COSTA MESA, Calif. (JTA) — It was the Karlin-Stoliner rabbis in the Havdalah congo line that had everyone buzzing.
Sure, there were great workshops, spirited davening, morning yoga and late-night shmoozing, and all the other multigenerational, multidenominational, plura-palooza that Jews in the know have come to expect from the Jewish learning extravaganza known as Limmud, which made its Los Angeles debut this past weekend.
But of the dozens of sessions that took place over three days — from a midnight screening of the low-budget Chasidic zombie movie “Night of the Living Jews” to Deborah Lipstadt’s Sunday morning talk on Holocaust denial — what stuck in the minds of many of the 650 participants was the two Chasidic guys in their long black coats and fur shtreimels.
There they were Saturday night, marking the end of Shabbat with hundreds of other men, women and children in a raucous outdoor celebration, complete with drumming, dancing and top-of-the-lungs singing next to the parking lot of the Costa Mesa Hilton.
“I knew what I was getting into and I still wanted to come, because I love all Jews,” said Rabbi Moshe Shapoff, who traveled to Limmud LA from his Israeli home in the Jerusalem suburb of Givat Zeev, where he co-founded a vocational school for haredi youth.
“I was literally in tears seeing all those Jews dancing together. At the end of the day, it’s not what we wear, but that one soul touches another,” he said.
That’s a big part of what the British-based, volunteer-driven Limmud is about: Jews of all stripes and ages coming together to study, worship and learn from each other.
Although world-class rabbis, scholars and literary figures show up to lead sessions, they don’t get paid, and they’re expected to stick around and learn with everyone else. People pick and choose from dozens or hundreds of offerings, sharing ideas that span the denominational and the political spectrum.
Where else would one see yarmulke-wearing grandfathers and teens with pierced eyebrows enjoying the same midnight concert of New Jewish music?
