Sherman Community Lecture in Jewish Studies 2022

"The Jewel in the Crown of Anglo-Jewry? A History of Limmud"
Rabba Dr Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz (University of Manchester)

Time and date: 6 December 2022, 8pm (Zoom). 

ABSTRACT: Limmud was founded in 1980 by four enthusiasts, and its first conference attracted about 80 participants. It has now expanded to a worldwide movement, with Limmud events happening in 47 countries; in the UK, the annual Limmud Festival was attracting over 2,300 participants before the pandemic. How did we get from there to here? Dr Taylor-Guthartz’s research explores the background to Limmud’s beginnings, its unexpected transformation from an educators’ conference into a new type of Jewish community, and the major challenges posed to Limmud’s survival by the pandemic. She also examines the significance of Limmud for the British Jewish community, the successes and failures of its unique volunteer ethos - and the peculiar things that happen at Limmud to participants’ sense of time and place.

BIOGRAPHY: Rabba Dr Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz received her doctorate from University College London in 2016. She was a Research Fellow at the Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Manchester in 2020-22, and has also been a lecturer at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, SOAS, King’s College London, and Vassar College, New York. She has taught at the London School of Jewish Studies since 2005. In 2019 she founded the Pop-Up Beit Midrash, and in 2021 she received Orthodox rabbinic ordination from Yeshivat Maharat, New York. Her first book, Challenge and Conformity: The Religious Lives of Orthodox Jewish Women, was published by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in 2021.