Abrahamic Family Reunion

Joseph V. Montville

is director of the Abrahamic Family Reunion, the Esalen Institute project to promote Muslim-Christian-Jewish reconciliation.  He is also Senior Adviser on Interfaith Relations at Washington National Cathedral, and has appointments at American and George Mason Universities. Montville founded the preventive diplomacy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 1994 and directed it until 2003. Before that he spent 23 years as a diplomat with posts in the Middle East and North Africa. He also worked in the State Department’s Bureaus of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs and Intelligence and Research, where he was chief of the Near East Division and director of the Office of Global Issues. Montville has held faculty appointments at the Harvard and University of Virginia Medical Schools. He defined the concept of “Track Two,” nonofficial diplomacy. Educated at Lehigh, Harvard, and Columbia Universities, Montville is the editor of Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies (Lexington Books, 1990) and editor (with Vamik Volkan and Demetrios Julius) of The Psychodynamics of International Relationships (Lexington Books, 1990 [vol. I], 1991 [vol. II]). In 2008, the International Society of Political Psychology gave Montville its Nevitt Sanford Award for “distinguished professional contribution to political psychology,” at its 31st annual scientific meeting in Paris.

Vanessa Gomez Brake

is personal/research assistant to Joseph Montville on the AFR project. She holds a M.S. from the Institute for Conflict Analysis & Resolution at George Mason University. As a graduate student she worked at the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy & Conflict Resolution, which engages in practice, research and education concerning the contributions of world religions to conflict and to peace.  Her capstone master’s project dealt with the creation of an interactive curriculum for middle school students, based on the nonviolent principles of Martin Luther King Jr.  She also has bachelor degrees in psychology and religious studies from Arizona State University. Currently, Vanessa works as office manager for Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service in Oakland, CA.

Dulce W. Murphy

Founder and director emeritus of the Esalen Institute Soviet American Exchange Program that began in 1980. Murphy then became the president and executive director of The Russian-American Center (TRAC) in San Francisco, a continuation of the same program. For the past twenty-five years she has been on the cutting edge of non-governmental Russian-American relations. In the spring of 2004, The Russian-American Center changed its name to TRACK TWO: An Institute for Citizen Diplomacy, that expands our mandate as a non-profit organization to include other countries, teaming up with our Russian colleagues to that end. Track-two diplomacy involves non-governmental individuals and groups that aim to fill the moral and intellectual voids of official peacemaking leadership. Track Two’s major goal is to re-humanize relations that are dysfunctional. It works to make relationships better.

Tamar Miller

consults to social change organizations with a focus on the contemporary Middle East. She was co-director of the New England regional office of The New Israel Fund; VP Education and one of three founders of an international company, American Higher Education, inc,; and Partner in Middle East Holdings, a business development firm based in Boston and Dubai. Tamar was Director of Leadership Development and then Executive Director of the Institute for Social and Economic Policy in the Middle East at Harvard University. Earlier in her career, she directed social service programs in New York, Jerusalem and Cambridge, MA. for disturbed adolescents, pregnant and parenting addicts, and families of psychiatric patients. She also was a community organizer in Ethiopian, Yemenite, and Moroccan disenfranchised communities in Israel.  Tamar holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Judaic Studies, Master of Social Work from Yeshiva University and a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University.   She currently is active on the board of directors of Parents Circle – Bereaved Family Forum, IPCRI (Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information), and the Alliance for Middle East Peace.

Tom Block

Moses Maimonides, acrylic, ink and collage on canvas, 40" x 30"

Tom Block is a writer, artist and theoretician best known for his Shalom/Salaam Project, which uses academic writing, speaking engagements and art to raise awareness of the virtually unknown story of a mystical entanglement between Jewish and Islamic mystics that took place over the course of nearly 1000 years.  He has written a book on this subject (currently being readied for publication by Fons Vitae Publisher, Louisvill, KY), as well as published numerous articles from this research.  Additionally, he has delivered papers at universities, academic conferences and symposiums about specific aspects of the Jewish/Muslim mystical entanglement.  He has created three different art series based in this study, exhibiting them in museums and galleries around the United States and Europe.

His artwork is in collections at the Irish Centre for Human Rights; Contemporary Art Museum of Montecatini, Italy; Montgomery County Housing Authority (MD), Portland Community College (OR); George Washington University (DC); Georgetown University Hospital (DC); HNTB Architecture (DC) and Hanover College (IN).  He has been awarded monetary grants and other support from the Maryland State Arts Council (MD), Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation (NY), Sugarman Foundation (CA), Nelson Talbott Foundation (MD), Puffin Foundation (NJ), New York Foundation for the Arts (NY), Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County (MD) and Amnesty International (NY).