Face-to-face learning returns
Delivering sessions at this year's Limmud Oz were a corps of artists, academics, performers, experts and enthusiasts. And with up to 10 sessions every hour, the greatest challenge was choosing a topic.
AFTER the challenge of the pandemic years, Jewish Melbourne sensed the joy of arguing, mingling and shmoozing – and listening to a plethora of bold ideas about Jewish life in the 2020s – when Limmud Oz reconvened for its first in-person conference in Melbourne since 2019.
Attendees flocked to the festival at the Herzl Club and The King David School’s Orrong Road campus on September 3-4 to hear more than 100 presenters expound on a diverse array of Jewish issues, and adding another chapter to the Australian Limmud story, which originated with the first Limmud Oz conference in Sydney in 1999.
They heard speakers and took part in discussions on arts, culture and literature, society and politics, everything Israel, text and philosophy, history and heritage, the modern Jewish world, language, and mind, body and soul.
Delivering these sessions were a corps of artists, academics, performers, experts and enthusiasts. And with up to 10 sessions every hour, the greatest challenge was choosing a topic.
A Saturday evening concert featured entertainment from Rita Satch, Daniel Light, Jessica Mond, Simon Starr and Jonathan Skovron, to name just a few.
Limmud Oz Melbourne festival co-chair Nomi Blum told The AJN afterwards, “Limmud Oz returned to Melbourne this past weekend and was, by all accounts, a resounding success. Watching people reunite in song, over a tract of Talmud or in argument over political differences was truly heartwarming.
“While Limmud’s foray into an online event in the early days of Zoom in 2020 was a remarkable endeavour, and drew in folk from New Zealand, Europe and remote Australia, nothing can compare to the utter joy and nachas experienced by those who came to Limmud in strong numbers – albeit not at pre-pandemic levels – to embrace Jewish life, culture and learning, face-to-face, with coffees in one hand and rugelach in another, to take them one step further in their Jewish journey.”
Highlights attended by The AJN included a session in which Jewish educator Frances Prince spoke with Rabbi Ralph Genende about her recent book, Gift of Time: Discoveries From the Daily Ritual of Reading With My Father, author Abi Dauber Sterne exploring disengagement and disillusionment among young Jews towards Israel, and Australian oleh Ittay Flescher, the education director of Kids4Peace Jerusalem, talking about how his organisation aims to connect youth from across Jerusalem’s religious and social divides with the goal of building peace.
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