This past weekend I got a chance to go to Mexico City for Limmud volunteer training where limmudniks from all over the Americas and our British partners have gathered trying to help each other be more efficient and productive while preparing and running our respective Limmuds.

Limmud as an organization had started in England over 30 years ago. I got involved with it around 10 years ago. During this time, I have worked on international Chevruta books, planned and presented at many Limmud FSU New York events.

It was truly inspirational to see people younger and older than me planning their 10th or first Limmud joining in conversations and exercises geared to solve problems arguing ‘le Shem shamaim’ , come up within new ideas no matter how modest or hugely idealistic they are, and sharing ups and downs of each conference with each other.

Jewish text was thankfully present in many a session including the incredible Shabbat day learning with Sandra Lilienthal 
Our group, a distinctly different yet similar in so many ways to others, Limmud FSU consisted of people from Toronto, New York, San Francisco and Israel.
We have some unique perspectives due to the nature of our learning thirsty audience that lacks the basics of Jewish education for the most part. Anything sounding religious may be a turn off for our people yet they have enormous intellectual curiosity and desire to know more in the range of Jewish subjects seeing Judaism more of a cultural rather than religious identity. We resolved to work together more, and create a network within all the Russian speaking communities that, hopefully, will help us to tackle our specific challenges and come up with ideas that will work for every group in the network for the benefit of the people coming to attend the events  we so lovingly program.

I invite you all to join the conference nearest to you – you will love it!