Limmud

[lethargic_man]

Okay, so I'm back from Limmud, where I had a good time for the middle bit, i.e. after I recovered from my previous flu, and before I went down with the stomach bug.

It started with a pleasant Shabbos. There was an amusing moment in the Shabbos morning service, where, after the Torah service, the Torah was paraded (as normal) to the back of the room, and then (not normal!) straight out of the door—due to an unsufficiency of Sifrei Torah not locked away beyond access, we had to share ours with the Orthodox service.

Of course, this being Limmud, even the nice relaxing Shabbos was jam-packed with sessions, including the best-titled one of the lot, Stewart Brookes' "So Long, And Thanks For The Fish: Narrativising Jonah's Death Wish." On Friday night, Lindsay Taylor-Guthartz led a session on דרור יקרא, on which I discovered that my favourite tune for it was in fact filked from a Six Day War song. Ah well, the words don't look particularly offensive, so I suppose I can continue to sing it. And even if they were, I could count changing the words as an example of subverting the original message. :o)

Shabbos culminated in a beautiful, beautiful סעודה שלישית singathon, which the organisers finally had to cut short with a bellowed "ENOUGH", or it'd have been morning before we made הבדלה. After Shabbos was out, I watched the film My People's Dream, a travelogue of ארץ ישראל in 1933 ("Bringing the sights of modern Palestine before your eyes"), accompanied—somewhat surreally, in the way he would stride up to a monument or in front of a vista, and start singing—by the singing of Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt. Rosenblatt died halfway through the film's production, and the makers went on to incorporate his funeral, attended by thousands, into the film itself. The film was fascinating for the glimpse it offered into how Palestine looked during the British Mandate period—we saw the Western Wall, for example, as it was when houses were built right up to it, before the Israelis bulldozed the ruins of the Jewish Quarter after reoccupying it in 1967 to create the vast plaza that's there now. Also of interest were the places not on the Israel tourist route, due to being deep in the West Bank; for example, the ruins of Shomron (Samaria), capital of the Israelite kingdom.

As well as seeing films (I also watched one on the Jews of Bombay), I got to see Neshama Carlebach in concert, and Reva leSheva, and Sephardi songster Ramón Tasat. And then, of course, there were the talks. I have notes on the following waiting to be tidied up and made blog-ready:

• Archaeological Espionage—TE Lawrence and Leonard Woolley in Sinai 1913/14, by Stephen Rosenberg
• Bruriah: Truth. Myth and the Construction of the Ideal Woman, by Yaffa Epstein
• Four Gemaras to Live By (parts i–iii—the last part was after I fell ill), by Dr Raphael Zarum
• How Barmitzvah Parties Began, by Michael Hilton
• Jews and Pirates in the Carribean, by Sharona Fredrick
• King Arthur and King David: Literary Parallels, by Sharonah Fredrick
• Pre-crime in the Talmud, by Adam Krause
• Robin Hood and the Jewish Connection, by Sharonah Fredrick
• Saudi Arabia: Kingdom on the Rebound, by Adam Goodvach
• Two Jewish Temples in Ancient Egypt, by Stephen Rosenberg
• Two Kaddishes and a Ghost Story, by Lindsay Taylor-Guthartz
• Utterly Rejected: Theology in Crisis in the Book of Lamentations, by Deborah Kahn-Harris
• Why the Books of Maccabees Didn't Make It Into The Jewish Bible, by Lindsay Taylor-Guthartz
• Would the Real Messiah Please Stand Up?, by Rabbi Joel Zeff
• Would You Buy A Cruse of Oil From This High Priest?, by Stephen Rosenberg

TBH, I'm not entirely sure I can be bothered to do all of these: I never actually look back at the vast majority of the notes I take, and would be hard pressed to give a reason I actually do it. (More "Interesting!" comments from people who read them on this blog would help!) I'll certainly put up the more blog-ready—but not for a bit; I really ought to finish off typing up my comments on rysmiel's novel first.

The last session I went to before I succumbed to the stomach bug was the one on the theology of the Book of Lamentations; I poked my nose through the door, and was amused to hear the speaker calling "Please! Come in!" whilst on the board was the talk's title, "Utterly Rejected". :o)

Apparently the quarantine measures kept the number of people who took ill at Limmud down to just sixty-nine people, though quite a few more have fallen ill since. To my relief, I failed to infect the person who gave me a lift back. כל הכבוד to Amanda, who apparently caught the illness whilst looking after the other people who had it; and also to Flora, who brought soup and other food for Shabbos to both me and curious_reader, who was (quite separately) ill. And a <Q>"now pay attention, 007"</Q> to A, whom, despite me telling him in an email that I was ill, assumed my absence in shul this week to mean I was in Newcastle, and emailed "Hope you're enjoying it."

Comments

[awful-dynne.livejournal.com]

Ramon Tasat was the Hazzan at the shul I grew up in while I was growing up and is a family friend!!! How neat that you got to see him in London!

Also, the King Arthur/King David and Robin Hood talks look of real interest. When you are feeling better/have the time, I'd be interested in seeing notes on those talks.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

This is a blanket 'I might be lacking the context, but I'm always interested in your notes' announcement.