New Years Eve 2007-Anti-Climatic Again

Ever since Y2K Fever, I had found New Years Eve to be a damp squib of an affair, whether waiting for my computer to self destruct and millions of networks and drives to implode and collapse and also being at a party on Camps Bay beach I have found New Years Eve to be overstated and boring.

I was invited by two Muscovites to celebrate the Russian New Year and then head off to a house party.

In Russia, every New Years Eve, Russians gather by Red Square and hear the President deliver a State of the Nation address, if they are not there, they are at home glued to their TV sets or to their radios.

Under President Vladimir Putin things are no different, he described how this would be the year for Russia and this would be the year where they will prove their greatness…again.

It is a brilliant act of nationalist rhetoric. We battled to find it on TV so we looked on our host Leonid Bimbat’s laptop, and first tuned into a channel Russia Today, the so-called English language Russian equivalent to CNN and Al-Jazeera. There is one clear difference, Russia Today is a propaganda machine for Putin, at times scary, but mostly hilarious, some non-Russian journalist was explaining how Putin had used 2006 to cement his position as Russia’s most popular ever leader, he said that their dispute with Georgia and Ukraine was the fault of those countries and their agents and that Russia had shown the opposite of economic imperialism when dealing with the gas crises.

We eventually tracked down Putin’s address and started the Russian New Year in style at 21:00 UK time, with champagne and mackrel.

I then went to a house party in one of the most amazing houseshares I had ever been to. I took some people with me, and the one was a deep embarrassment. He made me cringe and I disowned him. He started acting as if he was Kazakhstan and that he knew the real Borat. It was horrendous.

It was a huge party with tonnes of alcohol, I had a good time, however, it was my first New Years Eve in winter. Unlike the cool breeze and warm summer nights, the wind was blustery and the weather cold. I did not get to bed too late, I know I at least did better than my one friend who was in bed by 22:30

but like I said by way of introduction, the hype is as always too much, young kids should grow up knowing that this night is no different to all other nights…

Lets hope the rest of the year is more exhilarating than New Years Eve

Cheers

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The Champagne being popped at the Russian gathering, the clock in Moscow strikes 12:00 on the laptop in the background. Note the Mackrel

Greenwich Day Trip

I love Greenwich, so when my Muscovite friend Marina Kelman wanted to go by boat to Greenwich, I decided instantly to go, because I have never been on the Thames river before. I also love being a tour guide, as those who have visited me in Cape Town know, I love taking people around.

I thought we would have to cancel the trip because of grey skies and choppy waters. The trip takes about 70 minutes, it took us from Embankment to Greenwich, as per usual I was not correctly dressed, this time under dressed.

Despite having a guide who had an East End accent which was impossible for Marina and at times for me to understand, it is a brilliant way to get an understanding of the buildings that lie next to the Thames and indeed of the history of this city.

We cruised past buildings I had not been to see in London since I was first here in 1995, the Tower of London, Westminster, Big Ben etc.

The latter part of the journey was not as splendid as the beginning but we got to see where the penthouse from which John Cleese was hung out by his feet in a Fish Called Wanda, the area which inspired Charles Dickens to write Oliver Twist etc.

We eventually got off the boat and went for a walk through the village, my golden rule for travel is always show tourists the local stuff, so we drank an amazing hot cider of apple and cinnamon which did the trick by warming me up for all but two minutes but was useless when I decided to walk up to the Observatory.

The thing that amazes me of London, that no matter how cold the weather or how grey the skies are they are always in the park, there was traffic walking up to the Royal Observatory, this is the place where prime meridian was declared, and obviously where Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) comes from. The great thing is that one can straddle your feet on the line that divides the western and the eastern hemisphere. Alas, the museum was closed, like all other museums and places of interest in Greenwich. We did a great hike through the park; tree lovers and tree huggers would love this park…

Marina had never ever eaten Indian before, and after explaining to her that no self-respecting tourist and gastronomic connoisseur can leave London without sampling Indian food, we ate Indian food…cooked not by Bangladeshis but by Nepalese. Our waitron was beaming because Nepal had just won the Elephant Football World Cup…

Next time I go I will make sure all places are open.

