Nobody in That Room Was Supposed to Agree. That Was the Whole Point.
Atlanta, Georgia · BCTC Event #18
A Sunday afternoon. A private home. A group of strangers who had almost nothing in common — except that they showed up.
There was food on the table. A dog wandered through. A phone went off at the wrong moment. It did not feel like a summit or a seminar. It felt like what it was: a group of people who had agreed, for a few hours, to sit in a room together and be honest. And something rare happened: a room full of people with genuinely different backgrounds and beliefs stayed at the table — and kept talking.
That’s what BCTC does. Building Community Through Conversation brings together people who wouldn’t normally be in the same room — different faiths, different backgrounds, different politics — to talk about antisemitism, Jewish identity, and what’s actually happening in the world right now. Not to debate. Not to convince anyone. Just to talk, and to listen.
This was the 18th time they’d done it. It was, like all the others, unlike anything else.
“Come kind and curious. That’s the only rule.”
The Voices in the Room
The people in the room included a pastor, a lawyer-turned-activist, a woman who grew up in the Soviet Union, a person who had recently moved across the country to start over, someone who had served as a judge for fifteen years, a Christian who has spent decades building bridges between communities, someone raised Catholic in Canada who had visited a concentration camp as a teenager. None of them knew each other well. Some had never met.
“I didn’t even know any Jewish people growing up… I think I met my first when I was 16.”
They stayed for nearly two hours. Nobody wanted to leave.
The Hard and Hardest Exchanges of the Afternoon
At some point, someone described hiding their Jewish identity — taking down the mezuzah from the doorpost, no longer wearing a Star of David in public. Not in another country. Here. Now. In 2025.
At another point, someone described losing a friend to a terrorist attack. Not as history. As something that happened to their family last year.
Someone else talked about being targeted at work — not for anything they’d done, but for who they are. About signing an NDA so they couldn’t even speak about it.
A person who grew up thousands of miles away said:
“I didn’t know any Jewish people until I was a teenager. I’m still shocked, every day, by where we are. I thought we were past this.”
“In Russia I was a Jew. In Israel I was Russian. I came to America thinking none of that would follow me. Then I woke up on October 8th in a completely different world.”
“I have skeletons in my closet as a Christian. My own tradition has a history I have to reckon with. That’s part of why I’m here.”
“I was beaten up as a kid for being Jewish. It took me years to stop hiding it. I’m not hiding anything anymore.”
“Half my world is deeply Jewish… the other half completely not… and both are part of me.”
The Question of “Why Can’t We All Just Get Along”
There were moments of real friction too. One person asked, gently but directly: aren’t we just deepening the “us versus them” by talking about it this way? Can’t we all just — get along?
Someone answered him. Quietly. Without anger.
“You haven’t been the target of people who want you dead just for existing. That’s the piece you’re missing. I’m not asking you to feel what I feel. I’m asking you to understand that it’s real.”
Another participant jumped in:
“First — we don’t blame the victims. There are people who are brainwashed into hatred so deep that they have decided you should not exist. You have to be real with that. Telling someone who loves everyone that she just needs to get along with someone who wants her dead — that’s not a solution. That’s asking her to be complicit in her own erasure.”
He listened. He sat with it. Then he said:
“You’re right. So what do we do to change it?”
That question — what do we do — turned out to be the most important one in the room. Because everyone there, regardless of background or belief, had shown up because they felt the same pull: something is wrong, something is getting worse, and sitting on the sidelines doesn’t feel like an option anymore.
What People Said They Could Actually Do
The afternoon ended with something practical: a framework of concentric circles — what individuals can do, what can be done within families and friend groups, and what can be done at community scale.
At the individual level: read more widely, be more skeptical of media sources, and when encountering a Jewish neighbor or colleague, simply show up for them — a word of support matters more than people realize when 56% of American Jews are hiding who they are.
At the family level: have the conversation at the dinner table instead of avoiding it. Correct misinformation when you hear it, even from people you love. One participant described a family member who cited inflated casualty figures and an unnamed “expert in genocide” as her sole source — and the grief of being unable to continue the conversation.
At community scale: attend events like this one. Support elected officials who take antisemitism seriously. Consider hosting your own gathering. One participant mentioned the organization Pens for Swords, which generates mass letters to elected officials and institutions — described as one of the most effective rapid-response tools available for directing large-scale attention to specific incidents.
The Substance Beneath the Stories
The conversation grounded itself in substance rather than slogans: participants began by unpacking common misconceptions about Israeli society—its diversity, secular-religious spectrum, and everyday concerns beyond conflict—then moved into a deeper framework explaining how antisemitism has evolved across history (religious, racial, and now political forms), with the core insight that while the accusations change, the target does not.
From there, the group explored practical tools like the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition, as a shared language that helps institutions recognize and respond to antisemitism in real settings. A definition that has been accepted as law in many states. The discussion also clarified widely misunderstood terms, especially Zionism—as simply the belief in Jewish self-determination, distinct from any government policy—and examined how certain phrases and narratives, often used casually or without full awareness, can carry implications about Israel’s existence and Jewish safety.
“Your feed is different than my feed.”
Information alone wasn’t the whole story.
“You can give people all the facts… but emotions will drive.”
Together, these pieces created a throughline: much of today’s confusion and tension stems not from malice alone, but from gaps in understanding—making education, clarity, and careful language essential to more honest and constructive dialogue.
The afternoon covered a lot — history, language, myths, the real meaning of words that get thrown around online without much thought.
People learned things they hadn’t known. Some found that ideas they’d held for years looked different after hearing someone else’s story.
A few said, quietly, that they felt less alone.
Why These Conversations Are Hard — and Why They’re Necessary
The goal was the conversation itself — the rare experience of being in a room where people who disagree are still willing to look each other in the eye. We won’t resolve it in one conversation. One conversation at a time.
“We live alongside each other… but we don’t really understand each other.”
What it did was put people in a room who would never otherwise have had this conversation together: a Jewish woman who had been beaten up; a pastor reckoning with the wrongs in his own denomination’s history; a Russian-Israeli who became an activist overnight; a recent transplant still processing what she’d witnessed painted on her street; a Canadian who had stood in Dachau as a teenager and carried it with him ever since; a judge-turned-advocate who had been targeted.
The conversation was not always tidy. It went sideways. It expanded and kept going — because the people in the room understood, even when they couldn’t quite articulate it, that the alternative to conversation is not peace. It’s silence. And silence, as the numbers from 2024 make painfully clear, has not been protecting anyone.
“Today is the beginning of opening your mind and heart. You may leave this room with more questions than you came with. Actually — that’s better.”
Want to come to the next one?
BCTC events are free, confidential, and open to everyone — regardless of background, faith, or politics. They happen in homes and community spaces around Atlanta and beyond. Everything shared stays in the room.
BCTC model is designed to be replicable anywhere. Their website carries a full resource library including recommended reading, videos, and further reading materials.
If you want to attend, or host an event in your own community, visit the BCTC website or reach out directly. The only thing you need to bring is kindness and curiosity.
Leave a Reply