Limmud Day, Brighton, 29 March 2009

Shivaun and I turned up at this year's Limmud Day. The event was sold out well in advance and the number and variety of presenters were formidable. We kinda squeaked in when Shivaun spoke to the organisers a few weeks before the event, and were, quite last minute, assigned a slot to show our 30-minute documentary Surviving History and for Shivaun to give a presentation. She spoke briefly about her research project and gave a short talk on the history of Jews in Lithuania, trying to squish hundreds of years of history into a 20-minute session. The room was packed and people drifted in well after the talk had started and there was only standing room available. It was very touching to hear afterwards that some had been moved to tears, another said, "I could have listened all day," as he had found it fascinating. Most of the audience, like those we had met at the talk at AJR in February this year, commented that much less is known about East European Jewish experience, on account of the Iron Curtain and decades of Soviet rule; so for them, this was quite revelatory. Which kinda sealed it for us, that despite the fact that much has been written and discussed about the Holocaust, there is room for much more, especially when it comes to personal experience and recollection, which are unique to the individual. Kinda like finding the particular within the universal; the human and the individual within the historical.

Then we squished in to hear Julie Birchell speak. I don't know anything about her, but she seemed very popular; the room was literally bursting at the seams. Her comments both shocked me as well as touched me. (You can read a bit about the session here.) Later I got the rundown and realised why she was so well known, she is, as she herself claims, to be a 'philo-semitic'. Which left me wondering whether one needs to take an extreme stand in order to be heard? If you are quite objective and empathetic, do you come across as a fence-sitter, and will others ride roughshod over your opinions? I still haven't come to a conclusion...