Enactment, boycott, and tantric sex: A MASKED Urgent Conversation

This is the first in a series of posts where I will attempt to recount some of the conversations I am curating, or moderating, in my new and temporary position as Outreach Director of MASKED, an Israeli drama about three Palestinian brothers. MASKED has been playing since August 2007 off-Broadway at the Daryl Roth 2 Theater in New York.

Dr. Judy Kuriansky is a clinical psychologist who’s edited two volumes of essays on the psychosocial dimensions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The second one of these, Beyond Bullets and Bombs, is a veritable Who’s Who of coexistence and nonviolence education. However, in our Urgent Conversation on December 12th following a spectacular performance of MASKED, Dr. Judy leveled with the audience about her expertise in the field of relationships and romantic and sexual health. “I also wrote The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Tantric Sex,” she said, and then went on to explain that the psychological yearning for intimacy (not necessarily sexual) is a universal motivator of people that has helped her understand and appreciate the work of people-to-people organizations.

Speaking alongside Dr. Judy was one of the authors in her book, Dr. Warren Spielberg. Warren teaches psychology at the New School and was the American Psychological Association’s 2004 Practitioner of the Year for his work with firefighters post-9/11; he works with African-American young men and also runs a summer camp for Israelis and Palestinians for Peace Now. Warren talked about the psychologial dimension of encounter programs in a very nuanced way; as a psychologist he notices not only the superficial “photo-op” moments of “Israelis and Palestinians holding hands and crying together” but also the patterns of Israeli condescension and Palestinian escalation and increasingly polarized rhetoric that are the result of two groups of teenagers meeting face to face. “You’ll see people who came into the conversation much more left-leaning and democratic suddenly take positions that are much more hard-line,” he explained. Warren added that we often see young people “enacting” behavior patterns and beliefs internalized from their parents, who are too guarded to let these out in the open. Dr. Judy talked about the difficulties of making the effects of such workshops last when each side goes back to their polarizing contexts. I would add, in the case of the Palestinians they are going back to a situation of occupation which the “friends” they made in the workshop will enter the army and be perpetuators of.

The third panelist is a fascinating Jewish New Yorker named Gail Miller who talks about her activities with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in the West Bank as if she was talking about going and volunteering on a Kibbutz (she did this as well back in the 60’s at Ein Hashofet.) ISM is a nonviolent Palestinian solidarity movement vilified by most mainstream and center-left American Jewish organizations for their uncompromising denunciation of the occupation and their involvement with PACBI, the Palestinian Academic and Creative Boycott of Israel. As evidenced by the photos in her Upper West Side apartment, Gail draws inspiration from her activism in the civil rights movement for her advocacy and direct action for Palestinian civil and human rights. In 2004 she organized a group of 14 women, now an activist network called Women of a Certain Age, to travel to Palestine, work with ISM, and get to know what life in the Occupied Territories is really like. These women became friendly with the Israeli-Palestinian movement Combatants for Peace, and when Palestinian founder Bassam Aramin’s daughter Abir was tragically killed on January 16th, 2007 at the age of ten, Gail and her group decided to join forces with the Rebuilding Alliance and Combatants for Peace to build a playground in Abir’s village of Anata.

The final question raised by an audience member was the issue of boycotting Israel. Interestingly, there was no voice that came out directly against boycott. Dr. Judy noted that this was not her expertise and preferred not to comment. There was an agreement between Warren and Gail that America has a unique role to play in putting pressure on both sides, especially Israel. Warren had noted earlier that perhaps one of the reasons negotiations had failed during Camp David is that so much pressure was put on Arafat that he felt much as the Palestinian teens Warren works with do; marginalized, condescended to and strongarmed. If I may add my own amateur psychologist two cents, I have noted that the very mention of boycott brings out a virulent defensiveness in the Jewish community that is paralyzing, so perhaps the boycott movement needs to consider a bit of rebranding in order to reach more people and not be dismissed or decried as anti-Semitic.

The audience was riveted by Gail, Warren and Dr. Judy and stayed talking, conversing and exchanging cards and phone numbers long after the Talkback officially ended. If only a couple of these people connect with each other in meaningful ways and are able to advance the cause of a lasting peace in the Middle East, MASKED has done a service far beyond what we usually expect from New York theater.

This is co-posted on my blog.

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