This year was my first year that I went to Limmud put on by the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg. Now you may ask what is Limmud? Limmud is a volunteer run festival that celebrates Jewish learning, culture and more. The program took place at the Asper Campus. There are different speakers and activities that you can take part in. I went to three different programs: finding your spirit in clay, a silk painting kippot workshop and Judaism: a space odyssey. 

The clay workshop given by Tzaffi Weinberg started off with a few meditation techniques to get us relaxed, then we tried to form the clay behind our backs because the instructor said that it didn’t matter if we could see it because we had to shape it with an image from our mind. In this workshop I also made a clay kiddush cup. 

The next activity that I took part in was a painting kippot workshop lead by Channah Greenfield where you use a special glue to make a design on a kippah before painting it with dye and a paint brush. 

The last program that I went to was about keeping Jewish law (Halacha) in space. This workshop addressed the ideas of not being able to say daily prayers in space because a day in space passes in approximately ninety minutes, not being able to eat matzah in space because you are not allowed to have crumbs in a space shuttle and more! In my opinion this was the most interesting of all of the programs that I went to because the people that created this presentation had a passion for space and keeping their Jewish identity. Until that moment I hadn’t really been interested in the idea of space or astronomy but this really opened up a section of my thoughts that I hadn’t experienced before. In my opinion the beauty of Limmud is to go and enjoy yourself while also taking home an experience that you would not have otherwise experienced and also gaining knowledge about new things.

There were also many other courses that I did not go to such as a sushi workshop, Israel's relationships with Christians and much more variety. A few things that I would like to see next year at Limmud would be more students coming because this year it wasn’t like I didn’t have any friends there it is just that I think that the next generation in the Jewish community (Students around my age) would extremely benefit from experiencing this. Another thing that I would like to see next year are some more child friendly speeches because some of my peers went to other speeches than I did and they told me that at times they found that it didn’t make a lot of sense to them because they may not have been familiar with the topic. (Editor's note : Nathan reports that there were 4-5 kids his age at the event)

To sum up Limmud in a sentence or two: It was having a great experience with friends and I absolutely recommend everyone to attend next year!