Little did she know at the time, Deborah Silver’s first experience of Limmud at a conference in England changed her life. In 1999, Deborah’s cousin coaxed her, “Come on, it’s great! You know you want to!”
“Frankly, I couldn’t see what my cousin Susan was so enthusiastic about; what could possibly be so great about spending Christmas week on the campus of the University of Nottingham with a couple of thousand other Jews?” Deborah recalls. “Especially as I was already coming down with a cold. And the beds were like bananas. And the food ... don’t ask.”
At Limmud, Deborah realized that she had a Jewish community, even though she didn’t fit into any denomination at the time. She reconnected with people she hadn’t seen since childhood, and she learned to chant Torah in five days.
“My renewed interest in my Judaism as being rich and relevant to the life I was living also marked the beginning of my journey to the rabbinate,” says Deborah, rabbi at Shir Chadash Conservative Congregation in Metairie.
“Not everyone who goes to Limmud becomes a rabbi,” she says, with her tongue in her cheek. “But I believe profoundly in its power to advance us on our journeys, to help us question our preconceptions and to open us to conversations that never seem to occur elsewhere in the Jewish world.
“So come on, it’s great. You know you want to!” entices Rabbi Deborah Silver.
