Dialogue Groups: Groups of 14-20 Israeli and Palestinian Seeds are meeting on a weekly basis. Older, more experienced Seeds are helping to guide the groups as they learn themselves the skills of group-leading and facilitation. The first meetings focused on group and trust building activities, and were followed by intensive dialogue sessions with facilitators. In the second half of the year, groups will plan and implement outreach projects together.

“Coexistence Through the Year” Calendar Project: In this area, people live together but use three different religious calendars (Jewish, Muslim, Christian), two different national calendars (Palestinian, Israeli), and three different school system calendars (Palestinian, Jewish-Israeli, Arab-Israeli). A group of Seeds are designing, producing and distributing a yearly calendar that includes all the holidays and traditions, showing the dates for each one as well as short written explanations and images reflecting the importance of the dates. The calendar will also include the holidays of other religions celebrated in the area, such as Druze religious holidays.

Before producing the calendar, the participants in this project will research in detail the area’s different religions and cultures. They will discuss with each other in depth the significance of the various religious and national holidays. They will write the explanation passages and test them on each other, and work together on translations into Hebrew and Arabic. They will work with local artists to create images on each page that reflect their mutual understandings of the significance of the different religious/cultural/national dates. The calendar will be distributed widely to middle and high school aged Israeli and Palestinian youth in schools, promoting joint understanding of the important religious, national and cultural commemorations on both sides. Copies will be printed and distributed, all tri-lingual in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.

Mother Tongue Language Courses: Leaders for peace in this area should know how to communicate with each other—in each other’s languages. Mother Tongue participants meet once a week, teaching and learning from each other important conversational skills in Hebrew and Arabic, which will help them bridge cultural gaps as they strive to build a region of greater mutual understanding. They are also being exposed to the other culture through poetry, music, art, proverbs and much more.

Acting Out! Using acting, puppetry, storytelling and music, a group of Israeli and Palestinian Seeds participants are creating a performance which is imbedded with messages they see as important to the mission of Seeds of Peace. The show will be created throughout this year and performed starting next summer for family audiences at the Center for Coexistence, and will tour to Arab and Jewish communities. Before or after watching the show, the children will participate in a “hands-on workshop” in puppetry or acting, led by Seeds participants, where they can express their own creativity.  

Makin’ a Difference (Community Service): Through involvement in community work, Seeds contribute to their communities while simultaneously creating a positive feeling in their communities about Seeds of Peace, and working inside communities to promote the values of Seeds of Peace. Projects have already been implemented with an after-school Center in Jaffa targeting needy Arab and Jewish youth, Ayn al Sultan refugee camp in Jericho, and a group of Russian immigrant teenagers from Neveh Yaacov working with Seeds youth painting houses in the development town of Dimona.  

Sesame Seeds:  In conjunction with Sesame Workshops, which produces Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian TV components of the beloved children’s show Sesame Street, promoting tolerance and cross-cultural understanding, a group of Seeds are designing with educational experts hired by Sesame Workshops a curricula they will bring into the schools, reaching primary school aged youth with those messages and with their own example.  

Media Course/Oral History Project: This course is providing Palestinian and Israeli Seeds skills in writing articles, making commentary, and how to critically interpret and analyze both television and newspaper media. When the course is completed, the participants will be active contributors to the Olive Branch, the Seeds of Peace youth magazine.

The exceptionally talented youth will be encouraged to write for school newspapers and for Israeli and Palestinian press, and begin to build the Seeds of Peace Oral History: We have the ambitious goal of interviewing each and every one of our participants, asking them to talk about themselves, their personal and family history, their community, their views of the Arab-Israeli conflict, how they see the future in five years, and their experiences with Seeds of Peace. The interviewers and videographers will also be Seed participants who have participated in the media course. The Oral History Interviews will be in the Seeds of Peace library. They will be used in school presentations to show stories and perspectives of youth from “the other side.” Since closures and checkpoints often prevent the youth from traveling to each other’s communities directly, they can speak through the video tapes. In this way, Palestinian youth in schools in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza can hear the stories and experiences of Israeli youth, and vice versa. The Oral History library will also be available for students and NGOs doing research projects, and for Seeds participants to stay connected to each other and to their pasts over the years.  

