Limmud Vancouver

Climate hot topic at Limmud

Dr. Larry Barzelai and Maayan Kreitzman will talk about environmental activism at Limmud on March 1. (photos from the interviewees)

Environmental activism is among Canada’s top news stories in recent days and the issue will be confronted from both a Jewish and a broader perspective by two leading voices at Limmud Vancouver next month.

Dr. Larry Barzelai, a Vancouver family doctor, assistant professor at the University of British Columbia’s faculty of medicine and B.C. chair of Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), will present alongside Maayan Kreitzman, a PhD candidate at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at UBC. The pair acknowledges that they come at the topic using different tactics, but aim for the same objective.

Kreitzman has been among those blockading the port and traffic.

“The actions happening in the streets right now are in response to this Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline construction on Wet’suwet’an land,” she said. But this is only one element of the much larger picture, which is that oil and gas development is “occurring unabated and greenhouse gas emissions and ecological destruction is continuing unabated throughout the world, when we know that these activities are threatening our life-support system and are putting billions of people at risk over the next decade. People are already being impacted today.”

The issue brings together a host of concerns, she said, including “indigenous rights and sovereignty, the Canadian government’s complicity in a climate-unsafe future … as well as the business side of that from the private sector.”

Kreitzman has heard the complaints that disruptive protests may turn off potential allies and anger the general public.

“I think people’s emotions are valid and there is a valid concern about disrupting ordinary people that need to make a living and need to take care of their families,” she told the Independent. “On the other hand, I think many of the people that sometimes make these kind of complaints aren’t really the people that are struggling to feed their families. People that come from a place of privilege need to recognize that these protests inconveniencing them is a small price to pay for the types of progressive changes that will benefit all of us, including their children.”

Kreitzman said she and Barzelai will “bring a concise summary of the latest science to people so that they really understand the magnitude of the situation that we’re in.”

She said, “We’ll be speaking to a spectrum of different actions, from the personal to the more conventional campaigning type of approaches, like report-writing, research, lobbying, letter-writing, to direct-action approaches, which is what I’m most interested in, where people that have privilege start putting their bodies on the line and breaking the law on purpose, using the message of nonviolent civil resistance, which has been successful in many movements throughout history.”

Barzelai takes a more conventional approach to advocacy, but shares Kreitzman’s sense of urgency.

“Climate change, which we’re calling a climate emergency, is upon us,” he told the Independent. “It’s dramatic and we have to take big steps to do something about it. Maayan is taking a bit more radical approach to this. Myself and my group are a bit more middle-of-the-road, shall we say, but I think we both have the same endpoint in mind – that things have to change dramatically.”

CAPE, which has been around for about 25 years, focuses on the health impacts of environmental decisions and climate change.

“We see diseases that are spreading, we see cancers that are becoming more rampant, we are seeing the floods and the wildfires and the temperature changes that are dramatically affecting people’s health and we figure it’s our responsibility as doctors to look at climate change from a health perspective and to inform people of what’s going to happen unless we make dramatic changes,” he said.

Fracking is one area where he thinks British Columbia is “really going down the wrong path.”

“They’ve bought this myth that natural gas is clean energy, which it is absolutely not, and they are doing their best to increase rather than decrease global warming, and we think that’s the crucial issue that needs to be discussed in Canada and especially in B.C.,” he said.

Kreitzman and Barzelai will speak at Limmud Vancouver on March 1.

Tickets and more information can be found at limmudvancouver.com.

Many ideas at Limmud

At LimmudVan’20, Anna-Mae Wiesenthal will present on The “Othering” of Germany’s Jews and Canada’s First Nations. (photo from Anna-Mae Wiesenthal)

The latest local incarnation of the global Jewish learning festival Limmud takes place Feb. 29 and March 1. LimmudVan’20, which is being held at Congregation Beth Israel, begins with Havdalah and a few musical and intellectual appetizers on the Saturday night, followed by a day of presentations on a diverse array of topics on Sunday.

Anna-Mae Wiesenthal, a teacher at King David High School and a PhD candidate in Holocaust and genocide studies, will present on The “Othering” of Germany’s Jews and Canada’s First Nations.

Originating from Winnipeg, Wiesenthal has long had an interest in First Nations issues and has been involved in community programs there. She is aware of the sensitivities around paralleling these histories.

