Hundreds of excited participants are lining up, in perfect order, in front of
tables arranged according to the first letter of their last name. Smiling
volunteers, with seemingly unlimited patience, answer the registrants’ seemingly
endless questions while offering them chocolates.
Each registrant puts
down 20 pounds (about 120 shekels) as a guarantee for the room key and receives
a blue satchel with the 328-page program booklet. The British weather is kind,
and the sun is almost warm as they make their way to the simple, functional
dormitory rooms where all the participants in Limmud, no matter how renowned or
how august, are housed.
For five days in late December, some 2,500
participants from the UK, together with participants from another 20 countries,
take over the University of Warwick campus, some 126 kilometers (78 miles)
northwest of London. For the week, they will turn the dull, concrete campus into
a boisterous Jewish-fest, a kind of post-modern Beit Midrash, where just about
anything goes – from classic havruta study (in pairs, in the traditional yeshiva
style) to “An Introduction to Psychosynthesis” to Hanukka Origami.
This is the 31st Limmud Conference in the UK, and the model has been replicated
and adapted throughout the Jewish world. For these five days, the usually
staid British Jews, together with activists and participants from some 20
additional countries, will eat infamously bad food (“What do you expect,” says
an American participant – “it’s a combination of British and kosher”), drink
really bad freeze-dried instant coffee, and take advantage of the more than 900
sessions in a proud, purposeful mutual celebration of Judaism in all its facets,
complexities and differences.
Energetic young volunteers, sporting big
pins with “Ask Me!” printed in large letters, solicitously offer their help.
Wheeling her large suitcase, a winter hat tipped on her wig, a woman who appears
to be in her midfifties asks where her dorm room is, and a much younger woman,
dressed in skinny jeans and a midriff-revealing shirt, points her in the right
direction.
The older woman won’t stop for an interview. “I have to
hurry to my room to put my suitcase down,” she explains. “There’s a session on
‘Pirkei Avot’ [Ethics of the Fathers] beginning in a few minutes that I just
must attend.”
Name tags, worn by all at all times for security and to
permit entrance into meals and sessions, list the first name in large letters
and the family name in much smaller letters.
No honorifics, titles or
affiliations – and certainly no “lords” or “ladies,” although some of the
participants may be – are listed. All sessions are offered by
“presenters,” a term that removes the usual academic hierarchies and
democratizes the learning.
Most presenters not only don’t get paid for
their efforts – they pay to attend. Five days at Limmud Conference 2011 (some
come for only part of the time) costs £345 per person. Several dozen presenters
(including this author) are guests of the conference and their expenses,
including travel, are paid. According to organizers, some 80 percent of the
budget comes from participant fees.
There are a few invited regulars, including Deborah Lipstadt, the American
historian from Emory University, who successfully defended herself against a
libel action brought by British historian David Irving in 2000 after she called
him a Holocaust denier. Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo, founder and dean of the Beit
Midrash Avraham Avinu in Jerusalem and Herzliya, is also a
regular.
“Wherever you are going, Limmud will take you one step further
along your Jewish journey,” is the local mantra, hanging from signs and posters
throughout the campus. By design, that journey has no set
destination. Jonathan Boyd, executive director of the UK-based Institute
for Policy Research, tells The Jerusalem Report that “we understand Judaism to
be dynamic, and we also understand that each Jew makes that journey in his or
her own way. Limmud is a chance to become more Jewish, in whatever way you
understand that phrase.”
The learning is intensive, from “Early Bird”
studies beginning at 8 a.m. to latenight havruta and Israeli dance sessions that
begin at midnight and continue into the early morning. There was also a session
to try to break the dreidel-spinning world record (they failed), a shuk (market)
for Judaica, jewelry and books, and latenight singalongs. Numerous presentations
are part of an inclusive pilot project that is designed to integrate learning
disabled presenters and adult participants.
And there’s almost no quality
control – just about anyone can present just about anything, as long as it meets
the Limmud Mission Statement, included in the program book, that lists “core
values,” such as learning, expanding Jewish horizons, diversity, community and
mutual responsibility, empowerment and commitment to respect.
