By Joel Magalnick, JTNews Correspondent
Two years ago, before the attacks of Sept. 11, Andrea Cohen had not been a very public person. That day, however, when two planes downed the World Trade Center towers in New York, another took out a chunk of the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, something snapped in Cohen.
“I think at that moment I was just appalled, and I knew the world had changed,” Cohen says. “If the world had changed, my relationship to the world had to change.”
So she did something about it.
“After Sept. 11,” she says, “I felt very strongly that I had a tool I could use to spur people to talk and help humanize one another, and somehow deal in a constructive way.”
The tool this self-employed communications consultant used was conversation and dialogue. Using Compassionate Listening, an open and nonjudgmental way for people of different faiths or backgrounds to discuss their positions with others on different sides of an issue, many people who may have harbored fear or hatred toward one another can better understand why or how people believe what they do.
In an editorial for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about Compassionate Listening, commemorating the one-year anniversary of the attacks, “who is the person behind the position — and is there a piece of that person within me?”
Compassionate Listening, which is taught in the Pacific Northwest by a woman named Leah Green, has been used extensively as a tool for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as in a program that traveled to Germany called the German-Jewish Reconciliation Project.
“I’ve been particularly involved with all kinds of events that are designed to help people humanize one another,” Cohen says.
It was because of this work that earlier this summer Cohen received an award as a peacemaker in the community. It was bestowed upon her by Rabbi Ted Falcon of Bet Alef Meditative Synagogue.
“She is striving to live the principles that she teaches,” says Rabbi Falcon, referring to “the work that she has done in the Compassionate Listening Project, and because of her willingness to share her expertise in creating dialogue with other interfaith groups in the city.”
The award actually came as a result of July 4 this year, which fell on a Friday. Rabbi Falcon had been seeking ways to bring people to synagogue that evening, so he created a service with Unity of Bellevue church, the facility where Bet Alef holds its services, and Jamal Rahman, a Muslim and minister of the Interfaith Community Church in Ballard. Rabbi Falcon asked these spiritual leaders to recommend people who they felt deserved an award that brought people together and enabled them to understand and appreciate each others’ points of view.
Rabbi Falcon chose Cohen.
Though she is a member of Bet Alef, it was through her work at a group called Unity Project Seattle that Rabbi Falcon has had the most experience. The group began shortly before the first anniversary of Sept. 11, and has made its primary focus monthly meetings where people can eat a meal together, discuss Abrahamic traditions — the source of the three major religions — but most importantly get to know each other on a personal level.
“We were both sharing information as well as community, and we were striving to appreciate the deeper dimensions of spirituality in all our traditions,” Rabbi Falcon says.
Those ancient traditions were actually Cohen’s first look into compassionate listening and her journey to peacemaker. Asked in 1997 to direct the film Children of Abraham about the first Compassionate Listening Project — as a paid contractor with expenses covered — she decided she liked what she saw and used the film as a jumping-off point for dialogue and her own training.
When that day in September 2001 came along, she had to do something whether she was ready or not, she says.
“I had a responsibility to come forth with this awareness, these sets of tools I knew would be so valuable,” she says. “So I felt like I must put myself on the front lines in this way around dialogue and openhearted communication, because there wasn’t time to lose.”
For Cohen, one of the toughest struggles to creating peace is empathizing with the people in the world she strongly dislikes: whether it is their character, their views, or the ways they spread hate or fear.
“I think one of the great challenges of our times — our dark times — is to work hard at keeping our hearts open,” she says. “This is a time when we need to make our world a place for our children and our grandchildren. It’s not easy, and it goes against the grain of tit for tat.”
Rabbi Falcon echoes that sentiment.
The work Cohen is doing, with Unity Project of Seattle and other groups, is “about creating the kind of relationships and dialogues that can help heal the separation, fragmentation, suspicion, the fingerpointing that attaches to various [members] of our communities,” he says.
“I am seeing a need, a desire, a yearning, and a recognition that this is a major area where healing can awaken. We all look at our world and go ‘what are we to do?,’” Rabbi Falcon continues. “These are some the responses to which we’ve dedicated ourselves.”
“To me,” Cohen says, “there’s no other option. The news is awful. I try so hard to remember that nobody is all good, nobody is all evil.”
Cohen says she is proud of her achievement, and the thought behind it.
“It meant a lot to me to be honored in this way,” she says. “The work that I do needs support, and it needs spiritual support, and it needs the support of the community.”
Falcon says it’s an important reason for giving out such an award.
“The idea of the peacemaker was to honor some of the people who have been quietly doing important work, and had not before been publicly recognized for it,” he says.
Since receiving the award, Cohen remains active. One event, which will be held this Sept. 11 at the Seattle Center International Fountain, is called “From Pain to Purpose: Reflection, Self-Assessment and Community Renewal.” The noontime commemoration will include the opportunity for people to have conversations and better understand each other.
Her work will not stop here, and she will continue to work with others to bring positive conversations about.
“There are a lot of people on parallel paths, and I think a lot of people since 9/11 have come out and made big decisions on what they were going to do,” she says. “There’s a piece of something so deeply connected that I’m able to blossom. I’ve always done well for my clients, but this is really about my heart.”