I NSIGHT

JAMES DAVID BESSER

Special to The Jewish News

here is an uncomfortably fine line be-
tween being a visionary and being a
kook. Visionaries see things in entire-
ly new ways. So do a lot of people who
populate strange cults and groups on the
far fringes of politics. Genuinely revolu-
tionary ideas are far outnumbered by ones
that are naive or worse; the problem is
picking out the wheat from the chaff.
These truths define the world of Michael
Lame, founder, president and executive
director of the Foundation for Mideast
Communication. Lame has a vision: Im-
proved communications on a one-on-one
level between Jews and Arabs, he believes,
can be a crucial first step in taming the
deadly passions of the Middle East. He
sees himself as a kind of high-tech Johnny
Appleseed of understanding, planting
seeds that might just transform entire na-
tions.
In a kind of expanded version of the en-
counter groups that were popular in the
heyday of the "me-decade," Lame uses
structured communications exercises to
create new bonds of empathy between
Jews, Muslims and Christians who share
the heritage of the Middle East but battle
to the death over the expression of that
heritage in the modern world. In this con-
text, Lame's scheme for creating a new
climate for peace is nothing if not
ambitious.
"In the long run," Lame says, "our pur-
pose is to promote peace in the Middle
East through conflict resolution. We are
building a constituency of Jews, Christians
and Muslims whose primary commitment
is to resolving conflict. They may also have
strong personal feelings—most people who
have been involved in any way with the
Middle East do—but the real basis of the
Foundation is that people can work
together even when they disagree."
Despite the focus on communication be-
tween individuals, Lame sees his approach
as a political one. "I am a political person;
I worked for many years in political cam-
paigns," he says. "What I'm interested in
is leverage—but leverage is not limited to
lobbying on Capitol Hill, or working for a
new U.N. resolution."
According to Lame, the kind of leverage
he seeks is based on the slow, patient crea-
tion of a base of people who have somehow
learned to transcend their prejudices about
the region without necessarily transcend-
ing their political commitments to one side
or another.
"So it is a political approach," he says,

T

46

FRIDAY, JULY 17, 1987

Planting The Seeds
Arab•Jewish
Accord

Michael Lame, whose Foundation for Mideast Communication
was inspired by the visionary's experience with EST, says he's
not naive enough to think that simply talking will solve all the
world's problems, but it's a start.

"but not a partisan one. People don't
generally talk about the Middle East in a
vacuum; we do it in a particular political
and social environment. And I say that
that environment is poisoned by hatred
and fear and suspicion and distrust and
misinformation. Our goal is to modify that
environment so that there is at least a
minimum of understanding and possibly
even some empathy for the suffering on the
other side. If we can do this on a large
enough scale, I think we might just see
some new political possibilities emerge."
The primary weapon in Lame's arsenal
is the Foundation's "Re Thinking the Mid-
dle East" workshops. The group also holds
periodic briefings for civic and religious
groups and sponsors the "Children of
Abraham" awards for Americans of both
Jewish and Arab backgrounds who have
contributed to more open communications
between the two groups.
It's not exactly an accident that Lame's
program for peace in the Middle East bears
an uncanny resemblance to various pop
psychology doctrines. The foundation he
created several years ago stemmed in part
from his experiences as manager of the
Israel Center for Breakthrough, a program
of the Erhard Seminar Training (EST)
movement—the controversial, cult-like self-
improvement regimen developed by Wer-
ner Erhard. Lame takes pains to make
clear that he is no longer affiliated with
EST, and that his foundation is in no way

a part of EST's far-flung self-improvement
empire.
Still, the focus on structured conflict
within the bounds of a small group is
reminiscent of some of the EST tech-
niques. Lame argues that the skills he
learned as an EST trainer allow him to
work with the larger, infinitely more ex-
plosive groups that are brought together
at Foundation workshops. "Also," he says,
"there is this idea of questioning basic
assumptions. Personally, I came into con-
tact with that through EST."
But he insists that the basic goals of the
Foundation for Mideast Communication
are not derived from the EST program.
"I'm not interested in working on a per-
sonal transformational model," he says.
"I'm interested in social action, and what
can come out of these kinds of programs
of joint action by small groups of Jews,
Christians and Muslims."
The Foundation had its origins during
Lame's work in Israel for the EST group
between 1980 and 1984, when he had his
consciousness raised about the issue of
Jewish-Muslim communication. "The first
time I was in Israel, just after high school,
I didn't know any Arabs," he says. "Think-
ing about it now, I realize I was complete-
ly oblivious to that set of issues. It wasn't
until I was back in the '80s that I began
to spend time with Arabs, work with them.
I began to realize that what was needed
was a broader context for trying to resolve
the issues."