The result
is a riotous, intense five days, as participants rush from session to session,
with campus science labs and auditoriums doubling as Torah study halls. Yet
there’s a clear method to the chaos. Limmud is a response to the demand for a
democratization of Jewish knowledge and teaching. Multigenerational and
cross-communal, Limmud deliberately flies in the face of the accepted
hierarchies in the world of Jewish adult education and challenges the power
structures of the organized Jewish community. Reform and Orthodox rabbis share
havruta; wellversed scholars listen to presentations by novices; and
high-ranking, veteran community professionals sit on panels with young
activists.
“Choice is a fundamental principle here,” Clive Lawton, one of
the original founders has repeatedly told journalists. “Even if God himself
offered to show up and teach a session at 2 p.m., we would want to put on
someone else at the same time, just in case someone was not
interested.”
The learning and the arguments, says the Mission Statement,
are “for heaven’s sake… We recognize and appreciate that ‘arguments for the sake
of heaven’ can make a positive contribution to furthering our education and
understanding.”
“Judaism has courage,” Lopes Cardozo tells The Report
after a provocative lecture entitled, “God is not Righteous and the Torah is not
Moral.” He continues, “Judaism enjoys a good fight, because we know that a good
fight is enriching. Judaism must never be small-minded. To be Jewish is to force
yourself to remain flexible and to always question, to always be spiritually
alert. At Limmud, I hear new things and I fall in love with my fellow Jews, even
if I disagree with them, even if I think that some of what they say is
silly.”
Limmud UK and Limmud International, the organization formed as
a non-profit in 2006 to provide financial and logistical aid to new Limmud
groups throughout the Jewish world, employ less than half a dozen professional
workers. Voluntarism, the Mission Statement states, is a key feature of almost
everything that happens at Limmud. The more than 200 dauntless volunteers not
only work throughout the year to prepare the entire event, from international
transportation for invitees to preparation of name tags.
They also run
the event itself, producing color-coded flyers early every morning with updates
and notifications, making sure that the food, such as it is, is ready on time,
providing child care for families and ensuring that the required audio-visual
equipment is ready for every presentation.
The idea of Limmud was
exported from the UK about eight years ago, first to Israel and then to
Australia, several locations in the US , and Holland. It has grown globally and
exponentially since then. In 2010, according to Limmud’s promotional material,
more than 35,000 people participated in a one-day or multiple-day Limmud event
in more than 55 different Jewish communities, run by some 3,000
volunteers.
Limmud was started by a group of British Jews who had
attended a conference run by the Conference of American Jewish Educators (CAJE)
and decided to import the model of a summer camp-like conference.
Indeed,
Limmud does have many of the qualities so familiar to graduates of Zionist youth
camps. The experience of Limmud is what social psychologists refer to as a
“hilltop experience:” an intense micro-society that runs according to its own
set of norms and values, geographically and socially isolated from everyday
life, with its own history, lore and culture.
Part of this experience can
also be attributed to the timing of the conference. In the UK, Limmud is held
over Christmas week. In contrast to the defensive position that many Jews feel
as the mass appeal of Christmas encroaches on their identity, Limmud offers a
time to be Jewish in an assertive, almost all-encompassing, yet natural and
comfortable way.
Yet as self-celebratory as it is, Limmud has both its
limits and its conflicts.
The British Jewish community is often thought
of as conservative in its approach to Israel and, at the same time, as detailed
in The Report (“UK Embraces the Boycott,” August 16, 2010), the UK has long been
the international center of the boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS ) movement,
lawfare and universal jurisdiction and other virulently anti-Israel movements.
But there are no signs of either extreme right-wing or left-wing positions at
Limmud, which straddles a broad – but clearly delineated – middle
spectrum.
Conflicts within the British Jewish community also play out.
According to data provided by the Institute for Policy Research, some 60 percent
of affiliated Jews in Britain identify themselves as Orthodox. Limmud
defines itself as “mitzva-friendly,” including strict observance of kashrut (the
Warwick University kitchens are carefully and ritually adjusted for the
conference) and even marking off a ritual “Shabbat area” for the observant
participants who attend the pre-Limmud Shabbat. Yet to judge from their dress,
almost no ultra-Orthodox Jews attend the conference.
And while Lord
Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of Britain’s United Synagogues and the
community’s most prominent Jewish intellectual, did participate in Limmud over
its first decade, for the last 20 years or so he has bowed to the hardline
rabbinical court, who have ruled that attending Limmud is tantamount to
legitimizing the rabbis of the Reform movement speaking at the
conference.
