This account is meant as an addition to Peter’s account and will be clearer if you read his first.

Peter and I met in 1982 and were supposed to work together.  Things did not work out in the way we thought, but it allowed us to have a personal relationship instead.   Over the next few years we did do some work together bringing psychodrama to Finland and Italy.  My role was assistant to Peter, liaison with the group, group member modeling group skills, and symbolic mother figure.

Spring 1984

Peter came home from Four Winds Hospital, where he was Director of the Psychodrama Department and told me about being asked to substitute teach Sam Klagsbrun’s class at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS). He was really feeling very unsure of himself and as he felt he had no identity as a Jew at that point in life.  However, when we decided to marry I insisted although we were to be married by an Episcopal priest that we have a part of the ceremony be from a Jewish wedding.  He thought I was silly, but I thought that some day he might claim his Jewish identity and that it was important to include that identity in our vows.

Peter returned from the class at JTS much relieved and very excited about this word he learned, midrash, and began immediately to learn about it.  Amazed at how he had invented in desperation something that was time honored and valued in the Jewish world.  The Jewish theme in his life was thickening and thickened even more when he was asked to be a scholar in residence, first once and then more and more by the young men who were in that class after they graduated.  I would go with him whenever I could.  In those early years he always began with an apology for his lack of Jewish credentials and I told him over and over that he had developed something really great and that he really did not need to apologize.

One reason I knew what a great thing he had created was because of my experience in that group that met at the Quaker Meeting House.  We were a mixed group of Jews and Christians and non-affiliated folks.  Two things happened in that group that showed me the power of this method.  One was playing the role of Eve in the Garden of Eden.  I found tears in my eyes and saying things that were very real to the role and at the same time knowing that they also applied to the end of my first marriage.  As a psychotherapist I saw immediately how healing this was for me and how little resistance there was to going to that place because I was playing Eve.  I had a first hand experience of how this mask of a biblical character provides protection.

The second reason was a result of the group being a mixed religious group.  When we did passages from the Hebrew bible everyone participated.  When we did passages from the Christian Testament we had a few Jews who did not come and at least one who said he would just watch.  At a certain point that man jumped in to play the part of Jesus. We were surprised to say the least, but I was even more surprised when he shared after the action that it was the first time he could understand how his intelligent friends could be Christians.  Until he stepped into the shoes of Jesus, Christians were people who killed Jews.  He had a new respect for the person of Jesus and the possibilities of Christianity.  That was when I began to see the potential power of Bibliodrama to heal social issues as well.

As the years passed Peter did more scholar-in-residences with me along.  I gave him feedback about what worked well and how it could be better.  Then he and I began to take it to other interested people in an informal unstructured training.  In Philadelphia at one of these we met Rivkah Walton, who immediately saw that a more structured training could really enable others to do this as well.  We saw the truth of this and neither Peter nor I wanted to put in the time to break the process down into small skills that could be taught.  Peter’s way was intuitive and though I had the skills to systematize it I was busy with my work.   I was also having too much fun as star participant and chief of feedback and was undertaking another more pressing challenge.  Peter’s father had come to live with us for the last year and a half of his life at just that time.  This fact coupled with Rivkah’s wish to begin with just Jewish trainings and not have to deal with interfaith issues effectively put an end to Peter and me working together at that time although I was able to be part of a couple of the later trainings as well as designing Bibliotherapy, using Bibliodrama to help people work on their personal issues through bible characters.

Over the years Peter had been working on “Our Fathers’ Wells” with me as chief reader and editor.  I must have read that book 5 times before it was done.  Peter’s father lived long enough to see it published and though surprised to see the route his son was taking he was very proud of the book.   We were very happy to have completed it in time for him to see it, though we doubt he actually was able to read it.

Europe and Bibliolog

Peter and I made out first trip to Europe to the Bibliodrama conference in 1997 where he was asked to be a keynote speaker.  He returned with Sue Barnum to Germany the next year to train people in his method.  When he came home he was excited by the level of enthusiasm and talent he had seen, in Sue and in the students, but said he missed me very much and would never do that without me again.  When Peter’s father passed away we were able to begin our now longstanding travels to Europe together.  Finally once again we were a team working together now in what came to be known as Bibliolog training.  Peter brings the ever-changing spirit of improvisation, while I bring more of a sense of order and structure.  The natural balance that we bring to each other and to the work has developed over these years in Europe until we are dancing our work together.  The vision of working together that we had when we first met in 1982 has been fulfilled in Europe.  It has in fact surpassed our wildest dreams.

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