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