LimmudLA Fills 3 Days and Nights of Doing Jewish Right

More than 700 Jews of various denominations, ages and motivations gathered at the Costa Mesa Hilton last weekend for three days and nights of Jews doing Jewish right.

At the second annual LimmudLA conference, at any given time, from 8 a.m. to midnight, at least a dozen simultaneous classes, films, concerts, panels, prayer services pulled at participants, creating a frenzy of wanting to get it all in. The 184-page schedule included 272 sessions, 19 prayer services, 17 musical performances and workshops and 24 films. And that’s not including special programming for kids and teens.

But more than what you learn, LimmudLA is about with whom you learn: It offers a chance for Jews of various and often opposing backgrounds to study, eat or just sit together and in the process learn about one another and about things they might never have known could move them.

Volunteers power the whole conference — only Executive Director Ruthie Rotenberg is paid staff. Nearly all presenters pay for their own travel expenses and conference fees, including some internationally respected Jewish teachers and star musicians, as well as local residents with their own gems of expertise.

Limmud, the Hebrew word for learning, was founded in England more than 25 years ago, and in the last 10 years, volunteers have established the conference in 38 cities. Here, attorney Shep Rosenman and full-time Jewish volunteer Linda Fife, the conference chairs, began working toward bringing that energy to Los Angeles three years ago.

If last year’s inaugural LimmudLA was characterized by a wild intensity, this year offered a more relaxed mania, as both organizers and second-time participants (maybe less so for the 435 newcomers) now understood that, in the end, the spiritual and communal boost could be huge.

Still missing at LimmudLA are strong showings of Israelis, Persians and Reform or Reconstructionist Jews. Fundraising hasn’t yet closed the budget on the $590,000 conference. LimmudLA incorporated a $300-per-person subsidy into this year’s $550 conference fee, and it gave almost $50,000 in scholarships — though during a Sunday night appeal, one family donated back their scholarship.

The goal for LimmudLA is to help make something cohesive of the region’s sprawling, often fractured community. To that end, for those who weren’t there, here is a taste of what you missed:

Getting to Know You…
As six different prayer services converged into one giant round of “Shalom Aleichem,” a song welcoming the Sabbath before Friday night dinner, volunteers handed out lollipops, each wrapped in a label with someone’s name on it. The object: Find the lollipop’s owner, even if it takes all three days.

Forced? Perhaps, but although the organizers constantly urged everyone to mingle with new faces, it was impossible to meet everyone, and at the final breakfast Monday morning, a panic set in about all the people still to meet. In sessions we discussed deep — or just interesting — matters: blues music, King Solomon’s seven levels of laziness, Jewish meditation, but only rarely did follow-up conversations in the hallway produce much more.

And yet, even if not everyone became best friends, many conversations had substance, and that, times 700, created what can only be called a community.

Let’s Talk About Sex
All due credit goes to sex therapist Doreen Seidler-Feller, who was able to facilitate several provocative and highly unusual discussions about sex that included everyone from sexually active teenagers to long-married Orthodox couples, who might believe open dialogue about sex — especially for the unmarried — is at odds with their core value of modesty.

The tension between the two poles of modesty and reality made sex a popular topic at LimmudLA. Sessions addressed boring sex, Shabbat sex, sexual repression and the influence of testosterone.

Seidler-Feller took great pains to create an atmosphere of comfort where people could thrash out their fantasies and ask intimate questions:

So, how do you sustain a thriving erotic life in a long-term relationship?

Her answer: Be creative, aggressive, self-centered, even greedy in creating an “erotic space” between partners; and equally as important — practice restraint. She suggested that the Jewish law of nidah, which prohibits a couple from having sex during and after a woman’s period, sustains erotic tension over time. In another session, she blamed historic rabbinic authorities for taking those laws in a direction that caused silence and repression in Jewish sexual practice.

So That’s What They Mean by Music…
The musical headliner might have been the concert by Matisyahu, the Chasidic reggae star who not only led Shabbat services but jammed on stage with starstruck teenagers. But things got crazy-good on Sunday night at an unrehearsed, collaborative performance of the top-notch musicians at LimmudLA — none of whom got a single cent for being there (not even Matisyahu). Grammy-nominated saxophonist and radio host Dave Koz, after a few soulful solos, called upon Moshav Band’s Yehuda Solomon to set the rhythm on his dumbek hand drum. Solomon’s brother, Yosef, folk rocker Michelle Citrin, Jewish bluesman Bernie Pearl and pop star Evan Lowenstein brought in some base and melody on various forms of guitar (and Citrin threw in a kazoo, as well). Lior Kaminetsky, an Israeli classical violinist studying at USC, dropped some jaws with his riffs that went from bluesy to classical to country. On accordion was Rami Jaffe, a keyboardist who has played with Pearl Jam and The Wallflowers, and on harmonica and trombone the husband-and-wife team of the Montreal-based band Shtreiml. Los Angeles musician Sam Glaser stepped in on keyboard and vocals, and songwriter and vocalist Janeen Rae Heller brought forth a spectral wail from a saw — yes, the Home Depot variety.

Playing together for the first time with their seemingly disconnected styles (get all the Limmudesque symbolism?), the musicians boiled up melodies and beats and magic in a way that made the audience wonder whether they had ever experienced real music before. First they played together, then in solos, then in audience-requested groupings. “HaTikvah” on kazoo, trombone and saw? Cool. Musical masters Koz and Kaminetsky facing off in an astonishing duet? Even they couldn’t stop smiling.

