When Eliezer Cohn walked onto the sparsely furnished set for Larry Rosen’s new YouTube series, he was prepared for a frank conversation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but had no idea who he’d face. After hours of speaking with a Palestinian who fundamentally disagreed with him, Cohn had only good things to say about the experience.
“What Larry is trying to accomplish — I think it’s a really noble cause,” said Cohn, an Oakland resident and Orthodox Jew. “I think it’s something that the world needs more of.”
That episode, “A Palestinian and a Zionist Jew,” is one of five so far in the three-month-old series called “The Enemies Project.” It is also the most popular episode so far, with more than 144,000 views on YouTube since it went live in June.
“The Enemies Project” is the work of Rosen, a Piedmont resident and professional mediator who is using the series to sit down with people who hold diametrically opposed beliefs on divisive topics including abortion rights, transgender acceptance and America’s potential for dictatorship. By enabling open conversations without distractions, Rosen hopes that guests end up recognizing each other’s humanity.
“The powerful thing for me is that you don’t need to change your views in order to have a productive conversation with somebody. You just have to not hate them,” he told J. last month. “Once you view them with compassion, you can really hear much more from them, and the conversation changes.”
Two of the first five episodes have focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Ken Schneider, an Oakland documentary filmmaker, took part in “Two Jews: A Zionist and Anti-Zionist” — the second most popular episode with more than 60,000 views since it was posted in mid-July.
Schneider’s position is that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide and that Jews are required to call it out. He spoke with Ari Bornstein, a former Lafayette resident who made aliyah and has served in the Israeli military. In 2020, Bornstein wrote an op-ed for J. about his bond with Israel. “I feel eternally indebted, and beyond that, I feel inspired to serve,” he wrote.
The two men disagreed on many points — but the goal wasn’t for them to agree.
“Larry, the host, made it very clear that this was not about debating the issue,” Schneider told J. “This is about developing a new form of communication because [people] culturally seem unable to communicate with each other about tough issues.”
Rosen came up with the idea for the series about a year ago. He felt distressed by the polarization in the U.S. and the intense anger that had shifted toward dehumanization. As an attorney-turned-mediator, he has experience working with people who see the same situation in radically different ways and feels that rapprochement is possible when people are coached on how to stop demonizing others.
“It seems like nothing’s going to get accomplished in our world, and people are just going to fight unless we figure out how to communicate and cooperate,” Rosen said.
But first he had to find participants who would agree to be filmed.
Rosen began attending activities hosted by conservative-leaning groups to get to know people on the right, looking for those who might be amenable to the project. As for guests on the left, he thought it would be easy to find participants in the Bay Area. He was wrong.
“People who were progressive didn’t even want to speak with me,” he said. “They thought that this [project] was a disservice because I was sitting bad people down with good people.”
It has been even harder to get buy-in when the topic is Israel, he said.
“For this — Israel, Gaza — it’s been really harder than other issues because people who are on the Palestinian side, at least in my experience, really don’t want to sit down with Zionists,” he said. “I mean, they don’t want to go anywhere near Zionists.”
Schneider, however, decided to participate because he believes it is “critical” for Jews who do not support Israel’s actions to be heard.
“It’s very important for us to be on the forefront with our voices,” said Schneider, who calls himself a “post-Zionist,” having identified as a Zionist as a young man.
“I think as Jews, as people in whose name Israel is supposedly acting, we have to pay very close attention to what Israel is actually doing and decide if we’re really behind that,” he said. “And I am not. And I’m still very fiercely proud of my Jewishness.”
His conversation with Bornstein stretched for several hours.
“I did like him, and I felt he was earnest. And while he was very steeped in what I think of as Zionist ideology, he comes from the heart,” Schneider said.
Rosen acknowledged that the kinds of people who are willing to participate in “The Enemies Project” might be more amenable to seeing the good in others. But that has its purpose, too.
“These particular people think maybe resolution comes through communication, even if ‘I hate them,’” he said. “Typically, for the people who sit down, one [motivation] is to advocate for their side.”
For Cohn, who appeared in the episode “A Palestinian and a Zionist Jew,” the experience was “powerful” and “moving.” Cohn, director of Northern California region of the Orthodox-supported NCSY youth groups and Jewish Student Union clubs, wears tzitzit, payes and a kippah and feels strongly about Israel’s right to defend itself.
He was paired with Najib Joe Hakim, a Palestinian American and San Francisco resident who believes that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza.
Cohn said while the experience didn’t change his overall view, he did develop a bond with Hakim. Their conversation lasted for seven hours that day.
“We’re not pen pals, but, you know, we have each other’s number,” he said. “I feel comfortable reaching out to him. I would say we definitely left that room with some form of a bond based on the experience we had.”
Cohn added that it’s not his own experience that matters the most. It’s about how viewers respond, as reflected in their comments.
“You see much less of this hostile, aggressive commenting nature. It’s just like, ‘Wow, that’s actually kind of beautiful. That’s actually really nice,’” Cohn said. “And I think that’s exactly what [Larry is] trying to do.”
Rabbi Jacqueline Mates-Muchin of Oakland’s Temple Sinai — Rosen’s synagogue — agrees.
“People are just dismissing each other,” she told J. “So I think this process of exploring how we might be able to have that conversation could be really, really helpful.”
Mates-Muchin, who has agreed to participate in an episode related to Israel if the right partner comes along, said Rosen’s approach could help a fractured Jewish community.
“The conversation that is happening within the Jewish community I think is really significant for us and could be very defining for us in the next couple of decades,” she said. “It could be very damaging to us if we can’t figure out how to talk about Israel.”
One Bay Area group that has long recognized the importance of frank conversations is Resetting the Table. Co-founded by Melissa Weintraub, the group has a framework for facilitated dialogue and has assisted local Jewish groups and congregations. It works with the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund to bring trained facilitators to Jewish organizations, Weintraub said.
Weintraub said that different opinions are not, in and of themselves, a problem.
“As Jewish tradition teaches, disagreement itself can be generative,” she said. “There is nothing wrong with differences, even profound ones.”
Searching and questioning can lead to solutions, she added.
“Doing so does not mean suppressing disagreement or squelching debate,” she said. “It means application of care for the dignity of every human being, even those with whom we sharply disagree. It means listening carefully, not just to understand what others are saying but to open ourselves to the possibility that they may have something to teach.”
Each episode of Rosen’s self-funded series runs about an hour, edited down from many hours of dialogue during which Rosen helps guide the conversation when it goes off track, gives prompts and uses mediation techniques, such as asking guests to switch places and role-play as each other. He has 15 more episodes planned for the year on topics that include gun rights, immigration, critical race theory and family conflicts over religion.
He hopes his project will inspire viewers to treat their ideological “enemies” with humanity and dignity. “I really want to shift people’s view of conflict — that their enemy is them, just on the other side,” he said. “I’m hoping that happens.”