“There is a lot of controversy surrounding the use of the word genocide and First Nations, but I approach it from an examination of looking at different viewpoints and different research that argue both sides,” she told the Independent. “What do these two experiences of these two people have in common?” The point, she said, is not to come to any firm conclusions.

“I want to leave it open to the audience to process the information and to assess the commonalities and the differences,” Wiesenthal said. “I’m certainly there to point some of them out, but I think it’s to provide a different perspective that will engage and inspire discussion and curiosity among the participants to go further with it.”

Also not promising any proscribed conclusions is Rabbi Philip Gibbs, who will ask: Would the rabbis approve of Uber? Gibbs, who is spiritual leader of Congregation Har El, in West Vancouver, said that even issues as seemingly modern as an app that permits ride-sharing can be addressed through ancient wisdom.

Traditional arguments around fair and unfair competition have remained with him since rabbinical school and came to the fore in recent weeks as British Columbia argued over, and then slowly and somewhat clunkily implemented, ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft. Some of the issues that could arise include whether a company keeps money in the community it serves or extracts it to some distant parent company. But don’t expect him to come down clearly on one side.

“If you’ve ever looked into a question of Jewish ethics, you know that you can make the joke of saying two Jews will have three opinions,” said Gibbs. “Maybe, through the discussion, someone else will tell me what it seems like I’m thinking, but really I think the goal is just to be more attuned to what some of the issues are so that, as we begin to make choices of who do we call up for a ride to the airport, that we’re taking into account a wider range of values than simply how little we want to pay for it.”

Other presenters will talk about crafting Jewish children’s books (see jewishindependent.ca/new-publisher-set-to-launch); how Leonard Bernstein used the music of Selichot to create West Side Story; the rich and poor among Portuguese Jews in Amsterdam’s Golden Age; building Jewish micro-communities through co-housing; healing Christian antisemitism; analyzing the Israeli smash TV show Shtisel; and many other topics.

Tickets and more information can be found at limmudvancouver.com.

New publisher set to launch

Intergalactic Afikoman publishing house is the brainchild of children’s author and educator Brianna Caplan Sayres. (image from Intergalactic Afikoman)

A new Jewish children’s publisher is set to launch in Seattle. The brainchild of children’s author and educator Brianna Caplan Sayres, Intergalactic Afikoman will officially release its first book on Feb. 11.

Sayres is a fourth-generation Seattleite. Her bestselling series Where Do Diggers Sleep at Night has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Illustrated by Christian Slade and published by Random House, Sayres said the series was inspired by a question from her then-2-year-old (who just celebrated his bar mitzvah) about where dump trucks sleep at night.

Her latest children’s books explore territory far from earth. Night Night, Curiosity (Charlesbridge), illustrated by Ryan O’Rourke, is about a young girl who imagines herself on board the rover Curiosity as it explores the planet Mars. Asteroid Goldberg: Passover in Outer Space, illustrated by Merrill Rainey, is one of the books to be published by Intergalactic Afikoman. In this story, a young Jewish girl gets stuck in outer space for Passover, so she plans a celestial seder.

Sayres is a graduate of Brandeis University in Massachusetts and an award-winning Jewish educator – recipient of the 2016 Grinspoon Award for Excellence in Jewish Education.

“I realized that I had a vision for what I wanted to see in Jewish children’s books,” she said about why she decided to establish the new publishing house. “One day, I sat down at my computer and a mission statement just started pouring out of me.”

Her vision includes publishing genres that are not frequently seen in the Jewish book world, including fantasy. She also wants Intergalactic Afikoman to be known for publishing humorous books – “The word zany often comes to mind,” she said.

However, the primary goal of Intergalactic Afikoman is “readability,” she said. “We are aiming to publish books that children re-read again and again.”

Of the name Intergalactic Afikoman, Sayres said it “really says a lot about our company in that it is a fun and unique name and we are a fun and unique Jewish children’s publisher.”

She added that the word “intergalactic” also “signifies the out-of-this-world quality we are going for with every one of our books – from the text to the illustrations, it all has to be absolutely stellar,” she said.

Aside from Asteroid Goldberg, Intergalactic Afikoman will be releasing Such a Library! A Yiddish Folktale Re-Imagined, written by Jill Ross Nadler and illustrated by Esther van den Berg. “Both of these books exemplify the type of fun, humorous and unique books that Intergalactic Afikoman is aiming to publish and both of them feature illustrations that are absolutely out of this world,” said Sayres.

