Susan Reuben: How Limmud changed me

As I sat in one session that had already started, someone appeared at my elbow. “Is this hummus tasting?” she whispered. “No, it’s the lost books of the Maccabees,” I murmured back. She nodded her thanks and walked out again, leaving me reflecting that that interaction would have made no sense whatsoever in any other environment.

When people look on me with gentle pity because I’ve decided to exchange my relentless home life for a few days of relentless Limmud life, they don’t realise how joyful and energising I find it. I love it beyond measure.

At Limmud, you might spend the morning learning about Kabbalah, then the history of Masada, then how to build a refugee youth movement.

Afterwards, you sit down for lunch opposite a complete stranger who has spent his or her time in a completely different set of sessions. Without any preamble (except perhaps a quick mutual introduction, holding up your name badges for clarity) the likelihood is that you’ll share the new experiences you’ve had and the ideas they’ve given you.

OK — to be fair, once you find out each other’s name, you’ll probably first launch into a round of Jewish geography: “Oh! Are you related to so-and-so?” “I think my cousin may be married to your sister-in-law’s nephew…” But it rarely takes long for a more abstract discussion to emerge: the whole environment invites it.

It’s easy to laugh at the unbelievably arcane titles of some of the talks. “I was just at a session on the reformation of the history of pickle making,” said my teenage son — and although he was making it up, some of the real exampes are no less bizarre.

But while people may be amused by the obscure subject matter, no one ever says, “Why on earth would any want to learn about that?” It might not be your first choice, but there’s an unspoken acceptance that other people probably think it’s the most interesting thing in the world.

At this year’s conference, Rabbi Dr Raphael Zarum quoted his own teacher, Rabbi Yehoshua Engelman, who once said to him, playfully, “If I believe the same things this year as I did last year — shoot me.” I find that Limmud serves as a useful benchmark for the development in my own mental Jewish landscape, the changes in my own beliefs. With each year that passes, the type of session I choose to go to alters.

For years, I didn’t want to try Limmud at all, even though I had lots of friends who went. It just sounded quite excessively… Jewish. I loved conferences and lectures and learning new stuff, but my life was largely secular; I didn’t think much about Judaism except on Shabbat, and even then, not always.

So I didn’t see why you’d want to spend all day every day for nearly a week, focusing on Jewish themes.

When I did eventually go for the first time, in 2012, it was the Jewish music that grabbed me. Dan Nichols from the US, and Cantor Zöe Jacobs, Mich Sampson and Judith Silver from the UK, completely enraptured me with a style of singing I’d barely ever heard before.

These are still the sessions I gravitate to, but each year my interests expand a little — towards community building, for example, and interfaith dialogue, and even, tentatively, a tiny bit of Talmud.

As the week goes by, I measure the passing of time in my head, willing it to slow down. There’s still more than half the conference to go… Oh no, there’s only one more day… Then, the gentle mournfulness of the final morning, where I exist in a liminal space, my mind half focused on what the traffic will be like going home, and half trying to squeeze out a last drop of Limmudiness before it’s too late.

Limmud shows me how my kids are developing, too. A couple of years ago, my son, aged five, packed the following items to go the conference: “Binoculars in case I want to go on an adventure; a duck in case I find a river; a tomato in case I want to do pretend eating; a tiger and a dinosaur in case I need to scare a bad dog or cat.” This year, he wrote a packing list that was definitely more practical, if somewhat sparse: “Wrist bands, gloves, socks, jumpers, car, coat, driver, Limmud”.

It was a relief to see that he was planning to bring “Limmud”, because had he left it behind, 2,500 people would have been bitterly disappointed.

@susanreuben