Services We Offer > Dialogue Sessions
Since 2001, we have facilitated more than 200 dialogue sessions in synagogues, schools, and other venues in the Philadelphia area, New York City, and other parts of North America.
Our programs encourage people to:
- listen to and understand one other, across political differences
- work through their feelings
- examine difficult and confusing moral and intellectual questions
- deliberate about the choices they face
- seek common ground
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
- The dialogue consists of structured, facilitated small group conversations. Participants take turns responding to a set of questions, then hold a facilitated discussion.
- The dialogue will be a structured conversation, not a debate, a negotiation, or a mediation. We will encourage people to explore their disagreements and their own areas of uncertainty or confusion. We will ask people to seek to understand these uncertainties and differences more fully, not to try to resolve or dismiss them.
- The dialogue will take place in an environment in which participants can speak and be spoken to in a manner that respects their shared humanity and fosters mutual understanding.
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:
- Listen attentively.
- Speak honestly in ways that promote learning and genuine inquiry.
- Seek to understand each other.
- Refrain from explicit or implicit attack or persuasion.
- Omit language that any participant experiences as disrespectful.
- Treat what others say as confidential.
Feel free to contact us with any questions or suggestions.
