In March 2025, we welcomed our newest trustee, Daniel Moses. Here’s a few words he wrote explaining his journey to joining our board.

I’m happy to join Encompass Trust as a trustee, especially in this precarious moment of such violence and suffering. I look forward to helping Encompass to expand and deepen its important work of humanizing “the other,” of mutual recognition and dialogue, of connecting communities and challenging the status quo, in a world where violence, fear, and hatred are on the rise.                       

            I grew up in suburban New York and The City in a large extended Jewish family with gratitude for America. I pursued a Ph.D. in American history to explore the American experiment, the possibilities for self-government—for democracy. I was not happy with the status quo. In 2000, while finishing my doctorate, I accepted a position as a Civic Education Project Fellow and moved to Yerevan, Armenia, which had, until recently been part of the Soviet Union. As part of this, I helped to build an American Studies program, and organized conferences for undergraduates, graduate students, and young academics, from across the war torn Caucasus—from Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. This was the end of an historical moment set in motion in the early 1990’s by the crumbling of the Soviet bloc.  I remember the euphoric celebration of globalization and that buzz about “the end of history.” I walked close enough to hear the cries. In Armenia, I lived amidst the ruins of empire where people existed day to day in a state of shock. My colleagues and I worked across lines of conflict to bring together young people from across lines of conflict as they tried to build a more hopeful future for the region.                         

            On the evening of September 11th, 2001, I was weighing the options at a video rental store a few blocks from my new place on Pushkin Street in Yerevan when an American friend from Iowa who worked in the local office of an international N.G.O called me on my flip phone to say—forget the movie, just get over to her place. I put the VHS cassettes down and walked through the streets of Yerevan feeling that I had fallen into a movie–but I wasn’t sure yet what kind. By the time I got to her place, a crowd of my fellow expatriates were gathered in the living room in front of a large box television. My father and brother, who were living on 123rd Street in Manhattan at the time, volunteered to support the first responders. When I visited a few months later, posters of people missing from The World Trade Center were tacked up all over Grand Central Station.

            Early summer the following year, 2002, standing on line outside of Yerevan’s pantomime theater, I met a young couple, Bella and Roodley, who were traveling the world visiting with youth NGOs in conflict zones.  During college in Maine, Bella had worked at a summer camp, Seeds of Peace, which brought together young people from across lines of conflict. She was pursuing a Master’s degree in conflict transformation, something I had never heard of as a field: I was intrigued. Even with my countless blindspots back then, I understood that we, human beings, are in a race between our technological capacity for violence and destruction and our capacity to live together on terms of equality and human kindness.  That moment, on line outside of the pantomime theater in Yerevan, Armenia, in the shadow of Mount Ararat, among the ruins of The Soviet Empire, I had an epiphany about what I want to do with my life.                                

            Later that summer, I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to teach “Social Studies”—interdisciplinary social sciences—at Harvard University. While there, I started to work at The Seeds of Peace Camp in Otisfield, Maine. I viewed the camp as a chance to integrate theory and practice, to bring ideas down to the ground. From the beginning, my focus was the educators who accompanied the “Seeds,” the high school students from across the Middle East, South Asia, Cyprus, and The United States. In the spring of 2006, Seeds of Peace offered me a position based in Jerusalem to be the point person for new set of USAID funded projects for Israeli and Palestinian educators, community leaders, youth, and the general public. I accepted expecting that I would stay in Jerusalem for two, maybe three, years: I stayed eleven. After moving back to the States in the fall of 2017, I continued to work with Seeds of Peace. I was constantly on the road until COVID put a stop to almost everything and Seeds of Peace as an organization imploded from the incapacity for dialogue.       

            Over these last twenty five years, I’ve learned so much about what it means to be human, about fear and hatred, about conflict and struggle, about hope, connection and love. I’ve spent so much of my time jumping worlds, seeing things from a wide range of perspectives—lunch in the south Hebron Hills with Palestinian friends, a Friday night Shabbat dinner with friends or family in West Jerusalem. Through lived experience, I’ve learned how difficult dialogue can be. At the same time, I’ve seen how “regular” people of all ages can grow: I’ve seen what these “regular” people can do when we become part of a community. During my time with Seeds of Peace, my colleagues and I created a wonderful community of educators, community leaders and artists from across lines of conflict. (https://kappanonline.org/teaching-time-conflict-jerusalem-seeds-peace-moses/). We are continuing our work. With friends and former colleagues, I’ve started The Fig Tree Alliance, small non-profit initiative (https://figtreealliance.org/).  One of these dear friends, Karen Abuzant, told me about Encompass Trust. Karen and I met back in 2007 when I lived in Jerusalem and she lived in Tulkarem, in the north of The West Bank. At the time, she was creating a community center on the ground floor of her family’s home. We worked closely on the ground for many years. More recently—but for many years—she has been working as a staff member for Encompass. When she told me about what Encompass is doing and suggested that I apply to become a trustee—I jumped at the opportunity.

            In March of 2025, I flew to London for an Encompass trustee meeting: I was impressed by the veteran board members and I enjoyed our time together. I’m happy that Karen and I are working together again. For the summer of 2025, we are bringing four Palestinian and Israeli Encompass alumni to my corner of the world, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to be participants in Project Common Bond, a one-week program for young people in their twenties who have experienced “direct trauma or loss due to terrorism, mass violence, war or its aftermath.” After the Project Common Bond Program, these Encompass alumni, Karen, and I, will tour the area—from Portland, Maine, to the Pioneer valley in Massachusetts, to my hometown, Troy, New York. We’ll meet with local community members from churches, mosques, synagogues, and a range of activists.  What’s happening in Israel/Palestine has caught the attention of the world. I have beloved Palestinian friends in Gaza, in Jerusalem and across The West Bank. I have beloved Israeli family and friends from the north of Israel to the border with Gaza. The suffering is NOT equal: the Palestinian and Israeli situations are NOT equal. We must recognize (and explore) the radical differences of experience and of power. What’s happening is tragic. The fate of the two peoples, I believe, is intertwined. Continued violence is NOT the answer: we need a ceasefire now, followed by a tangible steps toward—I will use this tainted word—peace (https://medium.com/urgent-notes-of-a-failed-peace-builder-israel-and/urgent-notes-of-failed-peace-builder-63a5659c3848). In the context of what I view as the cruel, reckless, ethically blind, policies of Israel and the United States, I look forward to being with people who remember to be human and kind—who are working for a more just and hopeful future for all.  Dialogue alone is NOT enough: but I believe it is an absolutely essential part of the way out of this mess. Meanwhile, my wife, Celia, and I have built a yurt in the Adirondack Mountains, between New York City and Montreal. We’re slowly creating a haven. I intend one day in the not too distant future to invite Encompass people to these mountains. I’m happy and grateful, in this moment, to join as a trustee of the Encompass board.