Facilitation Training: Seeds who have completed both an introductory and advanced coexistence program are eligible to enroll in facilitation training. Through observation, role play, discussion of theory and practice, and supervised hands-on experience, Seeds learn skills needed to facilitate meaningful dialogue.

Protest poster ordered removed at Lewiston High School may go back on wall
Portland Press Herald

Dec 11, 2014 / No Comments

The superintendent expects to permit the racial justice message that students created to start a dialogue on national events.

A poster created by several students to protest grand jury decisions not to indict two police officers who killed unarmed black men could soon be back on the walls at Lewiston High School.

“Based on what I know, I don’t see any reason it should not be posted,” Lewiston Superintendent Bill Webster said Wednesday.

Webster plans to meet Thursday with the four girls who put up the poster to discuss it and tell them his decision.

The girls created the poster because they wanted to get involved in some way with the nationwide protests over the killings. They had abandoned their original idea, to walk out of classes to join the protests last week, after school officials told them there could be “unintended consequences” if they walked out. The four said they assumed that meant they could be suspended, and went along with Principal Linda MacKenzie’s suggestion to make a poster instead.

They put up the poster Friday, but Chandler Clothier, the student who designed it, said she was called to the principal’s office on Monday. MacKenzie told her that she failed to get prior approval for the poster, and that she needed to change the title “#blacklivesmatter” to “all lives matter” or take the poster down, Clothier said.

“#blacklivesmatter” is the Twitter hashtag that has been commonly used as part of the nationwide conversation over racial justice and the incidents in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City, in which unarmed black men died at the hands of police officers. Grand juries in both cases declined to indict the officers, sparking protests in many cities, including Portland.

The girls removed the poster, but said they believed their free speech rights were being violated, particularly because the principal demanded a change in wording.

They were probably right, said Zachary Heiden, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, which was aware of the incident but is not involved. Heiden said the organization would give the students legal help if asked.

In a previous ruling over student protests of the Vietnam War, the U.S. Supreme Court said that “students don’t check their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate,” Heiden said.

He said schools control their walls, but only to the extent that they allow free expression that’s not substantially disruptive to learning.

School officials “aren’t supposed to make decisions based on the message conveyed,” Heiden said. “That raises problems from a First Amendment standpoint.”

Webster said he reviewed the district’s 603-page policy manual Tuesday and realized that as superintendent, he, not the school principal, is supposed to approve posters and material to be distributed in schools. He said the policy bars material that is “hate” literature; material that creates hostility, disorder or violence; commercial, political or pornographic material; and libelous material.

“At this point, I’m not aware of anything on the poster that would cause me to say it should not be posted, although I haven’t seen it yet,” Webster said. He said he understands that the subject of the poster almost “requires that there be a #blacklivesmatter” hashtag because it has been so commonly used on Twitter to refer to the protests.

MacKenzie did not respond to several messages Wednesday. In an email response to questions Tuesday, she wrote that the girls had failed to get prior approval for the poster.

Lewiston High School’s student body is about 25 percent minority students, Webster said, and many of them are children of immigrants who settled in Lewiston after fleeing violence in Somalia.

Webster believes the school has done a good job integrating what, for Maine, is an unusually large number of minority students.

The students said that’s why it’s important for the school to discuss racial issues.

“It’s an important step for Lewiston High School students’ voices to be heard,” Clothier said.

She said students agreed Wednesday to put the poster on a civil rights bulletin board in the school, once it has been cleared by Webster. Although the bulletin board is in a less prominent place—the poster was originally next to an entrance to the cafeteria—Clothier said it still will be noticed. The new location also will allow other students to post information about civil rights issues, she said.

