January 15, “Dialogue and You in Your Neighborhood,” Eileen Dugan Senior Center. Dave Hall, an Arab-American gay activist and long-time Cobble Hill resident, and Kathy Burns, a Jewish-American actress, performed the song “Brooklyn,” an unofficial anthem for the borough, and spoke about the changing neighborhood, asking the senior citizens to come and share their personal histories of the neighborhood at our dialogues.

January 16: Marcia Kannry delivered the sermon at the Brooklyn Heights Synagogue, on “Living in Israel, Living Dialogue: How to Keep the Doors Open.”

February 24: Marcia Kannry gave a guest sermon at Mt. Sinai Synagogue, Cadman Plaza.

March 20: Workshop for United Greater Methodists Church Seminars at the Church at the United Nations. Marcia Kannry gave a presentation for lay leaders from Nebraska and students studying politics and faith about Jews in Israel/Palestine and neighboring Arab Muslims learning how to have difficult conversations.

May 7: Dialogue training for lay leaders at the United Greater Methodist Church at the United Nations.

May 16: Linda Sarsour, Irene Friedland, Faozia Aljibawi, and Marcia Kannry conducted two trainings on dialogue for Professor Charlotte Patton’s course on Mideast politics at York College. The Dialogue Project will continue to teach dialogue workshops there once a semester.

May 29: Jazz for Peace performance at Bowery Poetry Café, benefiting the Dialogue Project.
June 14: We brought a panel of dialoguers—Judith Scheuer, Mohamad A. Mohamad, Yehuda Erlichman, and Imam Samer Alraey—to the Upper West Side JCC’s Voices of Reason education series, for a taste of active listening and sharing stories; 104 people attended.

June 15-16: A first-time New York Dialogue Conference, hosted by the Network for Peace through Dialogue at Marymount College, drew 111 participants from all fields to learn about active listening. Paula Pace, Marcia Kannry, Sarah Sayeed, Irene Friedland, Imam Samer Alraey, and others from the DP participated in a dialogue training workshop. It was the largest workshop at the conference, with 50 participants.
September 11: Father Khader El-Yateem (DP treasurer), Marcia Kannry, and Faozia Aljibawi presented at the annual convocation on peacemaking at Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia; 65 students and faculty attended.

September 19: Marcia Kannry gave the keynote speech, “Creating Dialogue,” at the Turkish American Cultural Federation, Queens College; 350 attended.
November 4: Sixth Annual Interfaith Teach-in at Our Lady of Lebanon Arab Maronite Cathedral in Brooklyn Heights, featuring nine “table clergy teach-ins” 136 participants. The topics covered were:
Redemption/Sin/Forgiveness: How do we understand sin in our texts and traditions and how do we redeem ourselves in the 21st century?

The Stranger-Immigrant: How do our texts and traditions view the immigrant or the stranger in our culture? How do we reconcile historical mistreatment (war and enslavement) of the stranger in our midst?

Tragedy/Calamity: Why do bad things happen to good people? What do the texts tell us? How can we reconcile bad things happening to those who are good with the idea of a compassionate God? How do our traditions prepare us for calamity in the 21st century?

November 6: Marcia Kannry and Faozia Aljibawi gave a paid lecture, “How Does Non-Violence as a Strategy Affect Political Realities?” for Professor Charlotte Patton’s history course on India and the Middle East at York College.

SPEAKING ACROSS DIFFERENCES

This special community program focuses in two Brooklyn neighborhoods – Bay Ridge and Brownstone Brooklyn. Many new Arab and Muslim immigrants and citizens live, work and worship alongside long time residents of many different faiths and ethnicities (Italian, Irish, Jewish, Norwegian, Latino, African and Caribbean American). Each month people gather to explore local community issues and explore how our cultural, religious and lifestyle practices intersect with the greater secular, civil society of which we are a part. Below are descriptions of some of these dialogues.

Community Dialogues

The planning committee had identified gentrification, housing, relationships between affluent young professional families newly moved into the area and long-time working-class Irish, Italian, and Norwegian residents, and interactions between Arab Muslim immigrants and long-time residents as issues for dialogue groups in Brownstone Brooklyn to focus on. However, after the March 7 event we found that both long-time and new residents knew nothing about their Arab neighbors and were intensely curious about them. As a result, from that point to the present, we have focused on exploring deeply through dialogue their questions and the groups’ different perceptions of terms such as “fundamentalism” and “citizen ownership of one’s community”. We held several dialogues around the hot issue of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, an Arabic cultural studies school. These dialogues initiated a need for more dialogue around Public School and Secular education and special cultural studies schools in general. There are several teachers (Arab, Latino, Jewish) in the dialogues as well as parents of public school kids and these dialogues are still in progress.

Beginning April 18, we held a series of community dialogues, addressing specific questions:

April 18: How do we identify ourselves? How do others see us? School for International Studies, Cobble Hill, 42 participants

May 16: What does Jerusalem mean to you? Does it have a special meaning in your tradition? What does it feel like to you to have the controversy over Khalil Gibran International Academy going on in your neighborhood? Brooklyn Heights Synagogue, 32 participants

June 13: Khalil Gibran, continued. Differences and concerns about an Arabic-, Chinese-, or Greek-specific public school. What are positive elements and drawbacks of a culture-specific curriculum? Ideas about what creates pluralism and appreciation for diversity and pluralism. School for International Studies, 41 participants

July 16: How do we move within our cultural group and beyond our own group and comfort zone? When you were growing up, what lessons did you learn from your family about what it means to be a member of your cultural group? What aspects of your culture do you feel most proud of (cultural and religious)? What aspects would you most like to change? St. Paul’s Episcopal, Carroll Gardens, 40 participants

September 26: Community Iftar (breaking of Ramadan fast). Marcia Kannry was one of six honorees; she is Jewish and the other honorees are Muslim. Borough Hall, 200 attendees
September 30: Iftar by invitation at Dawood Mosque (State Street, Brooklyn Heights), 52 attendees. Dinner served and general social conversation, no formal dialogue took place.

October 15: Curious questions while visiting Dawood Mosque, plus discussion of swastika graffiti at the Brooklyn Heights Synagogue. Some questions were “Why do women have to wear hijab?” “Why do you take off your shoes at the mosque?” “Why do people find something in the Quran to cause 9/11 type attacks?” This initiated a conversation about the Hebrew Bible, Christian texts and general public news that also contain statements that may mis inform or inflame people who are not exposed to multiple world views, 52 participants

November 14: Questions of privilege and diversity, e.g.: “I can be pretty sure if I talk to the person in charge, I will be facing a person of my ethnicity, race or religion”; “I can arrange to protect my children, most of the time, from people who might not like them”; “I can criticize my government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider”; “I can turn on the television or look at the front page of the paper and see people of my ethnicity, race, or religion widely represented, and positive as well as negative images.” This turned out to be the most profound of the dialogues. School for International Studies, 38 participants

December 6: Understanding Chanukah and exploring ideas about fundamentalism and extremism from diverse cultural perspectives. Do you think “fundamentalism” can help people lead a “good” life? Do you have concerns that “fundamentalism” may prevent people from leading a “good” life? How do you define a “good” life? St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 48 participants