Exploring Blind Spots & Biases

Through this summer and fall we are asking you to join us on a counter-intuitive journey to help us all better navigate the fault lines between our communities. Together, we will digest together various books and films that will help us explore and better understand what is at stake for Muslims, for Jews, for Palestinians and for Israelis.

To give us the framework to critically evaluate and understand these stories, we’ll start with Amanda Ripley’s book “High Conflict” which will help us identify – in ourselves, our communities, and one another's communities – how deepening polarization and entrenched cognitive biases have increased danger for all of us. These biases and blind spots, even considering existing power imbalances, shape both discourse and policy. We need to talk about it.

With this foundation, we will watch several films that convey specific stories and experiences that some of us may not have encountered or have rejected out of hand. Each story is limited in its perspective while it seeks to share something that needs acknowledgement.

While reflecting upon these stories, we want to consider the questions: What important truth claims are these films uplifting? What context may be missing from the story? How can we expand one another’s perspectives to ensure we honor one another’s full humanity, and can act from that place?

Our Learning List (descriptions from each work's website)

July 29, 6:30 PM: High Conflict, by Amanda Ripley - How do good people lose their minds in soul-crushing conflicts with co-workers, neighbors, grown siblings or even national politicians they’ve never met? Through the stories of half a dozen conflict survivors in three countries, journalist Amanda Ripley reveals how humans can help one another break out of destructive feuds–and generate healthy, useful conflict instead. ONLINE ON ZOOM.

August 7, 6:30 PM: There is Another Way - In the midst of darkness, we discover who we truly are. There is Another Way tells the story of a group of Combatants for Peace, visionaries who refuse to surrender to violence and injustice, and in doing so show that another path is possible - for them, for us, and for all humanity. AT A PRIVATE HOME IN BEVERLY HILLS.

August 14, 6:30 PM: The Encampments - From Executive Producer Macklemore, The Encampments offers an urgent, intimate portrait of America’s student movement, ignited at Columbia University as students protested their universities’ ties to the war on Gaza. Their actions sparked a nationwide uprising, with encampments spreading across hundreds of campuses. IN KOREATOWN.

August 26, 6:30 PM: October 8 - OCTOBER 8 offers a look at the explosion of antisemitism on college campuses, social media and in the streets of America beginning the day after the October 7th attack on Israel by Hamas.

September 4, 6:30 PM: The War for Kindness, by Jamil Zaki - In this groundbreaking book, Jamil Zaki shares cutting-edge research, including experiments from his own lab, showing that empathy is not a fixed trait—something we’re born with or not—but rather a skill that can be strengthened through effort. ONLINE ON ZOOM.

October 20, 6:30 PM: No Other Land - For half a decade, Basel Adra, a Palestinian activist, films his community of Masafer Yatta being destroyed by Israel's occupation, as he builds an unlikely alliance with an Israeli journalist who wants to join his fight. No Other Land won Best Documentary Feature Film at the 2024 Academy Awards. IN ECHO PARK.

October 29, 6:30 PM: Holding Liat - On October 7th, during a raid by Hamas on her kibbutz, Israeli-American Liat Atzili was kidnapped along with 250 others, 12 of whom, like Liat, are U.S. Citizens. An urgent and heart-wrenching fight for her release by her family begins, forcing members of her family to confront their own uncertainty and perspectives on conflict as they pursue Liat’s safe return home. MID CITY.