Around 2000 participants from more than 40 countries worldwide came together for Limmud Festival 2021 

Limmud is thrilled to have been able to bring people together again as a community of learning, despite the ongoing pandemic, for a programme of over 300 diverse, inspiring and thought-provoking sessions.  

The core team of 16 dedicated volunteers led the way in creating Festival 2021 alongside the efforts of 1 in 4 participants who contributed their time, to provide the Limmud community with another fantastic event for participants of all ages. 

The five-day event (including programming before and after Shabbat) saw sessions from 367 presenters on subjects from the topical – such as current political issues and impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on the community, to the niche – such as shmita laws for Jews in the Diaspora and the Jolles Encyclopaedia of British Jewish cantors, chazanim, ministers and synagogue musicians. 

The event welcomed political speakers David Lammy MP, Councillor Carla Denyner, and former MK Aliza Lavie, alongside performers including Chava Mirel, Joanie Leeds and The Macaroons. In addition, the programme featured 27 sessions from European Limmud volunteers spotlighting 15 different communities. 

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For press coverage see below:

What to expect at this year’s Limmud Festival – The Jewish Chronicle

David Lammy apologises for nominating Jeremy Corbyn as leader – The Jewish News

David Lammy: I regret nominating Corbyn for leadership – The Jewish Chronicle

Labour’s David Lammy apologises for nominating Jeremy Corbyn to be leader – The Guardian

David Lammy says he made a mistake nominating Jeremy Corbyn for Labour leader – The Telegraph

A telling admission from David Lammy – The Telegraph

David Lammy apologises for nominating Jeremy Corbyn to be Labour leader – The Independent

David Lammy says sorry for nominating Jeremy Corbynas Labour leader – The Times

Communities should embrace the ‘Ashkenazi Marranos’ – The Jewish Chronicle

Importance of educating against ‘rape culture’ the focus at Limmud session – The Jewish News

Limmud moves children’s sessions online in wake of omicron wave – The Jewish Chronicle

The cross-communal must continue to innovate if it is to remain true to its spirit

Ben Crowne, Jewish Chronicle, 1 January 2021

Limmud Festival 2020 was by far our largest event ever, transformed into an online experience by a volunteer team who never met in person.

In a year which paralysed so much, Limmud ran more UK events than ever before, alongside dozens of teams around the world. At the height of the first lockdown, in the worried weeks around the chagim, and now in tier 4, we were able to bring people together to learn, entertain, collaborate and share connections despite our isolation. Our experience was not unique and is a testament to the resilience and goodwill we have seen displayed throughout the pandemic.

But as we cautiously plan for 2021, the temptation to revert back to established patterns can be overwhelming. Our anniversary activities – panels, an archive project and on-going academic research – have emphasised how little some things have changed in decades.

Limmud Festival 2019 was perhaps a little better catered, had more efficient logistics and hewed slightly closer to the communal mainstream than Limmud Conference 2000, but its essential features were the same – and most of them transitioned into our online event this year.

The same is probably true for much of our Jewish lives and for many institutions – yet in the same time our professional and domestic lives have been transformed by new technologies, structures and social trends. The recovery from Covid-19 offers the opportunity to ask ourselves: what truly needs to go back to the way it was? Where are we confusing familiarity with quality? These are questions we are asking ourselves as we start thinking about Festival 2021 but they are concerns which the whole community should consider.

For Limmud, one fresh perspective comes from the remarkable ways that a distinctively British event has evolved to the needs of other communities. There are nations where Limmud is a central fixture in Jewish life, with events drawing ten or 20 per cent of the Jewish population.

A UK event of similar proportions might look something like Rosh Hashana Urbano, a vast street festival run by Limmud Buenos Aires. What would a 25,000-person gathering in Golders Green, or on Hampstead Heath, look like? And aren’t we the poorer that it seems unrealistic to even ask?

Another approach would be to consider the generations of Limmud volunteers who have helped transform the wider Jewish landscape. An impact study in 2018 found that involvement in Limmud led almost 20 per cent of UK volunteers to set up a new Jewish initiative or organisation.

Although inspiring, many of these projects should challenge us – what is it about our community that pushes people to found something from scratch, rather than work with established organisations? What would it look like if more organisations gave volunteers the autonomy and resources that Limmud gives its Festival teams?

And how could Limmud transform our own events and ideas, if some of that energy for change was redirected inside our own structures?

Even as a virtual event, Limmud succeeds when it gathers a cross-section of our community into a single setting, and acknowledges all that we share. As an online event, we have seen hundreds of first-time participants – Charedim dialing into Zoom from landlines, students who would never go to Jsoc, Jews from towns with no synagogue or communal life.

Their presence this year is uplifting, but also a reminder that there remains much work to be done for us to be truly accessible and inclusive. What barriers have we temporarily lowered, and how can we ensure that they are not re-erected in a return to the status quo?

For years we have aspired to have “a Limmud in every country where there are Jews” – and we are most of the way there. But we have only been able to accomplish that via local teams of volunteers who saw a set of ideas that they liked, and wanted to use that to create something new and impactful in their own communities.

After 40 years of expansion and growth, that impulse to see change remains at the heart of Limmud’s success and needs to be embraced as we look to the next 40.

Ben Crowne is a trustee of Limmud

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Organisers estimate that this year’s event attracted 5,000 from around the world

Simon Rocker, The JC, 30th December 2020

This year’s digital version of the Limmud Festival attracted record participation as the cross-communal event celebrated its 40th anniversary.

More than 3,800 people bought tickets but organisers calculate that once multiple viewers on screened sessions were factored in, the number of participants reached 5,000.

The combination of Torah study, lectures on literature, history and Jewish thought, comedy, music and political debate drew audiences from 46 countries including Iceland, Madagascar and the United Arab Emirates.

While Dame Maureen Lipman charmed younger viewers with her reading of an old Yiddish folktale, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis revealed during a talk on resilience in times of adversity his favourite Leonard Cohen song, Anthem.

The Chief Rabbi said his favourite lines from the song were: “Ring the bells that still can ring/ Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack in everything/ That’s how the light gets in.”

“Just marvellous words,” Rabbi Mirvis said. “Let’s make music with what is left. Let’s remember those desperate times behind us but at the same time count our blessings and make our blessings count.”

Rob Simmons, the festival’s chair, said it had “united 5,000 Jews from around the world in a virtual community.

“Despite the distance and the difficulties, we are proud to have delivered 350 sessions, a welfare hub, chat rooms, participatory programming, and countless other innovations.

“Our steering team of 20 volunteers have dedicated 10 months to bringing this event together and I know the entire Limmud community is grateful for the spectacular results they have achieved.”

Although Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid was a late withdrawal owing to the country’s latest political meltdown, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer was able to speak to an estimated 2,500 people.

An average of eight Zoom sessions an hour ran over three days from nine in the morning till nine at night from Sunday to Tuesday, as well as a pre- and post-Shabbat programme, with participants able to exchange views using the Slack messenger platform.

Some of the 80 who took part in the first educational retreat at Carmel College, Oxfordshire in 1980 reconvened to reminisce, including Michael May, the former director of London’s Institute of Jewish Affairs, who gave the event its name.

Sian Beenstock, 39, of Hendon, North-West London, confessed to being “in tears” when she learned that the physical event would not be taking place this year.

She and her husband, Gerrard, 45, met at Limmud in Nottingham 2001 and have been dedicated attenders since.

Mrs Beenstock enjoyed “great sessions but I miss the in-person bit, I was in the virtual bar and you could chat to people in some of the sessions but it’s not the same.” Overall, she said, “they have done a great job in this situation”.

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