Source: Jerusalem Post
Over 1000 participants attended the Limmud FSU mega conference in Yalta between October 27-30 for a celebration of Jewish learning and culture, The Yalta Hotel, a 2,000-bed mega-hotel, taken over by the event, housed over 170 events offered by 150 presenters, and all organized by a committee of 20.
The program included making Shabbat candle sticks and Jewish genealogy. Singer Neshama Carlebach gave an insight into the musical journey of her father, the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, while Ukrainian historians looked into the Ukrainian national movement and the Jews during World War II.
Other lectures dealt with the role of women in Judaism; the Jewish religion through the eyes of Christianity; and a look at the remaining Jewish community in the Crimea.
The ideology and doctrines of Israel's political parties were examined and a lecture on the paradoxes of the artist Marc Chagall, and an in-depth look at Jewish cinema were some of the other choices.
The Jewish Agency was responsible for all the technical and electronic equipment, flights, buses and cars for lecturers including buying and transporting 5,000 plates, cups and bowls from Kiev.
An army of volunteers greatly contributed to the success of Limmud including getting participants to lecture halls on time through the rush on the elevators.
The kosher food for the event was brought in from Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine's third largest city situated 600 km. north of Yalta. Along with it came seven kashrut supervisors recruited from the Chabad community in Dnepropetrovsk who made the Yalta's kitchen kosher.
Future sessions of Limmud FSU are planned in June, 2009 in Vitebsk, Belarus, birthplace of Marc Chagall and in October, 2009 in Odessa to commemorate 150 years since the birth of Shalom Aleichem.