Bumping Into People At LimmudLA

David Suissa nails it:

But as the sessions piled up and I had to make more tough choices and miss more great classes, a funny thing happened: I started getting interrupted. As I went from class to class, I kept meeting more and more people.

Soon the conversations themselves began to pile up. An impromptu talk about the state of Jewish education in Los Angeles with a macher from The Federation. Encounters with an Ashkenazi professor who is a world-renowned expert on the Sephardi world; with an educator in my neighborhood who gives bar and bat mitzvah lessons to autistic children; and with a filmmaker from Jerusalem who is studying and documenting the halachic dilemma of donating organs within the Orthodox community.

I met a woman studying to be a Conservative rabbi who organizes Friday night services where the prayer melodies are always changing, a physician who prescribes natural substances to balance brain chemicals, a meditation teacher who thinks Jews do way too much thinking, especially at places like Limmud, and a successful television writer from Hollywood who once saw something on a license plate that encouraged him to become Torah observant.

As I kept meeting more people and having these impromptu moments, it struck me that our lives are filled with great conversations that never happen. These are not conversations that call for a lunch or an appointment or even a phone call. They’re conversations that happen when you bump into people; the kind of conversations, perhaps, that you would see among people who live, shop and hang out in a close-knit neighborhood.

I did not even consult the program before signing up for LimmudLA. I went for the conversations, not the classes. The classes help set up a framework for meeting people with whom you share values. People were far friendlier than normal at LimmudLA, something I also notice in a good shul or in a yoga center. People feel safe and they open up. I do notice more reverence in a yoga center than at LimmudLA with respect to cell phones. No cell phone goes off when Guru Singh teaches.

About Luke Ford

I've written five books (see Amazon.com). My work has been covered in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and on 60 Minutes. I teach Alexander Technique in Beverly Hills (Alexander90210.com).
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