“Make sure to look closely at Such A Library! A Yiddish Folktale Re-Imagined,” she added. “There are so many wonderful and funny details hidden in Esther’s illustrations.”

In addition to publishing these two books, Sayres said, “Intergalactic Afikoman is planning to do our own small part to help fight hunger by donating 10% of the net profits from each book sold to Northwest Harvest, Washington state’s own statewide hunger relief agency whose vision is ending hunger in Washington.” She explained that this commitment embodies the principle of feeding the hungry that is a fundamental element of the Passover seder.

Sayres, who has deep roots in Seattle, said she is “thrilled that our publishing company is based in Seattle, which is a literary hub of the Pacific Northwest, with many wonderful independent bookstores, an incredible children’s writing community and a thriving literary community.”

She said she is also “very happy to let the world know that, yes, there are Jews in Seattle.”

Sayres intends to publish just a few books a year to start and will be looking for both picture books and middle-grade novels from writers and illustrators from around the world.

“Our goal is to publish the absolutely best quality of Jewish children’s literature, so we are eager to consider all submissions,” she said, pointing out that one of Intergalactic Afikoman’s upcoming books is I Am Hava: A Song’s Story of Love, Hope and Joy by Freda Lewkowicz, who is from Quebec

“Of course, we would be thrilled to publish children’s authors from the wonderful Vancouver writing community,” she said.

Sayres also is looking forward to teaching a session at this year’s Limmud Vancouver, which takes place Feb. 29-March 1 at Congregation Beth Israel. For more on the class and the full LimmudVan schedule, visit limmudvancouver.ca.

For more information on Intergalactic Afikoman, visit intergalacticafikoman.com.

David J. Litvak is a prairie refugee from the North End of Winnipeg who is a freelance writer, former Voice of Peace and Co-op Radio broadcaster and an “accidental publicist.” His articles have been published in the Forward, Globe and Mail and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. His website is cascadiapublicity.com.

Doing work he believes holy

Irwin Keller will share some of his eclectic interests at Limmud Vancouver in March. (photo from Limmud Vancouver)

Irwin Keller is the kind of person most of us would like to be: curious about everything, smart, creative, always learning, always teaching. As one of the invited presenters for Limmud Vancouver ’20, he’ll be sharing some of his interests with the local community.

Keller’s first career was a long stint as a human rights lawyer specializing in AIDS and HIV-related discrimination. But, as a lifelong amateur musician, he also co-created the drag group the Kinsey Sicks. In 2006, he ended up serving as a lay leader for his congregation, which finally pushed him to go to rabbinical school, where he is now finishing up his training.

“I had always wanted to be a rabbi. When I had finished my undergraduate and was looking at applying to rabbinical school, in those days, there were no seminaries that accepted openly gay students,” Keller said. “I couldn’t do it unless I was willing to go back in the closet that I had just come out of – the closet was still warm – and I wasn’t willing to. It felt wrong. It was important for me to be in the rabbinate as who I was.”

Within just a year of deciding he couldn’t be a closeted rabbi, the AIDS epidemic began to tear through the gay community, and Keller began working on civil rights cases.

“Things can happen to people whether they’re legal or not. Often through some sort of ruse, or subterfuge,” he said. “As long as people didn’t want people with AIDS renting from them or working for them, they were going to find some way to get rid of them. That was our work.”

This work, which Keller describes as both holy and harrowing, led to the creation of the Kinsey Sicks. “Our community needed to laugh, needed to be delighted out of what we were experiencing every day.”

Momentum built and, after a few years, the group had an offer to produce their show off-Broadway.

“That was the point when we all quit our jobs. That was the last I ever practised law,” he said.

In all, Keller performed with the group for 21 years. Along the way, he taught himself enough Yiddish to be able to bring Yiddish music into the show, to both hilarious and touching effect. He had a recording of his great-grandmother singing the heart-tugging “Papirosn,” about an orphan boy trying to get by selling cigarettes on a street corner. Usually sung by women performers to mimic a child’s voice, Keller performed it in his drag persona Winnie, channeling the spirit of his great-grandmother and Yiddish theatre divas of a bygone era. You can watch it on YouTube: Keller playing a much older Jewish woman playing a young boy – gender collapses à la Victor/Victoria.

“Over the course of the maybe 18 years that I performed it, it was the most commented-on piece of music that we performed,” he said. “People were so moved – including non-Jews – that they were getting a window into Jewish culture that they were not getting from modern American culture.”

