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