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On the left hand side of the picture below is the park and the National Maritime Museum

Olive Groves and Kitke Bread

In my earlier blog about Limmud, I mentioned the brilliant sessions I attended by Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbi’s For Human Rights.
At the second session he handed out these flimsy hand-written fliers about advertising his family visit to North London for Shabbat. I decided to make one of my irregular appearances at Shul on Friday night. To my dismay, I found out that Rabbi Ascherman was not speaking in shul that night. In his place, I got to hear a young girl who was about to have her Bat Mitzvah talk about the portion of the week, she was excellent, talking about Yitzhak Rabin, Martin Luther King etc,, except that some young terror escaped the soft clutches of his dad and started running through the shul and screaming during her address, the father could not catch the child, the child ran past wiped these pieces of paper onto the ground, it was mayhem during this girls big moment!

After shul, I approached the Rabbi of New North London, Jonathan Wittenberg and expressed my disappointment that I could not hear him at shul, so to make up for that I got invited to a dinner at his house where Ascherman would speak.

In the beginning, I was downgraded, I had to sit at the kids table, and one of those kids was the young terror who spoilt that girls moment of glory, well he was no better, I really thought that he was going to deliberately break the table with all the food on it. In between the bedlam, I chatted to Ascherman’s elder daughter. She is 11, her father is a Rabbi and a human rights activist her Mom is a Rabbi and a dean of a Rabbinical school-Einat Ramon, so one would expect her to be bookish and already have her career mapped up, but unlike other children of Rabbi’s, she was able to excel at what she loved doing most…athletics, maybe she will become a Rabbi and a 10,000 metre superstar…

I was quickly upgraded to the main table. It was great to converse with Ascherman to hear a more intimate account of what he had encountered over the past few years. After a vegetarian dinner and complaints from all the people round the table that they served meat at Limmud-I was the only vegetarian at the table. Ascherman spoke about the work he did. It was an overview of his work, so naturally there was an overlap of some of the sessions I had attended.

Ascherman is a religious man driven by a sense of justice and compassion for him Jewish text mandates him to not look at the lessons of the Torah and the Midrash from a particularistic aspect but on a universal level. He spoke about how the settlers agitated and bullied the Palestinian olive farmers and his pains at getting the army to protect these farmers. He explained how most settlers have more of a problem with him than the Palestinian farmers. One of the projects he has initiated is the Olive Tree Project, where every year during harvesting season, Rabbi’s For Human Rights go and harvest olive trees with Palestinians and work hand in hand. He describes the event and process and surreal and the epitome of two people from opposite sides of the fence working together. He remembers working next to a Palestinian man who was shocked and could not understand why a rabbi would want to do this, and Ascherman remembers being amazed when he found out that the Palestinian was a member of Yasser Arafat’s Revolutionary Guard, who had taken time off to help his family.
Ascherman has faced the most challenges with regards to his work on stopping house demolitions. I am not talking about house demolitions of terrorists, but of Israeli Arabs who are involved in land disputes. Ascherman says the sight of the bulldozers destroying a home with the mother of the house tearing her hair out will never leave. He has looked at research saying that children take a very long time if ever to recover from something like this. Ascherman was arrested for standing in front of a bulldozer, and was dragged away. He remembers that his kippah was left in the rubble, and he hopes that when an Arab finds that kippah one day that a religious Jew tried to do something about it. In this particular case, they got money for the house to be rebuilt, and the Rabbis for Human Rights rebuilt it, but that house was again recently destroyed.

Rabbi’s For Human Rights always in principle divides their work into one project focused on Israel and another focussed on the Palestinians. At the moment, they are doing a lot of work to help the impoverished in Israel and are one of the organizations leading the battle cry for economic justice.