Muna Mohamed, the senior class president and one of the girls who created the poster, said the placard—and the fight over whether the students could put it up—already has had an effect at school. Her mentoring group discussed the issue of students’ civil rights Wednesday, and other students told her it was a topic of discussion in their advisory groups as well.

“It’s definitely sparked a conversation,” she said. “That needs to happen.”

Mohamed said she hasn’t heard any negative reaction to the poster and its message, but she’s OK with that too, if it comes.

“The whole thing we wanted was for this conversation to happen,” she said. “Probably some people disagree, but that’s needed in a conversation.”

Read Edward D. Murphy’s article in The Portland Press Herald »

From California to Kabul, connecting over podcasts and Zootopia

Aug 5, 2020 / 1 Comment

When I met Sajia, a 2009 Afghan Seed and 2020 GATHER Fellow, over video chat, I was immediately inspired by her presence and her ideas about education; especially her interest in empowering youth to design and implement their own projects within their communities.

We are both passionate about reaching youth—Sajia founded the Baale Parwaz Library in Kabul, and I’ve worked as an educator for 11 years—and the more we talked about our field, the more I realized how ideologically aligned we were. When I asked Sajia about how teens in Kabul were faring during the pandemic, she mentioned that they, like many American students, were stuck at home. So, I invited them to join This Teenage Life, a youth-driven podcasting program I had started over a year earlier that began meeting virtually due to the pandemic.

This Teenage Life began with a nonchalant bet I made with Nergish, a dear friend I met in the 2018 GATHER cohort. We were both obsessed with podcasts and I was looking for a new creative project. The bet was about if I could create a podcast episode for under $20 (maybe it was $30). Using my phone and free editing software, I eventually made this episode of a podcast for … no one. But it sounded surprisingly good!

Six months later, while working at a school in San Diego, I started podcasting again. This time it was with an inspiring group of teenagers. It started with one sophomore, then her friends, and several weeks later, close to 30 of us were sitting around one microphone having deep, meaningful discussions about issues relevant to our lives. We talked about issues such as self-doubt, love in high school, and when they realized their parents are human beings. We called it This Teenage Life. Almost two years since we began, we have many episodes which have been heard in 49 states across America and in over 70 countries.

For each episode, we edit the recordings of the conversations, compose and record music, make web art, and eventually publish the episode on our website and wherever podcasts are found.

Flash-forward to March. I had moved home to New York City where COVID-19 was spreading like wildfire. The school where I currently teach was closed, along with most high schools in the U.S. All stuck at home, the teens from This Teenage Life and I began having and recording conversations every other day. Throughout the pandemic, these conversations have been a social and creative lifeline which became even more powerful when I received an email from Daniel Moses, Director of Educator Programs for Seeds of Peace, which read: “Hi Sajia and Molly: I’m especially happy to be writing to introduce the two of you. This is an inspired connection. I strongly encourage the two of you to talk soon.”

So Sajia and I spoke, hit it off, and started figuring out how to connect the young people we work with. The schedule was tricky. To get the best internet connection, we met at what was 10 p.m. in New York, 7 p.m. in California, and 6:30 a.m. in Kabul. And while the connection wasn’t always reliable, it was good enough.

Our first conversation was trepidatious. The Internet was laggy and I felt nervous and awkward.

Everything changed when one young woman from Afghanistan talked about what she was watching during quarantine: Zootopia. Everyone—from the teenagers in San Diego to those in Kabul—was uproarious, “I LOVE ZOOTOPIA!” each teen was saying. The Americans and the Afghans all agreed—it was a fantastic movie and one with a beautiful message about resilience and how hard it can be to fight societal biases and change the status quo.

The idea of resilience really struck a chord. Each person shared stories of when they had challenged a societal norm or pushed to overcome something. A young woman in Kabul shared about how she fought her family to go to school and another young woman described her struggle to ride her bicycle in the streets. A teen in the U.S. described how she uses the limitations of not having much financial means to help motivate her. Another young woman talked about how she overcame her fear of swimming in the ocean.

