First LimmudLA Conference A Big Success

The first ever LimmudLA Conference took place in Costa Mesa over the long President’s Day Weekend, drawing a crowd of more than 650 who came to learn, pray, and connect with fellow members of the Jewish community.

In addition to films, concerts, and prayer, the conference offered more than 260 programs and sessions for the attendees to choose from, with such diverse subjects as At the Corner of Hollywood and Jew: Perspectives from the Trenches of the Entertainment Industry, The Guerilla Girls of the Talmud, and Science and Tikkun Olam: Simple Technologies That Can Save the World. The group sessions were led by a dynamic group of more than 130 presenters including noted rabbis, scholars, artists, professors, musicians, performers, and community leaders, all of whom volunteered their time to LimmudLA.

The Jewish Federation was a major sponsor of the weekend, contributing $50,000 to attract and integrate 20-somethings within the weekend’s program. Additionally, the Federation’s Jewish Venture Philanthropy Fund gave LimmudLA up to $75,000 to pursue strategic planning and evaluation.

Todd Shotz, a member of the Federation’s Entertainment Division Cabinet as well as the Vice-Chair of the Entertainment & Performing Arts Committee of the Federation’s Tel Aviv-Los Angeles Partnership, also serves on the Steering Committee of LimmudLA. Over the course of the weekend, he presented a series of three sessions teaching adults how to read Hebrew. “All of my students left the weekend being able to read Hebrew!” he said. “It was remarkable to experience the conference from the other side as a presenter.”

Shotz was also excited that he had the chance to be a participant in several sessions he had been eagerly anticipating, including “History on Trial”, presented by Deborah Lipstadt, who battled Holocaust revisionist David Irving in the UK courts. “It was truly an inspiring session as she related her experiences taking on a man who sought to erase our history. She was candid and incredibly informative about the strategies used by these types of revisionists,” said Shotz.

Linda Fife, who co-chaired the conference along with Shep Rosenman, was overjoyed with the weekend’s success. “The energy and excitement was palpable - you could really feel it in the air.”

Fife commended all those who came together in order to make the conference happen, adding that a key aspect of Limmud is volunteerism. LimmudLA has only one paid staff member; everyone else who made the weekend possible volunteered their time and energy during the weekend.

It was amazing seeing “people from different segments of the community talking, learning and laughing together,” Fife added. “This was about bringing Jews from all segments of the community together to learn with and from one another. It’s about coming together as a community.”

LimmudLA volunteer leaders are working to build on the success of the weekend with future community learning and celebrating opportunities to come, and plans for next year’s conference are already well underway.

For more information, please visit www.LimmudLA.org.