A workshop for the Britain friends

A workshop organized by the Friends of Neve Shalom in Britain as part of a study tour at Neve Shalom for 13 people from Britain, the Netherlands and Germany.

Since the goal of the workshop was to get to know the work of the School for Peace, we arranged for members of the group to have a hands-on experience illustrating the work that the SFP does. In preparation, participants listened to a general overview about the SFP and were invited to propose subjects about which they would like to learn more, and we incorporated their input into the program. The following day was the more experiential session of the workshop. We began with getting-acquainted activity, asking each participant to explain his or her connection with the conflict in the Middle East. The presentations were rich and varied but mostly did not reveal the speaker‘s identity or stance regarding the conflict. The only discernible direction that emerged was a preoccupation with and concern about the status of the Muslim woman and a desire to help improve it. After we invited people to tell about their connection in a more concrete and less universal way, people identified as Jews, as Christians, as former soldiers, as pro-Israel, and as people who oppose Israel‘s policies. The group felt at that point that it had already revealed quite a lot, and let go of its pose of politeness.


In the second session, we dealt with the work of the School for Peace. We talked about three subjects: the research on changes undergone by encounter participants, in particular Jewish participants; the connection between gender and nationality in our work; and attitudes toward terrorism. These topics provided a bridge to a discussion in the third session, when the group discussed the connection between our work here and what is happening in England. Very quickly the group progressed from a discussion about the conflict in the Middle East to a more internal one about attitudes toward Muslims, the fear of Islam, fears of Muslim immigrants, and British Mideast policies. The discussion was perceptive, candid and open. It was not easy to hear about people‘s fears and the confusion between liberal views and the attitude toward Muslims. The group was very diverse; people pondered aloud; there was self-criticism; and things were said aloud that people stated they had never permitted themselves to think about, much less say out loud. Toward the end of the workshop, someone dared to call the child by its real name and used the word racism.

As always with this kind of group, we had an opportunity to examine the suitability of our approach to groups from other countries, to ethnic conflicts, to inter-religious tensions. It is fascinating to see how similar the processes are, even when working with people of a different color, religion, language and history. The enduring insight from that workshop for us was articulated by one of the women participating; “We (British; white people) should pay attention to the fact that generosity is not the same as participation and equality. When people are being generous, they expect to be thanked; when they give, they can also take back again; they preserve their status and their power. When people share assets, power, status, and knowledge, they have to be ready to have something taken from them and to have everything change. And I‘m not sure that we are ready for this when it comes to the Muslim immigrants.” That just about says it all.