As he reminded me every time I heard him speak, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel would always say, “ In a Democracy few are guilty, but all are responsible…”

He and his organization might have won many awards, he might have a lot of anger and frustration, but he is incredibly down to earth and calm, but there is nothing that can stop his passion for equality, fairness and justice.

To learn more about Arik Ascherman and the work of Rabbi’s For Human Rights log onto www.rhr.israel.net

The pictures are taken from Limmud

Limmud Day 7-Thursday


That phone call did not come as the person thought I would be exhausted and they decided to give me a half an hour extra sleep, but the Sussman body clock had recovered, and heaven knows how or why, I jumped out of bed at 07:30 and made the 08:00 session entitled Wrestling. Jonathan Adam Ross, the drama actor, ran it this session looked at the Jacob narrative, and involved meditation, exercise and wrestling. It was a great start to the day.

I then went to my final session of Limmud, and it was a great one, it was Xu Xin again. He looked at the Chinese people’s fascination with Jews. It was so interesting, and despite only having two hours sleep, it was impossible to doze off.

I then helped with the site strike, it was good to do some good old Labour Zionism, there was a lot of menial, mindless, simple yet fulfilling work to be dome. It felt like Rear Guard. Before, I knew it I had to have pack my belongings and say my good byes to the many wonderful people I had met over the past few days. I might have said good bye to folks who I might not see for a very long time or indeed ever again, but the chaver schaft was amazing, the entire experience was out of this world.

What an event, if your December does not involve Machaneh and you have not yet made your plans, I implore you to try Limmud, it will be an experience you will cherish forever….
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Dan Patterson and I

Limmud6-Wednesday

I am a self-described indefatigable machine at events of similar nature, yet I was still down about my cell phone, and had to make a quick decision about what I wanted to see, I went to go see Robert Rozzett from Yad Vashem, a mild mannered American oleh, Rozzett made little eye contact with his audience and took little or no pauses during an 70 minute dialogue. A great topic looking at personal memoirs of survivors of the Holocaust, looking at their usefulness and potential concerns of it, however, I dozed off and started a bad trend for much of the day.

I decided to give Mikhael a break, I did not want to doze off during his presentation so I went to a presentation by Gershon Baskin, a well known leftie, a man who has been very active in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Baskin gave a personal account of some of the larger than life experiences he has had in dealing with the conflict. He runs IPCRI (Israeli-Palestinian Centre for Research and Information), a very confident man, although showing traces of arrogance, his track record is incredible and his experiences are legendary.

When bussing up to Limmud, I sat near a bearded, bespectacled softly spoken Shlomi Perlmutter, a wonderfully warm man. I had clashes and was finally on my way to hear speak about his family as he lives in a mixed secular-religious couple, he being secular and his wife religious. He is involved in a pluralist Beit Midrash called Elul, where people like David Grossman have been known to study.

I was about to walk in when I noticed there were only a handful of people in the venue and one of them was that person who I had the dreadful experience of doing dinner duty with, I knew I could lose it, so I went off to go hear Arik Ascherman speak on “ A Kippah in the Rubble” where he looked at his work in preventing house demolitions, again so inspiring, and although I dozed off his message lifted me up and despite my drooling during the talk, by the end of it, I was a new, fresh, focussed man.

I then traipsed to another far-flung venue to watch Josh and Danny Bacher, two young comedians from New Jersey, typical Jersey boys, I met them on the Sunday night, always by each others side, they are very humorous guys, however some of the o0lder folk found them lewd.

I found them to be good, I did not roll in the aisles, but they added a lot to the conference, comedy is a hard game, it is hard to be original today, and they are not award winning material yet but have the potential to do so.

After dinner, I met up with some other attendees and pre Celebration Gala drinks, the Gala is when the entire conference comes together for the last night, it included a drosha by an Orthodox lady, a piano piece, 3 South American chazzanim singing Jewish and Hebrew songs and the real highlight, a cameo by Joshua Nelson, Nelson is the originator of Kosher Gospel. He sings religious Jewish songs and Hebrew songs in a black gospel style. He has backing praise singer. It was sensational. I really felt like I was in Alabama in a church about to be saved. He is black Jew who was drawn to gospel music at a young age, backed up by as camp as camp can be Jeremiah and two large buxom ladies the crowd went wild. It was an eye opener.