Lopes Cardozo has had a similar experience. “Several
Orthodox rabbis have indeed asked me to refrain from participating in Limmud, so
that I will not be giving credit to other denominations,” he remarks. “But I
think that Limmud is a marketplace. I do not refrain from going to the market
just because it is selling things that I do not wish to purchase, or even things
that repel me.”
To Israelis, Limmud presents a series of complex
positions. Limmud regularly brings over a dozen or more Israelis, who represent
various aspects of Israeli society, as presenters. Organizations such as the
Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI ) and Yad Vashem also sponsor participation of
prominent Israelis; this year, JAFI , among its other presenters, brought over a
group of Israeli Scouts, who entertained the teens.
Sessions on Israel –
which cover hot topics such as the summer’s social demonstrations, women’s
rights, Hebrew lessons, and the LGBT experience, as well as current films such
as the celebrated “Footnote” – are well-attended and participants are often
well-informed. The “lingua franca” of Limmud seems to include numerous
Anglicized Hebrew expressions, while many of the younger set seem to be as
familiar with hot night spots in Tel Aviv as they are with the pubs of
Manchester. When Kerem A. Kiratli, Deputy Head of the Turkish Embassy to
the UK, speaks to a packed crowd, the Limmud participants’ questions focus more
on the Turkish-Israeli relationship than they do on issues ostensibly of greater
interest to the UK, such as the Armenian genocide or Turkey’s strategic
positioning vis-a-vis Europe and the West.
And yet, caught up in the
challenging yet pluralistic environment of Limmud, the participants seem to
regard the Israelis with a mixture of contempt and pity. When Daniel Taub, the
Israeli Ambassador to Britain, addresses the conference, he tells the
participants that they should “use their passions for social justice and
equality as a bridge. Israel is a house of many doors and it has keys for
everyone.” But the audience retorts with questions and criticisms about the
anti-democratic legislation coming from the Knesset and the exclusion of women
from public spaces, showing that they’re too up-to-date on the latest news from
Israel to settle for old-fashioned hasbara (official
information).
Limmudniks seem to care about Israel, but on the Warwick
campus at least, they do not need Israel. Israelis are quickly disabused of any
illusions they may have about the centrality of Israel’s Jewish experience for
Diaspora Jewry. Limmud didn’t start in Israel and it doesn’t center on
Israel. In fact, it is Israel that is attempting to copy Limmud-like
events back home.
A recent study, commissioned by Limmud International
and conducted by two leading researchers on Jewish life – Steve Cohen, professor
of Jewish social policy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and
director of the Berman Jewish Policy Archive at New York University and
Israeli-based sociologist Ezra Kopelowitz – reveals that educational events such
as Limmud help to “counter assimilation and disengagement from Jewish
involvement.” Based on a study of Limmud participants in 49 countries,
Cohen and Kopelowitz write that past Limmud participants reported “unusually
high participation rates in Jewish learning and in organized Jewish life,
scoring far above levels reported in studies of the general Jewish population…
The learning clearly serves both as an expression of and impetus to Jewish
involvement, impacting positively on participants’ Jewish identity and
leadership.”
The survey also demonstrates Limmud’s role in the renewal of
Jewish life in Europe, the authors said. More than a third of European
respondents said Limmud has “greatly affected” their sense of Jewish
identity.
On the first day of Limmud, Nicole Warther, 36, from South
Africa, mother of two young boys, tells The Report that she has been sent by a
representative of her Jewish community to “learn about Limmud so that we can
organize one back home.”
Married to a non-Jew, Warther says she
“acknowledges the fact that she is Jewish but that doesn’t mean much in my life”
and that she has almost no connection to the organized Jewish community. “I’m
not even sure why they wanted me to come,” she says. “I don’t think that the
fact that I’m Jewish can ever be very important to me, but I’m willing to give
Limmud a try.”
By the end of the conference, on the chartered bus that
brings some of the international participants to the airport, Warther says,
“They [the community organizers who sent her to Limmud] were right. I
know it was manipulative – they sent me here knowing I’d be ‘bitten by the
Limmud bug.’ And I was. It’s not that suddenly I’m going to become totally
Jewish or observant or anything like that. But I have experienced my Judaism in
a new way. I found ideas that are relevant to my life.”
She smiles
self-consciously and adds, “I think I’ll be willing to be on the organizing
committee for Limmud back home.” •
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