From that point on, we met once per week talking about topics such as Tik Tok, beauty standards, and moments when we have “talked back” to adults. Those podcasting gatherings among the Afghans and Americans have since branched into virtual gatherings centered around poetry and creative writing, coding, and essay writing.

Twice per week now, at 10 p.m., fighting the urge to go to bed, I sign onto Zoom to meet with teens in California, New York, and Kabul. As soon as their faces appear, the tiredness is replaced by awe for this little wormhole, stretching across space, time, and conflict where teenagers from across the world come together to share parts of themselves and to, in the process, make something new and beautiful.

Molly is a 2012 Seeds of Peace Educator and 2018 GATHER Fellow. Sajia is currently in a Masters program at Stanford University. Learn more and listen to the new season of This Teenage Life â€șâ€ș

January 17, 2014 | Special Screening (New York)

Jan 17, 2014 / No Comments

Seeds of Peace is co-hosting a screening of “The Square,” an OscarÂź nominated, award-winning documentary about the Egyptian Revolution (www.thesquarefilm.com).

There will be a panel discussion following the screening with the film’s Director Jehane Noujaim, Producer Karim Amer, and Seeds of Peace Graduate and New York Times reporter Mona.

ADDRESS: 22 E. 12th St. | NYC
DATE: January 17, 2014
TIME: 5:10 p.m.
LOCATION: Cinema Village
WEBSITE: www.16765.thankyou4caring.org/pages/events/2014-the-square-screening
CONTACT: Jen Lishanksy | jennifer@seedsofpeace.org

May 9, 2017 | Spring Benefit Dinner (New York)

May 8, 2017 / No Comments

Join us in celebration of Seeds of Peace’s work with young people from conflict regions for an inspiring evening honoring Diane Rehm, host of The Diane Rehm Show, Kiss My Face founders Bob MacLeod and Steve Byckiewicz, and Seeds of Peace alumni.

ADDRESS: 583 Park Ave, New York, NY 10065
DATE: May 9, 2017
TIME: Cocktails 6:30 p.m. | Dinner 7:30 p.m.
LOCATION: 583 Park Ave.
WEBSITE: www.583parkave.com
CONTACT: Dindy Weinstein | dindy@seedsofpeace.org
TICKETS: www.seedsofpeace.org/dinner2017

A voice from the field: Tension Release
University of Chicago School of Social Services Administration Magazine

Jun 8, 2011 / No Comments

Bobbie Gottschalk, A.M. ’66, helps Seeds of Peace defuse international conflict by making it personal

Bobbie Gottschalk, 68, has more than 2,600 Facebook friends. A handful are family, the rest are from around the world, mostly in South/Central Asia and the Middle East. So when thousands of Egyptian youth and young adults united against longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak last January, Gottschalk, A.M. ’66, did what any avid social media user would do: She went to Facebook and Twitter to check in on her friends. Her message to those in Egypt? First, “Are you okay?” And second, “We believe in you.”

Egypt’s uprising, in other words, was especially fascinating for Gottschalk, the co-founder of Seeds of Peace, an organization that brings youth from regions in conflict, such as Israelis and Palestinians, together in an intensive summer camp in Maine, where they learn to talk through their differences and see mutual goals, intelligent risks and shared fun as tools for peace. The teenagers return to their home countries, which include Israel, Palestine, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Cyprus and the Balkans, but they are forever linked to Seeds of Peace. They lead workshops, attend conferences, publish their own magazine, continue cross-cultural education programs, and ultimately build a lasting web of “Seeds” that promote peace across borders, oceans and conflicts. “At the most basic level, one of the most important things that Seeds of Peace does is that it humanizes everyone involved,” says Seed Serena Kefayeh, who was a camper in 1997 and 1998 and then a camp program leader in 1999. Kefayeh grew up in Jordan and today is the director of Georgetown University’s Master’s in Journalism program.

