Noa Baum, award-winning storyteller and educator performs internationally for diverse audiences ranging from the World Bank, universities, congregations, festivals, government agencies, schools, and detention centers. Born and raised in Jerusalem Noa offers performance art and practical workshops that focus on the power of stories from around the world to heal across identity divides, building bridges for peace and highlighting our similarities while celebrating differences, curiosity, and acceptance. Noa will perform her one-woman show, “A Land Twice Promised,” based on her dialogue with a Palestinian neighbor in the U.S., a moving testimony on the complex and contradictory emotional history surrounding Jerusalem, for Israelis and Palestinians alike. She includes true stories of four women: a Palestinian living under Israeli occupation as a child and as a university student; an Israeli child who lived through the 1967 war; a Palestinian mother’s memory of the 1967 war; and an Israeli woman’s experience of the 1948 war and the loss of her brother.  She says, “I tell the human story…apart from politics and hope that…it will call…us to listen with compassion without surrendering to prejudice and fear, choose dialogue, and commit to peace.”

Stories In The Round is a 10 session series at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Hagerstown, 13245 Cearfoss Pike (Salem Ave. extended) usually on the 4th Monday of the month, March thru December. Children 12 years & older welcome when accompanied by a parent or group leader.

$10 in advance, $12 at the door.  Contact: Fanny Crawford, 301-730-1638 or fanitsky@hotmail.com.