OPINION: Nobody told me there’s an Orthodox boycott of Limmud!

Rabbi Zvi Solomons

By Rabbi Zvi Solomons

I’m most disappointed. Nobody told me!

We’ve all heard of the Jewish conspiracy to rule the world, the Zionist plot to manipulate America. But why oh why was I excluded from the Cabal of Orthodox Rabbis who have been manipulating to bring down Britain’s premier Jewish experience for decades?

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Everybody knows Limmud is subversive. From the manner in which it mirrors the world outside of our ghetto, allowing almost anyone who is not from the Kabbalah Centre to present sessions.

We Orthodox rabbis are only too aware of the dangers of such an open system. The world itself is dangerous, a constant threat to the existence of Jews, and we must wall ourselves up in a ghetto of intellectual purity to avoid the challenges of modernity.

The presence of Progressve rabbis such as Danny Rich is but an indication of the subversive nature of this organisation. This is why, for the past two years, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has been boycotting Limmud by attending the December conference. His plan must have been effective because this year record numbers attended.

I myself have been regularly boycotting Limmud events up and down the country by presenting sessions, teaching Torah, and generally subverting the open format of the organisation for my own nefarious purposes.

And now Rabbi Rich tells me that this year, and perhaps others, I should have boycotted it like everybody else. My US and UK based colleagues rabbis Abel, Harris, Kaplan, Levy, Rosenfeld, and Zarum cannot possibly be as furious as I.

Here I am, a Limmudnik of 19 conferences, let alone all the other one day events I have helped organise, and only now he tells me I shouldn’t have been there!

Why wasn’t I consulted? Why wasn’t I on the list?

I noted the absence of several UK Reform rabbonim. Could Rabbi Rich’s Jewish News article possibly be a surreptitious diversion tactic to draw our attention away from the absence of such progressive luminaries as Rabbi Jonathan Romain? Could he too be in league with this cowardly boycott? He normally speaks at Conference!

Worst of all, I could have been spared the queueing, the bad food everyone used to moan about (it’s way better now), and all those sessions I presented, let alone the huge expense.

I will leave it to my colleagues to make their own feelings felt.

Thanks Danny, but couldn’t you have told me I wasn’t supposed to be there, or I was just being foolhardy all those years ago?

It makes you weep!

Rabbi Solomons of JCoB, [the Jewish Community of Berkshire in Reading] has presented more than 100 Limmud sessions since his first Conference in 1997