“When campers first arrive in Maine, they have their guard up and have little or no intention of listening to what the ‘others’ have to say. Over the course of the camp, you begin to see the other campers as individuals and as teenagers just like you,” she says. “You start to understand that they’re people who might not be as bad as you initially thought, and that there’s more to them than just their nationality. And Bobbie has been the driving force that has helped keep the Seeds of Peace mission alive and strong for all these years.”

After almost two decades in action, there are some 4,500 Seeds, most of them under 30. Gottschalk is in regular communication with close to 3,000 of them. “From the beginning I have tried to keep the group together,” says Gottschalk, who served as the organization’s executive vice president until 2006, when she transitioned to being a board member. “I am still the consistent person as far as the Seeds are concerned.”

In Egypt, one of the Seeds and his friends created a music video filmed in Cairo’s Tahrir Square (the center of the demonstrations) that received more than 1.4 million views online, and they helped lead cleanup efforts in the square after the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators dispersed. “While this may have been a very internal issue for Egypt, it does show how we can empower young people to make a difference,” says Leslie Lewin, Seeds of Peace’s executive director.

“One of the things that scared me to death was when the Internet was cut off [in Egypt],” says Gottschalk. “That’s the way we keep in touch with these kids. My Facebook page was all about getting the Internet up. And I asked the thousands of other Seeds to post to Seedbook [the Seeds-only social network] and Facebook to encourage their Egyptian counterparts, so that when we got the Internet back, they would see we were all supporting them. When one group of Seeds or even one is in trouble, we rally to their sides. It’s not a political matter; it’s a human matter.”

Providing that personal, deep connection has been a key role for Gottschalk since Seeds of Peace began. She’s attended every one of the summer camps, and she is a common thread for the Seeds. “Every one of our Seeds knows her, which is a unique and special role for her to play,” Lewin says. “She puts an incredible amount of time not only on her own contact with our campers post camp but also their contact with each other.”

Bringing the “human factor” to solving conflicts is what Gottschalk has been trying to do since she first started in social work. She remembers her first field placement with what is now known as Metropolitan Family Services in Chicago’s old stockyard neighborhoods while still studying at SSA in the mid 1960s. “The first client walked in and I wasn’t fully trained yet. I realized I could reduce the impact of that [lack of training] if I related to people as equal human beings,” she says.

Gottschalk’s second placement was with the Chicago Childcare Society, where she worked with foster kids and adoption services. “I had foster children who got placed in adoption. It was great. They were all being given a boost in life they wouldn’t have already had otherwise,” Gottschalk remembers. “With Seeds of Peace we work with kids from Gaza and the West Bank, Afghanistan
these kids also have very few opportunities. And any time we can offer them opportunities for scholarships to universities or a boarding school in the U.S. I feel like we are giving them the same kind of boost, the same way you feel when you place a hard-to-place child in a loving adoptive family.”

More than 40 years since she graduated from SSA, Gottschalk says she is still influenced in her daily work by two mentors from the School. “Helen Harris Perlman would say, ‘Don’t go any further than the client is willing to go,’” she says. And Joy Johnson gave Gottschalk the principles she applies to the group work she does with Seeds campers. “[Johnson] gave me four things that had to be advanced for a young person to want to be in a group. There has to be somebody who demonstrates they like that person. It has to be safe in the group. There has to be a benefit for that person. And there has to be something the person can give back to the group. I have found these thing to be true of all human beings in every group,” Gottschalk says.

After graduating from SSA, Gottschalk moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked with the Jewish Social Service Agency. There she started one of the first Jewish residential programs for adults with disabilities, as well as a mental health clinic for people who are deaf.

Starting Seeds of Peace came about as a happy coincidence. Journalist John Wallach had written a book about Palestinians that Gottschalk’s book group was reading. She invited Wallach to come and talk to the group, during which he mentioned he had an idea for a special camp to bring Israeli and Palestinian youth together. Gottschalk, then between jobs, volunteered to help.

