Weekend in the West #1: Limmud Tag Köln

Yiddish singer and accordion player roaming the conference

Köln Jewish Center

Limmud #2! Two Sundays ago, before my my already blogged-about adventures in Düsseldorf, I traveled over to Cologne to help out with “Limmud Day,” like the event I went to in Vilnius, but just one fun filled day, also supported in part by JDC.

Photo from my seminar

The event offered seminars on Jewish issues such as ‘Kabbalah and Mysticism in Judaism’ and ‘The Jewish Matrix – A Modern Midrash” in addition to movies and other things I don’t know because they were only written in Russian. In the morning I gave a seminar about Rosh Chodesh, a beautiful holiday celebrated by Jewish women to welcome the new moon. I did a massive paper on the holiday for one of my courses at GW and after re-reading the paper, still hidden away on my mac, I was again impressed with the story of how it developed historically, and also in contemporary times as the gem of the Jewish feminist movement. The seminar went well, although I’m a little rusty with my presenting skills, not making enough eye contact and speaking too fast. Not the best strategy when presenting to a non-native speaking group. But two women asked for my contact information because they were inspired to start their own Rosh Chodesh groups – success!

I had time afterwards to visit another lecture, on the Muhammed Al Dura tragedy and the trial against the French reporting of the events presented by Philippe Karsenty, who brought the trial to case and won, proving to the French court that the video and entire scenario was a hoax. At the end, Karsenty asked, “First, is anyone not convinced that the event was not a hoax?” No one raised their hands. Everyone was completely convinced and completely disturbed. Just one of the many interesting things one can learn at Limmud.

In the afternoon, I helped out Jana, the woman who originally started the Bambinim project, with the children’s program. I was pretty wiped out by then, having stayed out til 3am the night before in Düsseldorf for the Asian Purim Party. But the kids were amazing and still going strong after a day of pumping out art projects surrounding the theme of Passover, the Jewish holiday that begins at the end of this month. I came prepared to do another project with them, but we settled on free play until their parents came to fetch them, running around the colorful basement of  the Cologne Jewish community center.