I’m glad I don’t live in the North-East.
A search for "limmud" on Google News reveals zero coverage of this conference. Here are photos.
My experience of LImmudLA was the opposite of this. This year’s program should be no different.
Every LimmudLA program I’ve been to has been first rate — from the food to the drinks to the host homes to the presenters and the attendees.
Lilit Marcus writes for Jewcy:
It seems that Hayley and I made the right decision to leave when we did. My friend Dan Sieradski, who arrived Thursday evening in order to prepare for seminars he was going to teach and was put up in a nearby hotel when the Nevele’s boiler died, has been blogging and updating his Facebook page semi-regularly over the weekend. On his blog, he wrote:
As of Saturday evening, only some bedrooms had working heat (attendees have been squeezed into a limited number of heated bedrooms, with, in some cases, 5 to a room) and most classrooms are being heated by electric space heaters.
By visual estimate, more than half the participants — including featured presenters — have either left of didn’t bother showing up. And on Friday, event organizers sent frigid Shabbat-observant participants home with whole roasted chickens to compensate for the time they would not have to prepare dinner.
The kicker? Dan also noted that Limmud organizers – who are entirely volunteers – have stated that no one will get a refund for the lost weekend. I don’t think that’s going to sit well with the disappointed attendees who simply wanted to spend a weekend socializing, participating in panel discussions, and taking classes – and it certainly doesn’t sit well with me. According to Patrick, we weren’t the first people this winter who had called from the Nevele in a panic asking if he could get them to the bus station in time. In fact, there’s an entire website devoted to complaining about the Nevele’s poor service and outdated amenities. It also seems that a lack of heat is a semi-regular occurrence there.
"We arrived on Friday night and left on Saturday morning because of the filth — everywhere, multi-legged creatrues walking around in my room, no heat and a "too bad" response from "management," food which makes hospital food look like a 5-star restaurnant [sic], and a sense that the people working there really don’t care about the place or the guests."