Keller’s U-turn into the rabbinate is perhaps long in coming, but not surprising. He describes both his civil rights law career and his drag performing career as holy work: the yin and yang of what a gay community needed at a devastating moment in its history. Moving onto the pulpit only took that energy to a different place.

“I moved to Sonoma County and joined a synagogue whose rabbi was in the process of leaving and there was a lot of turmoil. I volunteered to do some of the rabbinical work while they were searching,” he said. “But what came out of me was a lifetime of longing.”

And the congregation needed his brand of leadership, too. “I think my being the singing drag queen rabbi gave people a different kind of welcome,” he said.

At Limmud Vancouver, Keller will be sharing two more of his interests: Yiddish poetry, and queer readings of Torah. In a session on the Yiddish poet Itsik Manger, Keller will lead discussion on the playful Bible-inspired poem cycle known as the “Khumesh lider.”

“The way he plays with the looping of time, the anachronisms, in a way that is also invited by rabbinic tradition – there is no before or after Torah, everything can take place in any order,” explained Keller. “So you can get the Turkish sultan visiting Hagar, you can get Ruth and Polish peasants, and it’s still Torah.”

Keller’s other Limmud seminar will examine the story of Joseph.

“I try to identify where there are queer currents running through Torah,” he said. “I don’t specifically mean exclusively gay-themed moments, but moments that seem to suggest a certain kind of outsiderness and outsider outlook and alternative biography from what you’ve come to expect from ancient tales.”

Joseph falls into this category because of his distance from the normative family. Joseph spends most of his life at odds with a family that made him unsafe. His power comes when he is able to be away from this family and incognito, and his unmasking is both dangerous and liberating.

“What’s interesting to me here,” said Keller, “is that the rabbinic tradition finds him to be problematic. They have a tendency to locate his problematicity in his gender and sexuality. So, it’s not like we as modern people are for the first time noticing that there might be a queer angle to this story. For 1,000 years he’s been alarming the rabbis.”

Keller speaks of human rights, Jewish drag, Yiddish poetry and queer Torah with unflagging energy. But this isn’t even all. Get Keller talking about angels in the Jewish imagination, and it’s off to the races again: “There is a tradition around angels who densely populate all our mystical texts, as well as running rampant through Torah,” he said. “It’s interesting to me the worldview that holds angels as present in every space and every function. Every natural force is controlled by an angel, every period of time. Every hour of the day has an angel that oversees it.”

Perhaps another year, Keller will share more at Limmud about angels. In the meanwhile, his joyous brand of learning and thinking will be available in two presentations on March 1 at Limmud Vancouver, held at Congregation Beth Israel. Registration is now open at limmudvancouver.ca.

Faith Jones is a librarian and Yiddish translator in Vancouver. She is a regular teacher and attendee at Limmud Vancouver.

Chef at Limmud buffet

Susan Barocas is one of 40 presenters at the April 14-15 “buffet for the mind.” (photo from Susan Barocas)

Among the many presenters at this weekend’s Limmud Vancouver is Susan Barocas, writer and filmmaker, Sephardi chef and expert on the history of Sephardi cooking.

Barocas, who was former president Barack Obama’s guest chef for White House seders, will give two presentations at this year’s Limmud. On April 14, 7:30 p.m., she will speak on Tastes Across the Centuries: The Enduring Influence of the Foods of Spain’s Medieval Jews. On April 15, 10:50 a.m., she will speak on The Long and Short of Noodles, a history of noodles from ancient China to the modern day.

Barocas lives and works in Washington, D.C., where she is an active and well-known foodie. She is a regular contributor to the Washington Post, Huffington Post, Lilith and Moment, and is a member of Les Dames d’Escoffier, a philanthropic organization of women leaders in the food, beverage and hospitality industries. She was the project director of D.C.’s Jewish Food Experience. Limmud Vancouver spoke with Barocas about her unusual career and interests.

LV: In Vancouver, you are speaking about classical Sephardi cuisine. Can you give us a little preview?

SB: I am really looking forward to talking about the food of the Jews of medieval Spain, putting it into historical context. Food played quite an important role in the Inquisition. (Hint: it goes way beyond pork!) Then, I will talk about what happened to the food of those original Sephardim and the surprising influences they have on contemporary Jewish and other cuisines. Of course, I’ll be sharing recipes, too.

LV: Can you tell us more about your heritage and its influence on your career?

