It hardly needed last week’s warning of an “unprecedented crisis” in Israel-diaspora relations from Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett for the subject to be on the agenda of this year’s Limmud Festival.
The annual convention is guaranteed to air the hottest Jewish topics of the day and when more than 2,000 Jews from 41 countries gather in Birmingham for the five-day event, they will find more than one session discussing whether Israel and the diaspora is a marriage on the rocks.
Israel’s controversial Nation-State Law, passed earlier this year, will come under scrutiny, too, while a number of sessions will look at alternatives at a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
And inevitably the Jewish community’s Labour problem features on the programme, culminating in an appearance by Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry on the final day of the festival on Thursday — quite a coup for Limmud to attract a senior politician during the Christmas holidays and during the turmoil over Brexit.
Apart from various panel discussions, Limmud will this year add one or two university-style formal debates, with proposing and opposing speakers. “We wanted to mix it up a little,” explained joint programming chair Sarah Pinch. “What we are trying to avoid is everyone on a panel agreeing with each other.”
Fellow programme chair Ezra Margules added: “Everyone is aware the tone in the media and social media has become more aggressive. Debates are a way of responding, by showing there can be a civil way to debate issues that doesn’t have to be poisonous.”
Politics represents only a small fraction of the 1,000 sessions given by close to 580 presenters. You will find more than one session, for example, on the Torah approach to sleep or to sexual consent. There are a couple about kosher cheese and several attempting to guide the perplexed struggling with prayer because they find the words hard to believe.
An Orthodox vegan rabbi from Israel will explain his outlook, while more than one Progressive rabbi will speak on mussar, the practice of personal ethics that emerged from the 19th century yeshivah world. You can take a two-part series on Judaism and reincarnation or dip into the Dead Sea Scrolls or the aprocyphal Book of the Maccabees. More than one session looks at the place of Yuval Harari, the best-selling Israeli thinker.
Limmud’s name change last year from “conference” to “festival” reflected the increasing importance over the years on arts and performance. Debutants this year include Soul Jump, an animated band founded by former Hasmonean High School pupil Martin Niman, who runs an animation company. Some of the songs, such as Fight the Darkness, about prayer, are inspired by Jewish ideas, while others, more light-hearted, include one about queuing.
This year’s Gefiltefest track ensures there is a plenty about food. Top Israeli food writer Gil Hovav will demonstrate how to make hummus and also speak on an entirely different topic, his great-grandfather, the father of modern Hebrew, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda.
Another food session will try to put together a biblical menu, while Ms Pinch will offer a Jewish take on spaghetti Bolognese.
“There are theories that Marco Polo brought pasta to Europe from China,” she said, “while a differing theory states the Etruscan civilisations invented the dish. Contrary to that, some historians believe the Moors are responsible. However, all we do know is that the first written reference to pasta is actually in the Jerusalem Talmud.”
Limmud has become a place for the emerging generation of educators to reach beyond the niche of their synagogue or classroom. The roster this year includes Orthodox Cambridge chaplains Rabbi Mordechai and Lea Taragin-Zeller, Masorti student rabbi Zahavit Shalev, Reform’s young adults community organiser Yael Roberts and associate professor in international refugee law at Reading University, Ruvi Ziegler.
British olim such as Miriam Feldmann Kaye, post-doctoral lecturer at the Hebrew University and author of a forthcoming book, Jewish Theology for a Postmodern Age, or Rabbi Samuel Lebens, Haifa University academic whose next book explores Judaism’s foundation principles, make a trip back home to take part.
And there is a whole cast of Judaic scholars from abroad such as Wojciech Tworek, postdoctoral fellow of Toronto University with an interest in Chasidic history and popular Charedi culture. He grew up in a Polish coalmine town, picked potatoes on a kibbutz on the Gaza border and studies for his doctorate at University College London.
JC education editor Simon Rocker will chair a panel discussion on whether Israel is alienating the diaspora an Monday