In four months, the pair had the first camp up and running, with Gottschalk serving as the sole employee. “It was a huge departure from working under the umbrella of the Jewish Social Services,” Gottschalk says. They had to solicit donations, barter with providers for food, airfare and other camp basics, and appeal to their U.S. representative for help getting 501c(3) status. “The hardest part of starting was that it’s scary. You are out on a limb. It was international—I wasn’t just calling up my friends,” Gottschalk says. “Often I thought, ‘What’s a nice Jewish girl doing chasing after Yasser Arafat?’”

Gottschalk is quick to point out that Wallach was the charismatic visionary of Seeds of Peace until his death in 2002. Her leadership role was to help shape how the program could succeed. For example, Lewin notes that the pathbreaking component of the summer camp—the 90 minutes every day the campers spend in conflict resolution with teens from other countries is largely influenced by Gottschalk’s social work background. “Bobbie helped create the co existence program,” Lewin says. “She and John thought from the beginning that we should embrace these difficult topics rather than avoid them, and Bobbie offered a lot of leadership in that aspect of our curriculum and its development.”

For campers, Gottschalk’s role in mediating conflict is essential to their experience. Iddo Shai, an Israeli Seed from the camp’s first summer in 1993 and now a content developer in Los Angeles, remembers clearly how Gottschalk helped him through early sessions in which a Palestinian youth started saying the Holocaust never happened. Members of Shai’s extended family had died in the Holocaust and the other youth were demanding proof.

“It was a lot to handle for a 13-year-old,” Shai says of himself. “I shut myself out to anyone who came to talk to me. Then Bobbie came to me and she was very honest. ‘You have to understand where he is coming from and that some people don’t have an emotional connection to the Holocaust,’” Shai remembers her saying. “She wasn’t trying to sugar coat it. She said, ‘People think like that and that’s why we have these camps. At the end of camp he may feel differently, but you have to talk. You have to listen and learn from that experience.’ That’s the moment Bobbie and I clicked.” Shai says he still talks to Gottschalk on an almost weekly basis.

Today Seeds of Peace runs year-round programs for continued leadership development and dialogue across borders and has full-time staff in offices in Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Lahore, Mumbai and Kabul, with additional staff in Gaza, Cairo and Amman. Gottschalk says that never did she imagine Seeds of Peace would grow as it has. “I thought it would be an experiment we would always point to. But once it got going, John and I both wanted it to be international, not just the Middle East.”

The Seeds who attended the first Seeds of Peace Camp in 1993 are now in their early 30s. As they and the other Seeds have grown up and moved on to careers, they became journalists in their home countries and abroad, international lawyers, educators, film producers, heads of NGOs, even members of the official negotiating teams for the Palestinians and the Israelis. Some are involved in new websites like Palestine Note; others are working on a new planned community in the West Bank called Rawabi. Two Seeds are Israeli TV anchors, another is a Cairo correspondent for The New York Times who covered the events in Egypt this winter. “These are extremely talented young people,” Gottschalk says.

Gottschalk’s role at Seeds of Peace has evolved to the bigger picture tasks of a board member, such as fundraising and reporting to the executive committee. Over the years she has won numerous awards for her work, including a Medal of Honor, presented by King Hussein of Jordan in 1997 and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Franklin Pierce University. But she still sits in on the monthly international staff phone conference call and attends every summer camp.

“Her historical perspective and ability to understand all aspects of our growth is absolutely invaluable,” Lewin says. “She has an incredible heart, as big as they come. And at a place like Seeds of Peace, you see that play out on such a huge scale.”

