Masorti Olami conference report: "We Will Be Dreamers"

Last weekend, aviva_m and I (okay, and curious_reader and lots of other people) attended a Masorti Olami European conference in London:

Speakers included a number (though not all) of the UK Masorti rabbis, aviva_m's rabbi Gesa Ederberg from Berlin, R. Yeshaya Dalsace, whom I had encountered in the Nice Masorti community a few years ago (along with his replacement there) and R. Ron Hoffberg, whom I had a encountered in Prague a few years ago.

I also encountered a few other people I had met on the Marom Olami European seminars I attended in 2005–6, including Ádám Schönberger, who has been in charge of Marom in Budapest for a ridiculous amount of time now. I sadly didn't see any of my friends from Prague, though I did meet somebody who had come from Prague, whom I asked to pass on my regards to them. Also notable by their absence was anyone from the Ukraine or Russia, though admittedly those are a long way from here (and I didn't go to the Marom Olami conference in the Ukraine in 2006). There were people from at least Spain, Portugal and Poland, though, in addition to the above-mentioned countries.

One other sad absence was the UK Marom coordinator Inbar Bluzer, who somehow ended up marooned in Israel with visa difficulties. The conference was a combined Masorti/Marom one, and aviva_m and I decided to split our time between attending Marom sessions and playing with the grown-ups. (Though I suppose I'm going to have to acknowledge some day that I've grown up myself...)

It's been a while since my trips to the Continent in 2005/6, and I'm pleased to see the way things have developed since. Back then, my friends in Prague, who were mostly female (on account of being mostly converts (do I have to explain why?)), were complaining about the difficulty of finding Jewish men in the gender-unbalanced Masorti community there; now, however, they all seem to be simultaneously pregnant (though I suppose that doesn't necessarily mean they solved that problem).

Meanwhile in Budapest, when I went there, I was not very impressed with the service in the Heroes' Synagogue; and got the impression that though Marom could attract a crowd of hundreds for a few party events throughout the year, young people were largely disconnected from the religious experience. Now, however, I learn that Marom has set up an egalitarian minyan, Dor Chadash, in their Moishe House (set up—as for that matter was London's—in the last few years), and it is thriving, so yay Marom, Moishe House and Dor Chadash!

The growth in Masorti institutions seems really to be rocketing. This was only the second Masorti Olami European conference, the first being the one in Paris two or three years ago; and I'd forgotten just how recently the European Masorti Beth Din was set up, first as a UK institution, and then more recently extending to the Continent too. The food at the conference was provided by Mint Kosher, the first caterer operating under the supervision of the Masorti Beth Din, drawing on a market that just a few years ago was too small to attract caterers. And Masorti communities have been springing up all (well, ish) over the UK—Bournemouth and Glasgow, I learned, joining communities founded in the last few years such as Elstree & Borehamwood and Stoke Newington.

(Finally, as a largely unconnected aside, did you know the Abayudaya, the autochthonous Jewish community of Uganda, affiliates to Masorti Olami? I discovered that recently, forgot it and then relearned it at the weekend Masorti Olami literature.)