Abstract
Examining a case study of a consultation to a synagogue community, this article describes how the community polarized around its Rabbi's support for the Palestinian rebellion in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. By studying both the processes of polarization and the dynamics of the consultation, the article explores how a polarized community can destroy the real and psychological public space that it needs to heal its divisions and proposes that consultants can help a polarized community revitalize its public space by providing structure and boundaries inside the consultation process itself; by facilitating conversation so that substantive differences can be explored, and by interpreting the consulting process so that unconscious fantasies and unverbalized feelings can be examined. The article suggests that as we enter into a multicultural world where identities are negotiated, we need to develop a consulting technology that can help communities tolerate, protect, and sustain the many identities embedded in the texture of community life.
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