Marc Brettler, JPS author, guest blogs about his LimmudPhilly experience.
Scholarship is a very lonely venture—just me and my books. I often wonder: Does anyone care? But whenever I go to Limmud, my spirits are buoyed.
http://www.limmudphilly.org/
I just returned from LimmudPhilly—my third Limmud experience, though my first in the US. (I earlier spoke at the first Limmud held in Cambridge, England, and at the big Limmud in the UK.) What a blast. Not only did I enjoy seeing old friends, colleagues, and former students, but I made new friends, and saw that people actually do care about the Bible, which I taught.
My first session was something new for Limmud—a class where knowledge of Hebrew was assumed, so we could look together at some of the Psalms traditionally recited on Friday night at synagogue, trying to figure out why there were chosen as Sabbath psalms. Given that Hebrew knowledge was expected, I thought I would have a handful of participants—but I had many more, and together we puzzled through parts of Psalms 92 an 93.
Sunday was even more of a surprise—Limmud has many simultaneous sessions, and I was talking about “How the Bible Became the Bible” opposite Ruth Messinger, who was discussing social justice. I would have gone to Ruth’s session! I had people sitting on the floor, asking the best questions I had ever been asked after I finished my talk. There certainly are demographic reasons to be worried about the American Jewish community. But my experiences at Limmud and other adult Jewish education venues, and the interest in my books The Jewish Study Bible, How to Read the Bible, and How to Read the Jewish Bible, have made me much more optimistic about the Jewish future in America. We may be decreasing numerically, but there is a solid and growing core who cares in a variety of serious ways about what it means to be Jewish, about who we are as Jews, and about continuing formal and informal Jewish education. It is this group, who was well-represented at LimmudPhilly, who sit before my mind’s eye as I continue to write on Jewish topics.
Marc Brettler is Dora Golding Professor of Biblical Studies at Brandeis University.
