Over a month has passed since my super-short visit to the City of the Angels as a participant in the three-day Jewish marathon known as “LimmudLA”. Only now, while enjoying a hour-long break from all the chaos and the traffic of Mexico City, can I finally think about how this weekend visit to Jewish LA has influenced me.

Limmud LA is a melting pot for all types of Jews, ranging from Israeli ultra-Hassidic black-hat Orthodox Jews to the San Francisco flower-power renewal Jews. The spectrum is so wide that it doesn´t even matter if someone considers himself Jewish or not, since the very definition of “Jewish” is a topic that remain in constant discussion. Everyone (and by “everyone,” I really mean everyone) came together to learn from each other, under the tenet that every Jew can say something of importance about Judaism regardless of their age, background, sex, gender or political views.

The result of this horizontal and egalitarian take on Jewish education is an all-day, ongoing series of debates and chats that prolong themselves into the wee-hours of the morning, giving new meaning to the words “Jewish discussion” (and boy, do we know what those words mean!).

I had heard much about Limmud from fellow ROIers, and a few weeks before the conference I was both expectant and eager about submerging myself in the eclectic waters of the Jewish sub-culture of LA. The interesting thing about my eagerness was that, locally, I was among the very few who felt it. There was an noticeable lack of Mexicans (three or four, tops) in the actual convention. Which, in a sense, was both an advantage and a drawback.

I participated as a speaker in the “Innovation Ecosystem” series, a panel organized by Joshua Avedon, from Jumpstart, that managed to gather the directors and promoters of many new Jewish grassroots organizations, from Moishe House to IKAR. It was interesting to hear, in the same panel that I was on,  Sam Yerbi, Melissa Balaban and Dov Gartenberg, whose innovative work was truly a source of motivation (even if it takes places so far away from where I usually am).

But what impressed me the most was the fact that people of all ages and backgrounds got so psyched about all the new NGOs that were setting up shop in Mexico City. Both the Jewish Salons and Moishe House are initiatives that seem to spark an almost immediate interest in any crowd: however, when it comes to these initiatives setting up on Latin American soil (not to mention, in the “dark” and “scary” environment of Mexico City), the interest doubles, as if doing something innovative and Jewish in Spanish was something out-of-this-world. I felt extremely exotic.

I particularly enjoyed meeting fellow ROIer Matt Bar, who, apart from having an incredible project called Bibleraps [LimmudLA reflections by project founder Matt Bar to come later this week], is also a major in philosophy who's obsessed, as I am, with Nietzsche (and his relationship with the Jews). I can already see most of the discussions we had during those days somehow filtering and impregnating the whole vibe of our local Jewish Salons events.

The metaphor, so popular nowadays, of intellectual (and international) cross-pollination, has helped me understand the importance of contemporary communications and multicultural dialogue on an intimate and much more personal level. This is one of the key concepts that has been engraved in my mind since the ROI Summit of last summer and I think that the Jewish Salons project makes a pretty good job of taking this concept to another level. This is why even LA Jews were so drawn to the whole idea of Salons (even if it´s not meant for the US): it´s an open opportunity to connect their take on local Judaism with the wide, plural array of cultural (and Jewish) manifestations taking place in the rest of the world.

Alan Grabinsky attended the 2010 LimmudLA conference in February, with assistance from the ROI Community Speakers' Bureau Fund.

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