Real stories. Difficult questions. Honest conversations about Jew hatred, Israel, Zionism, identity, misinformation, and what it takes to find common ground and build community across our differences.
After many gatherings and countless hours of conversation, one thing has become clear: the subjects don’t get easier, but the conversations keep showing us why we need to have them.
Jew hatred. Israel. Zionism. Jewish identity. Misinformation. Belonging. Fear.
These are subjects that can end conversations before they begin. They are often reduced to headlines, slogans, social media posts, and people talking about one another rather than to one another.
In our BCTC conversations, we are trying something different: bringing Jews and non-Jews, Israelis and Americans, and people of different faiths, cultures, generations, experiences, and political perspectives together for honest, face-to-face conversations.
Nobody is asked to arrive with the same opinions. Nobody is expected to have all the answers.
They are simply asked to be kind, curious, and willing to listen.
And once again, this group showed us what that can look like.
Hearing the Stories Behind the Headlines
People came for different reasons.
One guest shared that a Jewish friend had encouraged her to come because sometimes you can learn more by sitting across from another human being and hearing their story than you can from following the news. She came with her own perspectives and questions about Israel and the war, but also with a genuine desire to hear directly from people whose experiences were connected to it.
Another guest, a teacher who had once lived and studied in Israel, remembered the history, archaeology, people, and warmth she had experienced there. She also shared some of the very different conversations she hears today and brought those questions openly into the room.
That willingness to say, “This is what I’m hearing. Help me understand,” is exactly what these gatherings are designed to make possible.
And then came the personal stories.
One person described symbols of Jew hatred appearing close to home and near her children’s schools. Something that could once have felt distant or abstract suddenly felt very local.
Another remembered being a Jewish child in a country far from Israel, walking with classmates and hearing hateful insults directed at them simply because they were Jewish.
Another carried a family connection to the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires and spoke about how the past two years have changed even ordinary considerations, including thinking about whether it feels safe to be visibly Jewish while traveling.
These are the experiences behind statistics and headlines about rising Jew hatred and antisemitism. When someone tells you what those experiences actually feel like, the conversation changes.
Identity, Belonging and the Experience of Hate
There were also stories about belonging.
A young Jewish and queer participant described what it feels like when two important parts of your identity suddenly seem to be placed in conflict with one another — when a community in which you once felt completely at home begins to feel more complicated because you are Jewish.
That opened a broader conversation about social media, activism, misinformation, and how quickly all of us can encounter or share information about people, communities, and conflicts we may know largely from a distance.
And there were lighter memories too.
Someone remembered living in a college house filled with people from completely different backgrounds — South Asian, Arab, Muslim, Christian, Jewish. They argued. They disagreed. They talked. And they had a great time together.
Maybe that memory captured something important about the evening:
Disagreement does not have to mean disconnection.
What Does Zionism Mean?
We also spent time on words.
Words like Zionism. Phrases like from the river to the sea. Terms that appear constantly in headlines, protests, classrooms, political conversations, and social media — but that can carry very different meanings depending on who is saying them and who is hearing them.
Instead of assuming that everyone understood those words in exactly the same way, people asked.
What does Zionism mean? What history sits behind these phrases? What do different people hear when they hear them?
Those questions opened the door to a much larger conversation about Jewish history and connection to the land, Palestinian identity and aspirations, Israel and Palestinian statehood, wars, peace efforts, missed opportunities, competing narratives, and the enormous amount of history that simply cannot fit into a slogan or social media post.
There were difficult moments. There were questions people might have hesitated to ask somewhere else. There were different perspectives in the room.
And that was the point.
Nobody needed to leave agreeing on everything.
What stood out was the mutual respect, openness, and patience in the room. People listened. They asked follow-up questions. They gave one another room to explain.
And, dare we say, they even seemed to enjoy one another.
For two hours, people who could easily have remained strangers sat together and became something else:
People who had heard one another’s stories.
That may sound small.
But after doing this again and again, we have learned that it isn’t small at all.
From Jewish Stories to Community Conversations
Our Jewish and Israeli story is the story that first led us to begin these gatherings. But through all the people who have since sat in these circles, shared their experiences, challenged assumptions, asked questions, and listened, something larger has emerged.
This was never only about telling our story.
It is about creating space for people to tell theirs.
And increasingly, it is about what happens when those stories meet.
Because when we actually talk to one another, we begin to discover how much common ground exists beneath our different backgrounds, religions, cultures, politics, and experiences.
We begin to recognize concerns we share, values we want to protect, and a future we all have a stake in.
Conversation helps us find one another. Community helps us stand together.
Fighting Jew Hatred, Misinformation and Division Together
There are forces that benefit from keeping us divided — misinformation, radicalization, hatred, dehumanization, and the idea that protecting one community somehow requires rejecting another.
There are ideologies and movements that would take away rights, freedoms, safety, or belonging from people they see as different.
We do not have to agree on everything to recognize those threats together.
And we do not have to become the same to become partners.
A Jewish community can hear the story of an Iranian family. A Christian can sit beside a Muslim. An Israeli can hear a Palestinian perspective. People with different viewpoints can discover shared values they both want to protect.
People who entered a room as strangers can leave knowing that when something threatens the dignity, safety, rights, or freedom of one of them, the others should not look away.
That is the community we want to help build.
Not one without disagreement.
One strong enough to disagree and still stand together.
Building Community, One Conversation at a Time
That is where Building Community Thru Conversation continues to grow: people to people, culture to culture, community to community — and ultimately, community beside community.
We start with education. Facts. Context. Perspective.
We ask before assuming and listen before judging. We meet the human being behind the story.
Then we look for common ground.
And from that common ground, we can become allies and partners — pushing back together against Jew hatred and all hatred, misinformation, radicalization, dehumanization, and those who seek to divide us or take away the rights and freedoms that allow all of us to live alongside one another.
Different stories. Different experiences. Different perspectives. A shared responsibility for the kind of community and future we create.
The invitation is simple:
Come sit with us. Ask what you really want to ask. Tell us what we don’t know. Listen to something you may not have heard before. Find the common ground. Find one another.
And then let’s do something with it.
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