After a few more drinks I went to a highlight of the conference Abani Bi A Eurovision Star-two mock presenters looked at Israel’s progress, regress and even digress in Eurovision, what people who are not in Israel or in the UK don’t realize is that especially for Israel, Eurovision is a competition of fierce national pride. The hosts took us through most of the Israeli entrants had performances for songs like Diva by Dana International, Kan, Abani Bi, Haleluyah etc. This was well researched as they really showed almost all of Israel’s entrances. At the end the audience could vote by text and in your block for the song you thought was the best one ever. It was amazing to see how people got into the performances be It via screaming, voting, dancing etc.


It was very close in the end Abani Bi pipped Halleluyah.

I then went to see Charming Hostess, for someone raised on a farm, this was too weird, including beat boxes, Babylonian chants, hand claps, trip-hop etc, I gave up quickly and went back to the bar area. The vibe was amazing people were on a high, albeit knowing that Limmud was ending the next day.

There were some ad hoc additions such as the Un-Fire where the created a makeshift fake fire, the fake fire place was packed as people told Jewish folk lore’s, sang Hebrew songs, danced etc. I love campfire settings, even those which are fake, I have always found camp fire settings as the one place where one can have brilliantly, intimate, quiet discussions with people. The night went on, but people’s spirits were still high as the drinks flowed.

I got a kind soul to wake me at 07:30 the next day as I wanted to make an 08:00 session, I crept into bed at 04:15 but people were screaming and banging doors, I only fell asleep at about 05:30, I knew that in 2 hours time I was going to be grumpy on the phone.

1) Gershon Baskin
2) Bacher Brothers on Stage
3) The Crowd going mad during Joshua Nelson
4) The Abani B performers with wigs and all
5) The Un-fire

Limmud Day 5-Tuesday

After my standard breakfast of fried tomatoes and hash browns I had a tough decision to make, no session stood out. On the Sunday, I lunched with one Francis Treuherz, wearing a brown farmers hat, a purple waist coat and a multi-coloured shirt. With no lecture to go to, I went to go see Treuherz, this time without the hat, but with a sleep silver Apple laptop, a kippah and an organon homeopathic tie. Never did I think that I would attend a session on homeopathy. I did not sign up afterwards.

I went to another of Mikhael’s intensive sessions. This time he used videos looking the Hawara checkpoint in the West Bank and a documentdary video on soldiers frokm the 1st Intifada then and now. He showed a video which was supposed to be used as a Hasbara movie by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) but was cancelled because it showed the army in a bad light, it was eventually leaked. It shows soldiers mistreating Palestinians at this checkpoint.

It was another great session; I hope that does not come across as biased.

My volunteer duties finished early, so I decided to catch a session near by, I walked into a lecture by Richard Freund, a world famous archaeologist and highly popular presenter, so I went to go see an interview with Chaim Ulliel, lead singer of Israeli band Sfatayim.

Ulliel lives in Sderot and is at the forefront of reviving Moroccan Jewish music and Morrocan Jewish culture in Israel today. However, there was this woman sitting behind me who had the audacity to ask 14 questions during the talk, it became excruciatingly painful and unbearable. I had to breathe in and out to prevent me from vicious outbursts. The audacity and the nerve of the person to hijack the talk-this was probably my worst experience at Limmud.

I then had a 20 minute descent to the Cavendish buildings to hear the editor of Ha’aretz David Landau. Speaking at an event entitled “ Israel’s Annus Horribilis “. Like his newspaper, Landau was brilliant. A religious, observant Orthodox Jew, Landau painted a very gloomy picture of Israel, from the untimely departure of Sharon from the political scene, to the election of Olmert, to the failure of the Lebanon war, the grey clouds could not match the gloom of his presentation, pacing up and down, not making much eye contact with his audience, at times very verbose, Landau’s address was one of the best I went to at Limmud.