SB: I grew up in a mixed household – Sephardic and Ashkenazic. On one side, my grandparents were from Russia-Poland and, on the other, from the Ottoman Empire, what is now Turkey and Macedonia, descended from Jews expelled from Spain in the Inquisition. My father and mother both cooked, so we ate both cuisines – tongue, borsht, gefilte fish and shmaltz, as well as lentils, feta and olives, baklava and stuffed grape leaves.

Over the years, I have become more and more drawn to my Sephardic heritage. It is something of a mission for me to share my view that Jewish food really is international cuisine. To think of it otherwise is to miss out on so much of Jewish culture and cuisine.

LV: You describe yourself as a home cook without formal training, and yet you’ve built a very successful professional career. How did your career develop?

SB: I’ve been cooking since I was a very young child. My first career was in nonprofit public relations. Whenever I would do a special event, food definitely got extra attention from me. When I moved to D.C. in 1993, I worked for food guru Joan Nathan for a few years. My second career included writing and producing documentary and organizational films; raising my son; and teaching a course called In Grandmother’s Kitchen at a local Hebrew high school. Next, I ran the Washington, D.C., Jewish federation’s Jewish Food Experience project. Now I am well into my third career, as a food writer, chef, caterer and teacher.

LV: How does the Jewish Food Experience bring people together?

SB: The Jewish Food Experience is an innovative project of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. It includes an award-winning website, jewishfoodexperience.com. The goals of JFE are to use food and culture to build Jewish identity and community, particularly with certain target audiences that research showed had the greatest needs – young professionals, families with young children and interfaith couples and families. The project has become very successful with the website and programs, bringing people together and closer to their Jewish identity in many different ways.

LV: What is your most memorable Jewish meal?

SB: My most memorable Jewish meal would have to be the seders in the Obama White House, where I served as guest chef for three years. Over time, I was able to bring some of my Sephardic food to the table, so to speak, along with the Ashkenazic dishes. Even though I was working and didn’t actually sit down to eat the meal, I still get goosebumps remembering the pleasure the president and first lady expressed about the food, and also hearing from the next room President Obama’s voice booming out “We Shall Overcome” during the seder.

Elizabeth Nicholls is a volunteer with Limmud Vancouver. Chef Susan Barocas is one of 40 presenters at the April 14-15 “buffet for the mind.” To register and for the full schedule, visit limmudvancouver.ca. The fee for the conference is $75, which includes a kosher dairy lunch. Onsite babysitting is available, along with special programming for children and teens. All sessions will be held at Congregation Beth Israel.

Art and act of prayer

Alden Solovy leads two sessions at Limmud Vancouver, which takes place April 14-15. (photo from Limmud Vancouver)

Alden Solovy would like you to fall in love with prayer. His own love of prayer has been fueled by his aliyah to Israel, learning Talmud and Torah in Jerusalem, and the liturgy of the siddur. It has been deepened by the tragedies he has experienced, including his wife’s multiple suicide attempts and her sudden death from catastrophic brain injury in 2009.

Solovy will present two sessions at Limmud Vancouver, the festival of Jewish learning that takes place this year on April 14-15 at Congregation Beth Israel. He will speak on An Israeli Life – in which he shares his experience of two wars, a refugee camp and of living in Israel as an older, liberal oleh (immigrant) – and offer Spiritual Chevruta, a workshop-style session in which participants will study a passage of prayer, then break into pairs to delve into personal prayer.

Prior to and in partnership with Limmud, Solovy will be a liturgist-in-residence at Temple Sholom. His program there will include his workshop The Art and the Act of Prayer.

Solovy grew up in Chicago and made aliyah in 2012. Living in Israel, he said, nurtures his emotional and spiritual well-being. When asked to elaborate, he highlighted a couple of the cultural differences between the United States and Israel. In the United States, he said, following a tragedy, people typically react with pity whereas, in Israel, his experience has been of empathy and of interest in the rest of his life. As well, he said, in the United States, independence is highly valued, while Israelis place more value on interdependence.

Solovy has faced some challenges in Israel. In 2015, he was attacked and injured as he celebrated Torah with women at the Kotel. In an opinion piece following the attack, he cautioned readers to not use his experience as justification for hate and prejudice. Instead, he asked them to continue to rally against misogyny and in favour of justice.

