Conflict and the Healing of Hatred:Insights from Israel/Palestine

Sunday, October 19, 2025
6:00-7:30 PM, Cathedral of St. John the Divine
1047 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, NY 10025
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John Munayer is a Palestinian Christian, who studied for his Master’s in Theology and Religious Studies: Interreligious Studies at VU Amsterdam.

Enduring cultural or political conflict, between neighbors who become trapped in cycles of resentment or outright violence, can have a corrosive effect on the consciousness and identity of the people involved. For those who come to understand themselves primarily as people opposed to a hostile, threatening other group of people, it becomes difficult to imagine any alternative to one or the other side being destroyed or expelled.

Few organizations are better equipped to understand and intervene in such imprisoning conflicts than the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue, in Jerusalem—where years of violent conflict and the fear it engenders have left both Israelis and Palestinians emotionally and spiritually traumatized. Hatred of the “Other” is regarded as a normal response to the ongoing situation. Each side is increasingly isolated and embittered and this in turn only leads to the creation of further suspicion and fear.

Hana Bendcowsky is the Program Director of the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations (JCJCR).

Join us at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine as Dean Winnie Varghese joins in conversation with Hana Bendcowsky and John Munayer, peacemakers and program staff from the Rossing Center, about their unique, trauma-informed methodology for addressing conflict at its deepest level, based on tools for spiritual counseling. They will discuss how peace education has made a difference in the Israeli/Palestinian context, why such processes are so important, and what light this model may shed on the intensifying conflict environment in the USA.

This dialogue is co-sponsored by the Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute, the Community at the Crossing, and the Milstein Center for Interreligious Dialogue (at Jewish Theological Seminary).