Mikhael, Roi and I did not know what next to choose, I let Mikhael decide and we went to a talk on Revisionist Zionism and the right wing in Israel. Given, by noted academic and author Colin Schindler, from the first minute I raised my brows at Mikhael and let him know that he had made a crucial error. Monotonous and dull, Schindler gave an historical account of Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin, this lecture was so boring that it flatlined until some thoughtful new insight at the end.

Tuesday was not living up to Sunday and Monday’s standards.

To make matters worse, people were swapped on my dinner roster and I had to work with this loud, bumbling fool on my team, thinking she was in control and holding that Motorola walkie-talkie as if she was running a Fortune 500 company, I dodged her like the plague and ran the operation with one of my colleagues without her knowing what was going on.

Later that night, I went to a talk on racism and violence in Israeli football. Alan Bolchover, Chief Executive of the New Israel Fund in the UK until last Friday, gave a humorous yet telling account of this vice in Israeli sports and what his organization and the Israeli and English FA’s have been doing to combat this scourge.

After a few drinks, I went to go watch Sfatayim in concert. The turnout was poor, not because the music was poor, but because they were practically a full house the night before. It was another late night, and although parts of the day were crap it was still a great day…until I realised I had smashed my cell phone screen which meant that I could not do anything except see the time or take calls, I asked a good gentleman to wake me up the next day. I was looking forward to four hours of solid sleep.

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1) Francis Teurheuz on Homeopathy
2) David Landau
3 Sfatayim in Concert

Limmud Day 4-Monday

Conference got into full swing on the Monday, many top speakers were lined up for the Monday, and decisions were impossible.

At 09:00 I had to decide between attending another session by Alon Tal, Noami Chazan or Roi Yellin, a Meretz strategist. At the last moment I decided to go to Yellin. Yellin is a brash, Tel Aviv as they come political strategist. He looked at what happened to the “ Israeli Left “. Candidly told, Yellin rubbed a few people up the wrong way, but I loved this session.

You then had intensive sessions where you could go and hear one speaker over 4 different slots over the next 4 days. I went to go see an old friend Mikhael Manekin. Mikhael, an observant Orthodox Jew has consistent and strong left wing political views. He represented an organization called Breaking the Silence and looked at the violations and transgressions caused by Israeli soldiers in the territories. Breaking the Silence is made up of reservists who give testimonies of their experiences once they leave the army. Certain people were dumbstruck at what they saw and heard and one even saw Mikhael as an agent of the anti-Zionist left, but as much as it was hard for people to comprehend it gave them a lot of new insight and perspectives into the complications of the continued occupation and the dilemmas facing the soldiers.

I had 8 lectures I wanted to attend in the post-lunch slot, yes, 8, it was a torrid decision to make. Eventually, I went to Rabbi Arik Ascherman’s session entitled” The Dialogue of the Olive Groves” Ascherman is the director of Rabbi’s For Human Rights, an organization which involves itself in stopping house demolitions, the destruction of Palestinian olive groves, and helping the impoverished in Israel. I had heard and read a lot about him Ascherman and it was great to finally see him in the flesh.

I then went to a presentation by Naomi Tsur from SPNI (Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel). She spoke about the Safdie Plan, a development I had been monitoring for some time, an idea to turn much of the green space of Jerusalem into an unsustainable housing development which would be an ecological and environmental disaster of the highest order. She spoke about the coalition fighting this project Sustainable Jerusalem and some of the many advancements they have made to stop this nonsensical development plan.

After dinner I went to a short film called Dharamsala Sheli, made by up and coming Israeli film maker-Elad Wexler. The film looked at this Israeli who went to India after the army and how he dealt with these experiences upon his return to Israel. A good discussion followed and it was great to break the routine of lecture after lecture with some new film.

Vivienne Anstey organized an introductory Limmud SA meeting, there was a small delegation of 4 South Africans, but many other South Africans who live abroad and wanted to get involved. It was very impressive how many former South Africans presented at Limmud and a handful were former members of Habonim.

