Jewish Dialogue Group

Working to promote constructive dialogue within Jewish communities
about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other controversial issues

Services We Offer > Dialogue Sessions

Since 2001, we have been facilitating dialogue sessions in synagogues, schools, and other venues around the Philadelphia area and in New York City. In 2007, we plan to travel other cities around North America to facilitate sample sessions.

These sessions encourage people to:

Some of our dialogue programs are one-time events, and others involve multiple meetings over a period of weeks or months.

Many of our dialogues bring together members of a particular synagogue or organization or students at a particular school. Others bring together individuals who are not members of the same group but who have a special need to talk with each other, such as activists who are at odds with each other over a particular question and want to open up a more useful kind of conversation with people on "the other side." Finally, we frequently hold public dialogue sessions that are open to any Jewish person who'd like to attend.

We make use of various approaches to dialogue, including techniques developed by the Public Conversations Project and the National Coalition Building Institute.

What to expect

You can view a sample agenda that we use for many of our one-time dialogue sessions.

To understand more about how we define dialogue and how this differs from debate, please read this handout developed by the Public Conversations Project.

Terms of Participation

All participants will be expected to observe the following ground rules:

Feel free to contact us with any questions or suggestions.