Encounters in the Looking-glass of Time: Longitudinal Contribution of a Life Story Workshop to the Dialogue between Jewish and Arab Young adults in Israel

The field of encounter groups between Jews and Arabs in Israel is commonly discussed in academia; nevertheless, despite the multitude of studies that deal with encounter groups, longitudinal research in this area is very limited in the literature. The purpose of this article is to pinpoint, the contributions of an encounter group that was researched over a long period of time. The article describes the results of a four year longitudinal, qualitative study of a group of Jewish and Arab university students. Initially all of the students took part in a year-long encounter group workshop that was based on the “life story model”. We recognized that our students went through a process during the seminar and the next few years that followed it. Based on the analyses of interviews with the participants we have created a four stage model that we would like to suggest as a means for examining participants processes in the looking glass of time. We discuss the contributions as well as problematic aspects of the "life story” method and suggest recommendations and implication for future experience with this method in different contexts and groups.