Read Patti Wolter’s article at The University of Chicago »

December 7, 2002 | T-Fense World Tour 2002 charity project (New York)

Dec 2, 2002 / No Comments

Featuring top international designers for a month-long international benefit exhibition including Adidas, X-Large, X-Girl, Stussy, 2K and other premier streetwear companies

New York opening, Saturday, December 7th at Halcyon in Brooklyn and simultaneously at five locations worldwide

NEW YORK | T-Fund is proud to announce the 2nd Annual T-Fense World Tour 2002, a charity benefit involving 18 hip streetwear labels, each designing a limited edition hand signed and numbered T-shirt around the theme of Global Peace with all proceeds to benefit Seeds of Peace, one of America’s most respected charitable organizations. The event will bring together New York’s top artists, designers, DJs, and urban trendsetters to help raise money and awareness for the cause.

The four-week exhibition will kick off with five simultaneous opening receptions on Saturday December 7th in Brooklyn, San Francisco, Pasadena, Berlin and Tokyo. At Brooklyn’s Halcyon Saturday night opening, top New York guest DJ Kenny “Dope” Gonzales will spin with other surprise guests throughout the evening. The exhibition will also feature one-of-a-kind pieces created by some of the world’s hottest artists and designers assembled by each host gallery. The $35.00 T-shirts will be sold at each location and available for purchase online at www.karmaloop.com.

T-FUND is a New York based not-for-profit corporation formed by halcyon owner Shawn Schwartz and T-Fense curator Ben Ewy. T-Fund’s mission is to finance and produce events like the T-Fense World Tour 2002 that raise funds and awareness for specific charitable organizations whose programs address the concerns of global youth culture. T-Fund projects draw together a worldwide community of small business innovators, independent artists, freelance designers and DJs. T-Fund serves as a facilitator, providing an inroad for established charities wishing to align themselves with the next generation of volunteers and donors.

HALCYON is Brooklyn’s world-renowned DJ Lounge/Coffee Shop/Record Store/Mid-Century Modern Furniture atelier. Halcyon has earned its reputation as an epicenter of NYC’s underground community since opening in 1999.

ADDRESS: Halcyon, 227 Smith Street, Brooklyn, NY
DATE: December 7, 2002
TIME: 7 p.m.
LOCATION: Brooklyn, NY
CONTACT: Jason Charles | (212) 614-1514 or jasoncharles@earthlink.net

Leader Focus: Meet Rukmini, a Samvaad Trainer

Feb 23, 2021 / No Comments

When Rukmini was a young girl growing up in Mumbai, she mostly thought of the word “peace” in the context of beauty queens and would-be saints: Miss Universe talked about the need for it, Mother Teresa gave up everything for it, but what, Rukmini wondered, “did that mean for someone like me, a lay person who has conflict at home?”

Her personal inquiry deepened with time, leading her through several peacebuilding programs in high school and, eventually, to college where she attended an interfaith dialogue session hosted by a Buddhist group. What she experienced there, she said, left her “awestruck.”

“I came from a family where my parents are extremely religious and caste-ist, and I knew I wanted to fight that but didn’t know how to in terms of having the emotional and psychological safety to voice that at home,” she said. “So to me, it was such a relief to learn that these spaces can exist that can allow for processing and talking about my own faith (or lack thereof).”

Having built a career in peacebuilding and corporate leadership development, Rukmini has actively practiced dialogue for most of the past decade—including as a Seeds of Peace Delegation Leader and Educator, and this spring, she’ll be one of four trainers leading The Samvaad Project, a new Seeds of Peace interfaith-dialogue facilitation training program for university educators in Western India. She has seen what happens when people have safe spaces to explore their beliefs and differences, and sees dialogue, particularly for young people, as a critical ingredient in building peace.

“In the world we live in, I don’t think it’s an option any longer,” she said of dialogue. “It’s essential.”

She spoke recently about The Samvaad Project and how educators can play a key role in providing safe spaces for youth to explore their beliefs through dialogue, just as she did as a student.

Seeds of Peace: It seems you were thinking about peace and conflict from an early age. How did that translate into action for you?

