MoEd – To expand the organization’s educational program centered on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by training Jewish educators across the United States to facilitate the program in their communities.

Where did the idea for Tovanot come from?

Tovanot emerged from years of witnessing Jews polarize or fall silent around the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Most often, the conversation forces people into false binaries—forced to choose their values or their identity, between caring about Israelis or Palestinians. The devastation and rupture of Oct 7 demanded and created an opportunity for a different conversation. We wanted to create a brave and honest space that assumed goodwill – that everyone in the room is there because they care deeply about the Jewish people – and that would allow all to lean into discomfort. We seek to provide knowledge and tools to engage with empathy and integrity.

How might this program bring the Jewish community together in this time of polarization and uncertainty?

Since launching in the fall of 2024, we have delivered Tovanot at numerous synagogues in Washington DC and Montgomery County, MD. The program allows participants to set aside any need to ‘choose a side.’ Rejecting zero-sum thinking, Tovanot centers empathy, nuance, and realpolitik-practical, rather than ideological considerations. By engaging with Israeli and Palestinian narratives side by side, including, for example, the respective Israeli and Palestinian Declarations of Independence, participants are encouraged to hold multiple narratives. Through primary and secondary documents, maps, storytelling, reflective exercises, and brave conversations, learners are invited to welcome nuance, sit with discomfort, and imagine possibilities beyond zero-sum thinking. At a time when many feel isolated or afraid to speak, Tovanot models brave, respectful, and honest engagement.

What is your advice for how to diffuse tension when members of the Jewish community engage in polarizing political debate?

Our advice is to first humanize the conversation by level-setting on our shared values, top among them the sanctity of life and ahavat hager- love of the stranger (the most frequently repeated mitzvah in the Bible). Then focus on realpolitiks: there is an almost equal number of Jews and Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, both are there to stay; neither is giving up its right to self-determination. Because we want Israel to survive and thrive as the democratic homeland of the Jewish people, living at peace with itself and its neighbors, we need a solution that honors both people.