Later that night, Dan Patterson brought out the guitar for an evening of typical Habonim campfire songs part Hebrew, part rock classics, I could see how this guy had created award winning TV programmes and just imagined what a legendary madrich he must have been.


When glancing through my Conference handbook two names always stood out Maurice Stone and Srdjan Cillic. Both of them were down for presenting most sessions at conference. All they spoke about or did was involving or related to Israeli dancing. Maurice met Srdjan in Belgrade when teaching Israeli Dancing there, and these unlikely dancers have been a hit ever since then.

Srdjan could be a bouncer or a wrestler, he must be about 6”4, a hulking figure with a boyish smile dancing with a hirsute Mauurice Stone, it was brilliant to see such a collaboration and even more amazing to see Limmudniks dancing till well after 01:00 in the morning. I headed to the pub and again got suitably sloshed and then made my way back to my bed….\

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1) Mikhael Manekin during his presentation
2) Dan Patterson on the guitar getting the crowd going
3) Srdjan Cillic doing Israeli dancing

Limmud-Day 3 Sunday

Over Shabbat we just used 3 venues, it all changed on Sunday, many of the venues used on Shabbat became minor halls with the campus being divided into day venues and night venues, certain lecture halls were a good 15 to 20 minute walk and this was no flat terrain, so not only was one exercising their brain but also getting a good bit of walking on the campus.

When arriving on Friday, the fog prevented one from getting a true understanding of the beautiful location of the campus. Situated over sprawling grounds with bare trees and beautiful grassy areas, my walks across the length and breadth of the conference gave me a great appreciation for the place.

The first talk I went to was by a slender Frenchman Pierre Stanislawski who gave an account of what happened to his family in particular and the Jews in general in Czectoschowa Ghetto in Poland. Using video images and pictures he gave a very good account of something I did not know about. Now unlike the other events I ahd been to, Stanislawski is no real expert in the field he spoke on. He is an engineer, however, his research and passion for the topic resulted in a great session, and this also shows the greatness of Limmud. It is not only about the big name presenters, because if you are able to motivate the programming team, anyone can speak as long as it relates to the broad theme of the aims of the conference.
Another great advantage to Limmud is that you are always around the presenters and you can almost get them to sell you their lecture, on Shabbat lunch, I sat next to Xu Xin, a non-Jewish Chinese academic who started an impressive centre for Jewish Studies in Nanjing, China. Looking not a day older than 50, this man in his late 50;s turned out to be one of the hits of the conference.

He spoke about “The Practise of Judaism in China”, looking at how Judaism was observed and organized historically.

After lunch, I got to meet my fellow young activist volunteers. I was on the catering team, lead by a logistics maven Warren Grant who duelly explained our tasks.

It was right up my alley, in a nutshell, the work was easy and I got to schmooze and meet a tonne of people.

I was next in line to hear Alon Tal, the eminent Israeli environmentalist, I arrived late, but to my surprise Tal had not arrived yet, I waited another 10 minutes, knowing that I could have gone to other sessions, but Tal did not arrive, so I ended up going to a session by an Israeli-Arab Fathi Marshood, a prominent social activist, Marshood spoke about “The Many Faces of the Arab Community in Israel”, there were a lot of kippot in the crowd, there were hardly any belligerent, unfair questions tossed at Marshood, but a proper dialogue. Marshood is not some Philo-semite who belittles his own, like some of the speakers I heard in South Africa, but someone who is very critical of the government, yet a proud Israeli citizen.

I had dinner duty which irked me, as I had to miss Robert Abbey, Abbey is known as one of the most eccentric attendees at Conference. I met him at the bus stop and before I even read about his session, I could see that here was someone who was going to be highly entertaining. He was going to speak about how he was going to beat Ken Livingstone and be the next Mayor of London. He told me it was no joke…

After dinner, I probably attended my best session, it was a panel, with enigmatic, straight-talker Naomi Chazan, Chazan is a top political scientist in Israel, and is from Meretz, she was a former Deputy Speaker of the Knesset. Einat Wilf, Einat Ramon, Head of the Schechter Rabbinical School in Jerusalem and one other lady.