Rukmini: It’s all about context, right? When I was growing up, Mumbai was filled with gang wars and there was a lot of violence. I remember once, I was probably 21 or 22, I was on a train and there was a bomb blast in another compartment. The train halted, we all quietly jumped off the train, and calmly walked to the next station. While I moved on that day, there was something wrong about it in terms of, how can we just go on?

Those kinds of experiences intensified this relationship with conflict—that something about it doesn’t make sense and we need to work at it. And when I say “we” need to work at it, I mean common people. It can’t be something just left to governments or UN agencies. We need to have lay people working on conflict resolution.

What role do you see educators playing in creating cultures of peace?

Adolescence or early adulthood is when people are thinking about the kind of impact they want on the world, and I think it’s the right time for us to introduce people to personal responsibility towards the collective and how they can contribute to peacebuilding.

And peacebuilding is something that can be integrated into pretty much everything one does—into law, government-related work, design and architecture—it’s a way of life, and a way of sensitizing us to the fact that conflict exists in us and around us. If you’re able to integrate that concept early in our lives, then there isn’t as much resistance to it later in life, when one is faced with conflicts.

Given the kind of influence that educators have and the opportunity that they have to create conversational spaces in their institutions and in their communities, there’s so much that can be done. There aren’t enough safe spaces to talk about faith at the moment, so even if you’re able to even marginally increase the amount of safety, that will be work well done.

How does interfaith dialogue contribute to lasting peace? Can it be achieved without it?

Dialogue—interfaith or otherwise—is crucial. There are so many divisive elements all around, online and offline, and the only way to counteract that is dialogue: to sit across and talk about what’s your story, what’s my story, and how do we build our collective story and a shared future.

Why was this important to be centered specifically on interfaith dialogue?

First, because of the times that we live in, there’s a lot of propaganda around faith in every form. Second, because a lot of elements of faith are so unconscious to us. And because we’re often not really aware of the privileges we carry, we sometimes mete out unfairness without knowing it. So it’s really important to bring that into conscious awareness and start working with it, otherwise we end up perpetuating structural violence without even knowing it.

What if a person is not religious, will this course be useful to them?

Yes, that’s also an aspect of faith. If I’m agnostic or an atheist, that’s still my faith, and I still need to live in my community, family, my society where people may practice other forms of faith and they may want to be respected for their expression of it. And so my being non-religious may have an impact on them just by being what I am. At the end of the day, the fact that we are human and belong in society is reason enough for someone to do this work.

What can participants expect from the program?

There’s definitely a skills component in terms of how to facilitate dialogue, to handle sensitive conversations, to manage it when things get heated up, and so on. But a lot of the work is also inner work, which will definitely take participants outside their comfort zone, and that’s also the intention—that as educators, we need to live the process to be able to educate others around it.

It’s not always comfortable, but I would still say it’s rewarding because you see changes—particularly when you work with young people. You see how their world view changes and how much more expansive they become as a result of dialogue, and that’s worth everything.

What do you hope people will do with this course?

I hope they generate conversations around faith in a safe way, wherever they are. Even if they generate one question or reflection in their inner circle, that’s good enough impact for me.

Learn more about the Samvaad Project or submit an application â€șâ€ș

Rukmini is a seasoned leadership development facilitator, coach, and peacebuilder with over 19 years of professional experience around the world. She is certified to use a wide variety of approaches, including conscious and unconscious human process work, whole systems thinking, Appreciative Inquiry, Non-Violent Communication, and Neuro Linguistic Programming. As a Rotary Peace Fellow, Rukmini is a trained peacebuilder and conflict resolution specialist and channels her work in this area through her peacebuilding platform The Womb Tales. She has a Professional Development Certificate in Peace and Conflict Resolution from Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, and a Master’s degrees in Organizational Psychology and Bachelor’s degree in Commerce from the Mumbai University. Her publications include ‘A Culturally Sensitive Approach to Engage Contemporary Corporate India.