Solovy is a liturgist whose work has been used by people of all faiths. He has written nearly 700 pieces of liturgy and has an extensive publication list. His books are available on Amazon. (His most recent publication, This Grateful Heart, from CCAR Press, has enriched my own daily prayer practice.)

Solovy is a talented teacher and writing coach, and an award-winning essayist and journalist. He shares his work online at tobendlight.com and he also teaches at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem.

Solovy has energized learners at Limmud conferences in the United Kingdom and in the United States. He loves the enthusiasm and joy of learning that bubbles through the conferences. He finds this energy whenever he engages with adults who are active in choosing what they want to learn, which is a central value of all Limmud conferences.

In addition to Solovy’s sessions, Limmud Vancouver offers more than 40 other learning opportunities, everything from current events to Torah, history, music, art and food. This year, Limmud also offers a full day of programming for children and youth. For more information and registration, visit limmudvancouver.ca.

Leora Zalik is a volunteer with Limmud Vancouver.

Limmud is coming up

This year’s Limmud Vancouver takes place April 14-15 at Beth Israel. (photo from Limmud Vancouver)

Limmud Vancouver will be holding its fourth conference April 14-15 at Congregation Beth Israel. The Vancouver program is one of 80 Limmud gatherings around the world, which have developed since Limmud was first founded in the United Kingdom in 1980. Non-denominational and multi-generational, Limmud’s goal is to take participants one step further on their Jewish journey.

Limmud Vancouver opens with a Saturday night event, starting at 7 p.m., that features three diverse presentations. Susan Barocas, the chef and writer who organized President Barack Obama’s Pesach seders, speaks on Tastes Across the Centuries: The Enduring Influence of the Foods of Spain’s Medieval Jews. Laura Duhan-Kaplan, rabbi emerita of Or Shalom and director of inter-religious studies at Vancouver School of Theology, presents Sacred Texts: Three Religious Traditions in Twenty-Five Words or Less. Avi Dolgin, a retired educator who has a longstanding interest in Jewish ritual and midrash – and who also was the founder and first chair of Limmud Vancouver – presents Yonah ben Amitai, Inc.: A Dramatized Midrash. Havdalah and refreshments follow.

On Sunday, the Limmud “buffet” offers a wide variety of speakers, topics and formats. During the day, beginning at 9:30 a.m., there will be five time-slots, with eight presentations in each slot, on subjects such as arts and culture, history, social issues, Israel, healing, spirituality and Torah. Gloria Levi will speak on aging as an opportunity to cultivate wisdom, Dr. Efrat El-Hanany on antisemitic stereotypes in Western art, and Rabbi Binyomin Bitton on a lawsuit about the ownership of valuable manuscripts confiscated by the Nazis. Attendees can participate in Rabbi Susan Shamash’s presentation on women in 19th-century Eastern Europe, in Alden Solovy’s liturgical chevruta and in Miriam Libicki’s talk on cartooning as a way of exploring identity. They can learn from Rabbi Adam Rubin about the revival of the Hebrew language, from Gordon Cherry about Toronto’s antisemitic Christie Pits riot and from Joelle Lake about an enigmatic Qumran scroll found in the Cairo geniza. Current events will be covered in Alycia Fridkin’s presentation on Jewish LGBTQ issues and Rebecca Denham’s session on Jewish addiction community services. There are descriptions of all 40 presentations and speakers at limmudvancouver.ca.

Children and youth programming has been enhanced this year. Limmud collaborates with PJ Library on a session for ages 3-7, with local educators on sessions for kids 8-12, and with the Ismaili Centre in Burnaby on an inter-religious exchange for high school students. Also showcased this year is a children’s hamsa project, dedicated to Ruth Hess Dolgin, z”l, through whom Limmud Vancouver came about.

After attending a Limmud event in Europe, Ruth Dolgin had begun preparations for a Vancouver version when she became ill and, sadly, died, in 2012. Her husband, Avi Dolgin, has carried on with her work. Ruth Dolgin loved and collected hamsas, which have been seen as a symbol of protection and good luck throughout many cultures. Each of the presentation rooms will have a display of hamsa art created by students from the community’s Jewish day schools and after-school programs.

The conference fee is $75 (with special pricing for ages 36 and under). Registration can take place online at limmudvancouver.ca or by phone at 778-776-9215. The fee includes a kosher dairy lunch. In addition to the children’s programs, childcare is available on site, staffed by experienced members of the Habonim Dror Ken Achva.