They looked at the issues which really concern Israeli woman. Chazan was forthright and hard-hitting; a pugnacious feminist who really got to the core of the problematic issues in Israeli society which affected woman.

Chazan only came to Conference for 36 hours and it would be the only time I saw her, but she was brilliant.

Instead of going to another Chazan lecture, I decided to show off and go to the Pub Quiz, but even for me, this quiz was impossible, to be honest it was a terrible event, and it would have been much better if I stayed and heard Naomi Chazan again.

At 23:30 one still had 7 choices of things to do, from two different sessions on Israeli dancing to studying religious texts to a gathering for gay, lesbian and bi-sexual Limmudniks, to meditative chants to and acoustic music, but I decided to go to a play entitled “Walking in Memphis”, a one man show written and performed by Jonathan Adam Ross, a Tennessee native, looking at his life as a Jew growing up in the South. This play had a lot of resonance for me, as I remembered my youth growing up in Vryburg in South Africa.

At 01:00 you could go to an Israeli boogie party or hip-hop, funk and house tunes, I headed for the bar.

The amazing thing about Limmud is how sociable and friendly people are, I thought it would be much more cliquey, but it was not all, besides you will not find drinks as cheap as Limmud anywhere else in the UK. It was a late night which would need an early wake up…

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Jonathan Adam Ross and I

Limmud Day 2-Saturday

I woke up early to try plan ahead, after Shabbat, certain time slots would have a choice of 20 slots, I was taking this seriously, I could not make slip ups, despite my pre-emptive pre-planning preciseness I could not get beyond Sunday evening. This process was frustrating; before I left for Limmud I had decided who I wanted to see but many of these speakers sessions always clashed.

One of the great things about Limmud is that everyone wears badges with your name, and the place you hail from These are also colour-coded i.e. red is for volunteers. Certain people were wearing green Shabbat-Only” badges which did not give your name or residence, as one of those who donned the green-badge said, he felt like an “outcast”, he felt as if he was at the “bottom of the hierarchy”.

The first session I went to was by Paul Liptz, I had heard Paul twice before, on separate visits to Israel, a former member of Habonim in the then-Rhodesia, Paul gave a talk on “The Heavy Load of History-Jews in the 21st Century. He was supposed to look at the Holocaust and the creation of the State of Israel as two examples of the most dramatic events for the Jewish people in the 20th century and then look forward to what the 21st century held for them.

He did not really stick to his topic, but his charming nature and his insight of the points he veered to made it an interesting talk. I had been to 3 talks and not one was bad. I was off to a great start.

It got better, after lunch, I went to Ruvik Rosenthal, one of Israel’s top journalists and commentators on the Hebrew language, This session was very well attended. There he was sitting slouched in his chair with his legs crossed and his hands folded dressed like an archetypal professor with a wry smile. It was about “The Fate of the Yekkes”, Rosenthal gave a deeply personal account about his own family who had moved from Germany to Palestine. He read extracts from his novel Blumenstrasse 22. It was fascinating to hear how the German’s dealt with the move and how they interacted with the other immigrants, but yet also tragic as Rosenthal told the stories of his own family.

I realised that a thread was developing, all the lectures I had been to thus far were all presented by Israelis, I decided to an about turn, the next session I attended was entitled the Dying Musical Traditions of the Anglo-Jewish Chazzanos “-the title is no joke. It was given by a bow-tied sartorial Mark Daniels, Daniels explained and sang to us many of the tunes which were sadly dying out from our synagogues. I don’t think I would ever attend such a session beyond the trees of Nottingham University, but I learned something new, although I still cant sing.

