After a packed day of events, Judi Herman reports back on the first ever virtual Limmud Day

On Sunday 3 May, Limmud presented a brand new event, Limmud Together UK, which took place entirely online. It was a (very) full day of talks, discussions, singalongs and more, and attracted the sort of presenters that guarantee enthusiastic audiences, which, in this case, counted hundreds of Zoomers.

I'll start with an intriguing session – not just because it was delivered by JR’s new Executive Director Aviva Dautch – The Jewess Who Ruined the US, aka Emma Lazarus. This was always going to be a title to draw me in. I knew the name, but it was news to me that this description wasn't ironic, but antisemitic. Nor did I realise Lazarus wrote the evocative poem engraved on the plaque beneath the Statue of Liberty ("Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…") or that it's a sonnet crafted in the style of Shelley’s Ozymandias.

Dautch's carefully prepared slides provided beguiling proof, with the matching rhyme schemes side by side. She slipped in plenty of immaculately illustrated biographical info on her heroine and contextualised the often uneasy lives of wealthy Jews in late-19th-century America (the Statue of Liberty, gifted by France to the US, dates from 1882-3), attracting the wrong sort of attention long before the era of Twitter trolls. Unsurprisingly, this fascinating talk attracted a rapt audience upwards of 350.

My Limmud day began with a session for the ecologist in many of us. "That blackbird woke me up," exclaimed Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg (of Things My Dog Has Taught Me fame), marvelling at the ways "nature sustains us under lockdown … with Torah, mysticism, poetry and pictures". Again beautiful slides showcased texts on prayer and trees in the Talmud, treating us to the context of the Tree of Life metaphor for Torah study, which is the text of the very first, and perhaps best loved, happy clappy singalong infants learn in cheder (religion school) in the Progressive Movement. Rabbi Wittenberg, who'd spoken on BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day the same week, was equally delighted to share the beautiful butterfly that Times columnist Miriam Darlington had noticed that weekend; and Christian theologian Hannah Malcolm’s Thought for the Day, Jesus’s "behold the lilies of the field". All have in common healing, balm and respect for nature and our place in it, now foregrounded by planets shining in clear skies and birds seeming to sing louder than we remember.

Later a brilliant pairing of minds – author Howard Jacobson and Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland – questioned Jewish writing and Jewish imagination. It was funny, honest, revealing and articulate, and attracted well over 500 viewers. Jacobson shared how his life as a Jewish writer prepared him for lockdown and, perhaps not entirely joking, revealed how his father articulated the danger outside the house – "Quick – everybody under the table" – when the doorbell rang. His "foreboding and sadness about what’s outside", that the world is "a dangerous and unhealthy place", sat well Jacobson confided. He looked forward now to overcoming his FOMO (fear of missing out) as "no one is having a better time than me". And perhaps most intriguingly, he admitted to living a lot in his head and currently writing "not a novel but a memoir".

Sandwiched between two wondrously inclusive and healing sessions of song, Nachamu Ami: Songs of Hope and Healing, led by Cantor Zoe Jacobs and Mich Samson, and a Sing-Along with Student Rabbi Anna Posner and Cantor Tamara Wolfson, there was a bit of a reality check. No Limmud would be complete without a session on the labyrinth that is Israeli politics. Mamash Balagan! offered a panel of four experts on 18 months of Israeli political chaos. Robin Moss expertly worked with a well-balanced quartet of commentators – Eylon Aslan Levy, Sara Hirschhorn, Simcha Rothman and Dhalia Scheindlin – to present to around 350 Limmudniks with an unsurprisingly sober reality check. Thank G-d for my last session, the singalong where the infectious joy of Cantor Tamara and Student Rabbi Anna and their enthusiastic fellow musicians left even this alto on a high note.

The entire day ran extraordinarily smoothly, thanks to the fantastic planning that went into it all, including the complicated technical set up. And of course it couldn't have happened without the dedication and resourcefulness of the team of volunteers moderating the sessions, organising Q&As and managing the virtual "queues". I guess we’ll meet again in the flesh eventually, but meanwhile – and perhaps even when we can get together for days of Limmud in the same venue again – let's not lose what we have found here. There is surely room for both: all the satisfaction of a Limmud Day out, but from the comfort of your home.

By Judi Herman

Header image © Limmud

Visit limmud.org to find future Limmud events, including more online activities.