Linda S. Wallace

Everyone sat in a circle so you could see their faces as they spoke. The crowd at Houston’s Emerson Unitarian Universalist Church assembled with an ambitious goal: listen, in silence, to one another’s stories.

It was a tough assignment for so many people in the room, including me, and I was reared Catholic.

Participants were asked to spend 15 minutes listening to the story of someone from a different religion or ethnic background. (During my first exercise, my partner told me his father was in the KKK.) No jumping in. No interruptions. No commentaries, or worse, neighborly advice. We were asked to listen to a stranger’s story without saying a word. Then, during the last 5 minutes, we had the chance to ask questions, demonstrate empathy and gain clarity.

The stories of the Palestinians and Jews are very different though they have traveled over so many of the same paths in history. The Jews carry with them the horror of the Holocaust and the fear that stems from centuries of persecution. Many Palestinians are grappling with the loss of a family home and a feeling of displacement.

How does one convince people to stop talking and start listening?

Libby and Len Traubman found a way. The couple is the force behind the Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue, which began in their living room in San Mateo, Calif., and has spread across the nation, including Houston. (The Houston group normally meets in living rooms. This session was held in a church because of the large crowd attracted by Libby and Len.)

Palestinians and Jews meet on a regular basis, in someone’s living room, to listen and try to build connections between their communities. This is not a conversation, Libby Traubman says, or a discussion where you trade views, or a debate where you end up with a winner and loser.

“It’s total openness. A new quality of listening,” she says. “We are so quick to want to talk about my life, my goal, my experiences.”

Adds her husband, Len: “The story is the shortest distance between two people. A lot of people want peace but they don’t want relationships.”

In other words, we want to eat the cake but nobody wants to spend the time to collect the ingredients and make it.

On this night, the circle offers a rich diversity of experience and thought on the Middle East conflict and various other issues. Each person is asked to choose a partner who is different. In most cases, the Jews and Palestinians in the room pare up together.

The partners meet for a half hour, with each one getting 15 minutes to tell his or her story. Each takes a turn playing the compassionate listener. Afterward, people come back to the circle to share what they will take away from this experience.

The Traubmans, who have been doing this for 16 years, believe that relationships are the start of real change. They argue that connections lead to communication, which leads to cooperation, which allows enemies to create new ideas and new patterns of thoughts.

“The quality of listening is terrible,” Libby says.

Mingling in the room this evening is Elias Gotto, a Palestinian whose family fled Jerusalem during the fighting right before the creation of Israel. Tears come to his eyes even today as he recalls it and the impact on his father.

Gotto is the Traubman’s neighbor and their “Palestinian partner” in this dialogue.

Gotto said he attended the first meeting because he was anxious to tell his story, and let everyone know about the wrongs and injustices his family faced. “I guess I was a little selfish,” he said this week.

Now he attends to practice listening and build a path to peace. He and the Traubmans are such good friends that when Gotto and his wife have family visiting and run out of the space in their home, Libby and Len open up their doors. The Gottos do the same for the Traubman family.

It’s a small gesture that means a lot. When I ask him why he practices listening so intently, he says, “I choose the harder path, trying to make peace and to understand my enemy.”

(Linda S. Wallace is The Cultural Coach. Her Cultural IQ blog is featured at www.tristatedefender.com. Visit her Web site: www.theculturaclcoach.com)

(For information about the Houston dialogue, contact jackiepeacenow@hotmail.com.)

(To learn more about compassionate listening, visit http://traubman.igc.org/global.htm.)