A workshop exploring Jewish pasts, family history and our connection to our ancestors to nurture a healthy world. We will catch the world and our history through our inner conflicts and deconstruct some of our privileges that we may not be aware of. This will help us shift the dynamics of power and oppression within ourselves.

What is the essence of our family histories? How do we carry this with us in today's world and how can we use this to relate to our identity now to free us to be more fully present?

Using discussion, drawing and movement we will open up new and creative pathways into the past. This will give us a chance to recollect and reflect on our history together and access the deep potential that lies in our history and experience. The workshop uses methods from Processwork, a group facilitation method which enables us to engage with history in resonant and healing ways.

This workshop is for anyone interested in the theme of family history and Jewish ancestors. It doesn’t matter if you know a lot or nothing about your family history. We will open a space up for you to have a ‘felt’ connection with history and any ideas you may have about it - real or fictional.

The workshop will be led by Lea Misan, Daniel Eisenberg and Alex Eisenberg who have been working together over the past 18 months with a group of other Jews based in the UK to think about collective approaches to processing Jewish history, identity and visibility in the present moment.

Lea Misan is a process-oriented psychotherapist, facilitator and trainer. She has worked in private practice since 2015 and is the founder and director of the mental health charity for young people, Act for Change working particularly with abuse and trauma since 2007. The focus of her work with communities has been collective memory, community conflict, trauma and community development and leadership. She is interested in engaging with diversity issues that both enrich and trouble us. Together with Daniel Eisenberg, she co-founded the Jewish Process Work group in London.

Alex Eisenberg is an artist, producer and facilitator. His background is in theatre and performance and he’s created projects at Tate Modern, the Barbican, Google Arts and Culture, the British Library, and Hull City of Culture. Alex’s past work includes We Make our Histories a two year oral history project which brought together young and older participants to record oral histories about being Jewish in London (2014-16, JW3). In 2019 he collaborated with Liat Rosenthal and the Southbank Centre on a project looking at artist responses to antisemitism.

He is currently working on The Light of Day, a short film with the artist Anne Bean and White Sands Crystal Foxes, a film made in collaboration with Liz Rosenfeld for the Zeiss Groß Planetarium in Berlin which will premiere in 2021. Between 2012 and 2019 he was a curator at Live Art Development Agency and during 2019/2020, he was Associate Programmer at Battersea Arts Centre. He is also part of the diploma programme with Processwork UK, a school for training in psychotherapy and group facilitation methods.

Daniel Eisenberg is a social worker, youth worker, translator and educator. He studied German at Cambridge university and lived in Berlin for one year working at the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe. He has recently moved to New York where he has been studying Jewish text and spiritual practice. He intends to begin a Master’s Programme in Process-Oriented Psychology at the Process Work institute in Portland, Orgeon in October 2020. He co-founded with Lea Misan the Jewish Process Work group in London with the aim of bringing greater awareness to Jewish trauma patterns that continue to affect ourselves and our world.

Further Info

You do not need to be able to draw to be part of the workshop but you do need to be able to use a pen or pencil in some way.

The work we do will be personal to you and your history but you will be encouraged to share your insights with the rest of the group as there is learning to be gained from sharing our stories. Whilst we will explore both positive and negative aspects of history, it is likely that we will explore themes that may be difficult and that evoke a fracture or break with the past. Please consider this before signing up and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us in advance to discuss your participation.

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This event is in aid of Act for change, and all the proceeds will go to the "Jewish History Engagement Programme"

Angels of History

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