Not Your Bubbe’s Zionism
When Consul General of Israel Yaacov Dayan arrived at LimmudLA Monday morning, he had already heard the buzz — and he was not happy. The prior afternoon, UCLA Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller had raised some tough questions about the Zionist idea: Is nationalism antithetical to Judaism? What is the ideological connection between a young American Jew and a secular Israeli? Can a people born in the desert and strengthened through exile retain their identity with a homeland?

With Israel deeply ingrained in the Jewish collective psyche, LimmudLA addressed shifting perspectives about the Jewish state. In one of four talks, Gidi Grinstein of the Jerusalem-based Reut Institute called for “The Israel 15 Vision,” a plan to catapult Israel to one of the top 15 most developed nations. Others discussed aliyah, the 2005 disengagement from Gaza and international anti-Zionism.

But none of these others touched the hot button Seidler-Feller had by positioning Judaism in opposition with nationalism.

“The state can remain a state,” he said. “But can it be filled with meaning?” In other words, if the nationalist impulse dominates all else, is there room for Jewish values? He suggested the idea of an “Israel among the nations,” an Israel that is moral-based and inclusive of its Arab populations.

Dayan, who presumably had been bombarded with questions resulting from Seidler-Feller’s talk during his own lecture, held court afterward in the lobby. Overhearing his defiance, LimmudLA director Rotenberg was inspired: “We have to have a panel with both of them,” and she was off to plan it.

It’s Not the Economy, Stupid
In a pleasant surprise, angst about the economy did not dominate the conference.

One exception was a heated audience discussion about the post-Madoff era, led by Jewish marketing guru Gary Wexler and Rabbi Danny Landes of Pardes in Jerusalem. Was Madoff just a lone deviant or a product of our Jewish community? Have we allowed the moneyed to set our communal agenda? Have we educated ourselves and our children to deal with success in a values-driven way? Has success stunted the hunger that originally gave us the drive to make it in this country?

Wexler strives for substance, so he jotted down some concrete suggestions: new educational models, less communal brown-nosing of the wealthy, a forum where philanthropists and lay leaders can openly discuss the uncomfortable subject of money.

From Hollywood to Hashem: Observant Jews in Tinseltown
Hollywood may be among the toughest places to lead a religious life. Almost everything about the business — from the power lunches to the endless work schedule to the idolatry of ratings and box office — pose problems for the traditional Jew. Two observant Jews with the chutzpah to aim to satisfy both their ambition and their religious commitment shared their stories at LimmudLA.

Jeff Astrof, a sitcom writer, and David N. Weiss, a screenwriter, both became Orthodox after their careers were launched. For both, their transformation met resistance — “What do you mean you can’t work Friday nights or Saturday? Do you have to have kosher food on the … table?” If such questions sound trivial, these guys will tell you they’re not. Finding God, in fact, provided a spiritual alternative for feelings of envy, greed and insecurity, despite the sacrifices that path required. In order to not work on Shabbat, Astrof promised one producer he’d work harder than anybody else every other day of the week — though that didn’t stop his writing partner of 14 years from abandoning him.

“Just when you get comfortable, you get thrown a curveball,” Astrof said.

Will Women Rabbis Change the Face of Judaism?
The only panel of rabbis assembled throughout the weekend (LimmudLA is militantly anti-hierarchical; titles such as “rabbi” or “doctor” don’t appear anywhere) was a Monday morning session presented by women. Given that until the latter part of the 20th century there were no female rabbis, the generational differences among the four on the panel — Elissa Ben-Naim (Wilshire Boulevard Temple), Dara Frimmer (Temple Isaiah), Elianna Yolkut (Adat Ari El) and Nina Bieber-Feinstein (the second woman ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary) — were all the more remarkable.

Of course, some things have stayed the same, such as the expectation that women will both manage thriving careers and also nurture healthy families. Projecting an image of femininity can be troublesome, too — how a woman looks sometimes overshadows how she performs. Working in the trenches, the newest generation is determined to change the paradigm and normalize femininity in the rabbinate.

And they are doing so with uncommon humility.

These younger women rabbis see themselves as community builders more than figureheads. They don’t preach; they organize. They invest in relationships, while many of their older colleagues have been tied to the traditional hierarchical framework.

With less focus on power and more on love, the question remains whether women can create synagogue communities more responsive to societal change that open hearts and accept the marginalized.

Yolkut, who is a lesbian, hopes so — because, even as gender equality in Jewish life is closer to triumphing, the battle for sexual orientation equality has just begun.

Of the Book
Deep text studies and lots of grappling with God and faith were prevalent in the program. Valley Beth Shalom’s Rabbi Ed Feinstein captivated a packed room with his insight that with Zionism, we rewrote the Israelite covenant, wresting control of our destiny from God. Saul Wachs, a grandfatherly professor at Gratz College in Philadelphia, explored spiritual transcendence in a way that was at once academic and deeply personal. UCLA Hillel director Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller brilliantly meandered through a treatise proposing that submitting to faith means understanding that we have no right to dominate others — and that only that realization will allow us to be true mirrors of the Divine image.

It was heavy fodder, fulfilling another of Limmud’s goals: to inspire participants to go out and study — to take ownership of their Jewish experience outside the confines of LimmudLA.