MidEast Citizen Diplomacy

Compassionate Listening
for Jewish-German Reconciliation

September 27th - October 6th, 2002
Steyerberg, Germany

Dear Friends,
You're invited to participate in our new Jewish-German Compassionate Listening project. Please help us get the word out by sharing this invitation in your community.
Blessings to us all in these deeply challenging times,
Leah Green, director

"To develop the drop of compassion in our own heart
is the only effective spiritual response to hatred and violence."

Thich Nhat Hanh

Our new Jewish-German Compassionate Listening project provides an opportunity to advance Jewish-German reconciliation and healing. Participants will also learn a powerful conflict resolution technique which will serve you in all aspects of your life.

Our first Jewish-German Compassionate Listening project will take place over a ten-day period. 12 Jewish participants and 12 German participants will be hosted in a beautiful retreat center in the Lebensgarten community in Steyerberg, Germany. Jewish participants are welcome from all nations, and will travel to Germany for the project (German Jews are welcome too). In Lebensgarten, participants will study and practice Compassionate Listening, and begin to hear one another's stories.

An important part of our program will also include listening to German speakers throughout our time together, including people with widely varying experiences during WWII. Our listening sessions will take us to Berlin for three days, and will include dialogue and home stays with families in Berlin's Jewish community. We will also tour the Jewish Museum and a concentration camp.

Through our daily practice with one another, listening to speakers and in our group sessions, participants will begin to explore and heal the Jewish-German wound, cultivate compassion, and learn a powerful tool for reconciliation.

Compassionate Listening

Compassionate Listening offers a framework for reconciliation and healing in these deeply troubling times. We believe that peace comes through the hard work of meeting the human being behind the stereotype, and acknowledging one another's suffering.

We will learn to listen with our "spiritual ear," to discern and acknowledge the partial truth in everyone - particularly those with whom we disagree. We will learn to put aside our own positions while we listen, and to stretch our capacity to be present to another's pain. We will also learn how to build bridges between people in conflict.

Our training curriculum includes theory, exercises, and practice sessions with one another. Our field experience will help participants to gain a deeper understanding of the history of the German-Jewish relationship and to rehumanize the "other". Individuals will learn how to work with their own internal conflicts and judgments to become instruments of reconciliation and healing.

Project Background

The Compassionate Listening Project was founded in 1996 under the auspices of MidEast Citizen Diplomacy, one of the oldest established NGOs working in Israel and the Palestinian territories in the field of Track II (people-to-people) diplomacy. MECD has led 17 citizen delegations, ushering over 350 Jewish American leaders and American citizens very deeply into both societies to listen to the suffering and grievances of people on all sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Compassionate Listening Project has built the international constituency for Mid-East peace, while offering a cutting-edge conflict resolution model for our delegation participants and for Israelis and Palestinians on the ground. This year the project expanded to include Syria and Lebanon.

A documentary film about our work in Israel and Palestine, Children of Abraham, screens widely throughout N. America. We published Listening With the Heart, a Guidebook for Compassionate Listening, and offer Compassionate Listening training to audiences world-wide. We now offer an advanced certification training as well.

Training Staff

German lead trainer Beate Ronnefeldt is a mediator and certified trainer of NonViolent Communication. From 1986 to 1990 she worked as a coordinator for peace and dialogue with military and police in the local peace NGO of the Hunsrück area of Germany, where nuclear weapons were stationed. She has worked for years with Bosnian refugees, and as a member of Earthstewards Network she co-directed/facilitated the Peace Trees Vukovar project in Croatia. Since 1990, Beate has worked as a mediation and communication trainer.

Jewish team lead trainer Leah Green is the founder/director of MidEast Citizen Diplomacy - a U.S. based NGO, and the Compassionate Listening Project. Leah holds master's degrees in Public Policy and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Washington. Since 1990 she has led 17 citizen delegations, including Jordan, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Syria and Lebanon. Leah produced and edited two documentaries: Speaking of Peace, and Children of Abraham. She began teaching Compassionate Listening in Israel and Palestine and is now teaching to audiences world-wide.

Andrea Cohen, project facilitator, has been a communications consultant, trainer, and video scriptwriter and producer for many years. She took her first trip with MidEast Citizen Diplomacy in the early '90's and returned to the Middle East with the Compassionate Listening Project in 1998 as director of the film Children of Abraham. Since then, she has led numerous post-film discussions about compassionate listening and co-facilitated compassionate listening retreats. She went on her first trip to Germany in 2001.

Cost:

Depending on accommodation preferences at Lebensgarten (from dormitory style to single room), the cost for this program ranges from $1,200 - $1,400, including housing, food, ground-transportation, speaker honoraria, translators, and compassionate listening training. We will also arrange group airfare for all those traveling from the U.S.

To register or for more information:

Jewish participants: please send your $300 deposit with completed registration form to the Compassionate Listening Project at the address below. For more information, contact Leah Green at:

German participants, please contact Beate Ronnefeldt at:and visit theGermany website.

Compassionate Listening for Jewish-German Reconciliation