After doing some volunteering, I attended a late night session on “The End of Aliyah”, given by Einat Wilf. Playing devil’s advocate and suggesting interesting ideas for Israel and Jewish communities across the world to interact with one another, Wilf had some interesting exchanges with Jewish Agency madrichim, loonies, and Post-Zionists. I had quite a few exchanges with her to explain my convoluted thinking of where Aliyah was heading and what kind of Olim Israel needed.

They had opened the EMCC (East Midlands Conference Centre), this was the hub of the conference, this had the main venues, pub, shuk, tuckshop, offices etc. Many people started arriving for Limmud on Saturday night, and the Limmud experience was about to be transformed from a small Shabbat community to a conference of over 2,300 people.

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The photo is a side angle of Ruvik Rosenthal

Limmud

Friday 22nd December 2006-Day 1
Some of my friends could not understand why I would want to possibly go spend my end-of-year break in Nottingham on a university campus studying and attending sessions like The Fate of the Yekkes (German Jews) who fled to Palestine in the 1930’s or attending more sessions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as if I had not enough of that over the last few years.

As Dan Patterson, creator of Whose Line Is it Anyway said in the Jewish Chronicle this week “It was like being back at Habonim without the hair, it is the best thing for Jews beyond Israel”.

Last Friday morning, we left for Limmud on a bus, and I was put in charge of the bus with an eccentrically upbeat lady Linda Grant, Linda could best be described as a New Yorker who loves Carlebach, Kaballah and catching waves on her surf board. I was one of the only people on my bus who was not presenting something at Limmud.

After stopping at a garage complex and witnessed pricing for food and drinks which could only be described as maniacally extortionate and exorbitant, we pulled into a misty, foggy cold Nottingham. A delightful Scottish man, Mr. David McCallum, registered me, although having lived in London for over 30 years, he had an accent which made Sean Connery’s accent sound as genuine as the DVD’s sold at the traffic lights in Johannesburg…

I went as a volunteer, which meant I got a hefty discount, I had to work 4 and a half hours a day, this prevented me from attending certain sessions, however I think my brain would have been worse off had I attended every thing on off. I helped set up for Shabbat, and after lighting Shabbat candles at the incredibly early time of 15:00 in the afternoon,

I did not really know anyone who was going to be there over Shabbat, and even the candle lighting felt a bit strange.

Shul services at Limmud are not organized by the Limmud organizers, a time slot gets allotted for them and the Orthodox, Reform, Liberal, Masorti communities need to organize their own venues and do their own marketing. I went to the Masorti shul, and the different accents of people was amazing, and I soon worked out that were people from Holland on my left, Swiss folk on my right, Israelis, Americans and Swedes behind me, and Germans and Londoners in front of me.

There were only about 350 people at Shabbat, a lot of them were foreigners, hence the Friday night service feeling like a global event, most Brits came just for the conference.

The first session I attended was by Einat Wilf, an aspiring politician who is a member of the Labor Party. Einat spoke about Woman in Israeli Politics and the many challenges they had.

The sessions over Shabbat were much more intimate, and one could really engage with the presenters. The sessions went on from an hour to ninety minutes.
We all had Shabbat dinner in one hall; this was interesting to see the different types of Jews who all obviously were accustomed to certain customs from the type of Judaism they belonged to. It was amazing to see that there was no tension, that an Orthodox Jew did not walk out when a Reform woman might have said a prayer etc. I sat next to Co-Chair of Limmud SA, Vivienne Anstey and I asked her whether this would ever be possible in South Africa…


I broke bread with Vivienne, Phillip Brodie, former Cape Tonian who is very involved in Limmud and Ruthie Warshenbrot, a North Carolina native, John Edwards fan and involved in Limmud New York.

After dinner, I went to a talk by the former Israeli Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Gershon Gan, someone I had last heard speak at a Habonim Friday night meeting in 2000. We both remembered each other. His lecture was called “Would you want to be adopted by Madonna”. It looked at Israel’s technical assistance to Africa, whilst many confused folk walked out when they realised the session was not on adoption per se, those who stayed found it interesting. I did not find it to be a typical hasbara speech, but something more personal and genuine.

I only got two hours sleep the night before so I had an early night.