Six members of the WJC Jewish Diplomatic Corps gathered in Birmingham, England lastweek for the Limmud UK Festival, a five-day event that offered hundreds of sessions by educators, artists, and performers from across the Jewish world. Members of the delegation came from Mexico, the United States, Argentina, Canada, Israel, and Turkey.
The festival, which primarily focused on empowering young Jewish leaders and promoting a positive view of Jewish communities as a mechanism to combat antisemitism, provided an opportunity for members of the JDCorps to connect with fellow community leaders from around the world.
Among several highlights was a talk led by Yitzchak von Schweitzer entitled “Surviving Hitler: My Personal Story.” While participants may have expected to hear about the testimony of a survivor, his story had a twist. Schweitzer was a member of the Waffen-SS during the war. Later in life, while living in South Africa, he converted to Judaism and today lives as an Orthodox Jew in the United Kingdom.
Representing the WJC at the conference were Randall Fried, Rabbi Eliahu Carvajal, Inbal Freund, Ela Cenudioğlu, Liat Sadovitch Garduño, and Shayna Wise-Till. The WJC delegation presented a talk on “Jewish Diplomacy and Advocacy: Advancing Jewish Interests on the World Political Stage.”
In addition to the presentation by the WJC team, there were a wide variety of other tracks and events from which to choose, on topics such as arts and culture, modern society and social change, and science and technology.
