Brandeis Visions for Israel in an Evolving World launched its second year last Wednesday with the event "Actualizing Visions" in the Shapiro Campus Center Atrium. The event featured Rabbi Ron Kronish '68, director of the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel, and Iyad Zahalka, a judge in Jerusalem's Sharia Court. University President Frederick Lawrence also attended to give some opening remarks regarding bVIEW's upcoming year.

The event was cosponsored by the Coexistence and Conflict Program at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Hillel, the Interfaith Chaplaincy, the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life, the Peace, Conflict and Coexistence Studies department and the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies.

Each speaker highlighted bVIEW's goal of creating better dialogue about Israel, in which people can feel more comfortable about expressing their opinions. Kronish and Zahalka work together in Israel to create dialogues between different groups of people about issues facing Israel, and spoke on how to best create these dialogues.

During his speech, Kronish highlighted steps his organization uses to create safe and positive discussions, including sharing personal identities among participants; interreligious learning, in which each side reads the other's religious texts, and, as Kronish noted, often learn that their religions are not that different; open discussion about issues of conflict; and acting on ideas discussed, which could be something as simple as posting to Facebook, according to Kronish. "We go a long way to breaking down stereotypes when we take these first two steps. We create a lot of trust, and fear and barriers go way down," Kronish said.

Zakalka echoed Kronish's sentiment of wanting to build understanding in order to create dialogue, repeating the idea that all sides must "join forces" in order to solve their problems. "If we start talking people to people, human being to human being, religion to religion, we can start to understand a way the conflict can be solved," Zakalka said.

Like Kronish, Zakalka said that it is important to see others as people, and that "religion is not part of the problem, religion is part of the solution."

After the speakers, bVIEW members acting as student facilitators broke the audience up into small discussion sections, which were led by the student facilitators. These facilitators emphasized that the groups were safe spaces for discussion. Following the break-out session, there was a question-and-answer session during a small reception, during which bVIEW came together again, officially opening their year with a few words from Lawrence.

Lawrence applauded bVIEW for creating a safe space and dialogues about Israel that he said he feels happen nowhere else in the world. "I am delighted to be part of the launch ... of bVIEW. It did start as an idea about a better kind of discussion. ... Often dialogues are really parallel monologues," he said.

Lawrence also noted that he looks forward to bVIEW's second annual conference with other universities this upcoming winter, and to the creation of a new chapter of Visions for Israel in an Evolving World at Harvard University.

Gil Zamir '15, a cofounder and current programming director for bVIEW, said in an interview with the Justice that bVIEW's goal for this year is about making their goals a reality, hence the event title "Actualizing Visions." He said Kronish and Zahalka were chosen to speak because they are "actualizers." "They're not waiting for the politicians, for anyone. On the ground, this is how you make things happen," Zamir said.

Zamir said he sees Brandeis as a place full of future world leaders like Kronish and Zahalka, and that "while we are all together, we can breed the best ideas for Israel. Things on the ground are not progressing, so the way we are trying to use this is as an opportunity for the next big breakthrough to happen here." He said he hopes that events like this will open up a different kind of dialogue about Israel that will allow students to have these big ideas. "Israel is not toxic and messy, it's the way it's been talked about that is," he said.