Limmud gatherings around the world are committed to the egalitarian spirit of volunteerism – all of the organizers and presenters are volunteers, and none of the presenters receives an honorarium. Limmud is funded through donations, and Limmud Vancouver thanks its individual donors, as well as the Snider and Schusterman foundations.

Elizabeth Nicholls is a volunteer with Limmud Vancouver.

Limmud seeking presenters

Rabbi Carey Brown presents at LimmudVan ’14. (photo from Limmud Vancouver)

The inaugural event of Limmud Vancouver received rave reviews for its diverse and engaging presenters. The second annual festival of culture, creativity and learning promises to be even better.

Would you like to be part of this fascinating, thought-provoking and inspirational event? Organizers are now searching for presenters with ideas for sessions at LimmudVan ’15.

Here is an opportunity to share your knowledge and expertise with eager learners. A teaching certificate is not necessary. Limmud especially values the notion that everyone has something to teach and much to learn from others.

The Limmud weekend will begin with an interactive evening program on Saturday, Jan. 31, at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, followed by a full day of sessions on Sunday, Feb. 1, at Eric Hamber Secondary School.

It is the daylong program for which Limmud is inviting proposals for presentations. Submissions from presenters will be accepted until Oct. 15. The program will be confirmed in November. Tickets for the event will go on sale soon afterwards.

What is your passion? The sessions could be on any topic with a Jewish component. Proposals for sessions for families and children are welcome. How you share your knowledge is up to you – lecture, study group, storytelling, panel discussion, dance or maybe poetry slam.

An important aspect of Limmud is that volunteers run the event. Presenters at the front of the room in one session become participants in other sessions. Everyone pays the registration fee; no one is paid or receives an honorarium for sharing their knowledge at Limmud.

The full array of sessions at LimmudVan ’14 are on the Limmud Vancouver website. New and seasoned presenters are invited to submit proposals to limmudvancouver.ca/present – Share. Learn. Teach.

The spirit of Limmud in Vancouver

On Sunday, more than 200 adults and children converged on King David High School for the first annual Limmud Vancouver. Limmud is a global phenomenon celebrating Jewish learning and experiences in their most diverse and unexpected forms. Now occurring in scores of cities worldwide, each event is unique and driven by local volunteers.

Vancouver’s first foray into the Limmud experience was not only apparently flawless in execution (with 42 presentations in multiple rooms, with hundreds of participants, any number of things could go wrong – if they did, they were invisible to the average participant) but also as a model of community in its purest sense.

Limmud was brought to Vancouver by Ruth Hess-Dolgin, z”l, whose vision and passion outlives her. After her passing, her dream was taken up by her husband Avi Dolgin and friend Betty Nitkin, who corralled dozens of volunteers to deliver a truly remarkable event. Some community organizations supported it, but Limmud was led, driven and delivered by volunteers acting in no capacity except their dedication to the idea of learning in ways that are “non-denominational, multi-generational and truly transformational.” The buzz around the event was so intense that it sold out weeks in advance, which was perhaps the only disappointment of the day; that so many who would have liked to were unable to attend.

Limmud is founded on a philosophy that everyone is a teacher and everyone is a learner. When they were not presenting on their own topics, presenters were participating in lively sessions with others. Titles – rabbi, doctor, professor – went out the window.

The sessions were as diverse as the attendees. Experiential sessions included Jewish chanting, the music of Uganda’s Jews, and singing along in Yiddish. Ethical and spiritual issues confronted included organ and tissue donation, reflections on the Shema, the Ten Commandments and whether God has gender. Historical themes included religious tolerance in the Middle Ages, klezmer music in early-20th-century Montreal, what caused the death of Jesus, and the Nazis’ policies on reproduction. There was a presentation on how Jews should treat people who transition to Judaism from other religions and Jews who transition from one gender to the other.

In the breaks between sessions, the hallways were filled with traditional and untraditional Jewish musical performances. People were able to unwind in a crafts room. Children were tended but also treated to family-oriented programming of music, art and a session on how to be grateful and what it means.

For those who attended, Limmud provided countless opportunities to reflect on our inner selves, our communities, our world. And perhaps the most important lesson of the day was that this kind of an event does not require the mobilization of organizations and institutions. It was envisioned by a single woman, whose spirit and enthusiasm inspired hundreds of individuals to share her passion for Jewish experiential learning. It was the model of how a single individual, even when she was there only in spirit, could significantly enrich our community.