My Excellent Sydney Adventure: Part 1

Posted at 9:30 PM, Wednesday, June 13, 2007

I returned last night from a whirlwind 4 days in Sydney. Literally as well as figuratively. My plane landed on Saturday in the midst of a natural disaster: very heavy rain and very high winds lashed Sydney and particularly the areas to its north for four days, killed at least nine people, and did up to $200 million in damage. Visit Phillip Adam's immensely entertaining commentary on the storm to learn how regions that had been drought-stricken for years are now under water. As he writes, "...our sad gutter of a river is roaring, fighting its way through the 6 meter she-oaks that took the opportunity to grow between its banks. You know it's dry when a riverbed turns into a forest."

I am not a nervous air traveler, but I admit I was very anxious about this particular flight. All was well until the last ten minutes. The co-pilot came over the PA system to announce that we could look forward to 60 kmh winds as we neared our destination. I closed my eyes and waited for it to be over. I never noticed before just how long it takes once you hit the runway for the plane to actually start to slow down. As we finally gained control over the plane's speed, the flight crew invited a round of applause for the pilot, and we all enthusiastically complied.

I didn't get to see much of Sydney for the first 48 hours I was there. The precipitation alternated between a light drizzle and a full-on downpour, with sheets of rain often blown sideways by the gale-force winds. Quite a welcome to one of the most renowned cities on earth. A good thing my primary goal in making the trip wasn't tourism!

I had come to Sydney to attend Limmud Oz--Australia's annual festival of Jewish learning and culture. The original Limmud is held in the darkest days of winter in Great Britain each year and attracts thousands of people for hundreds of presentations. Australia's version is more modest but still quite impressive: 800 people attended, and twelve presentations were held every hour between 9:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. during the two days. The level of teaching was very high, and I found the whole experience to be revitalizing. In particular, I attended three wonderful sessions taught by Peta Jones Pellach, director of Adult Education at the Shalom Institute. She is a modern Orthodox woman whose teaching style is absolutely as modern as it is Orthodox. I made it to two of her three lessons on "David's Women," plus a class on Esther's varying identities that she co-taught with her sister. Other great sessions were the three very different classes I attended taught by educator Paul Forgasz, and a very stimulating hour with the fabulous Amy-Jill Levine--a Jewish woman who teaches New Testament to Christian divinity students at Vanderbilt University. Go figure!

What was not to like about Limmud? The conference met at Moriah College--a Jewish day school with more students than Adelaide has Jews. The campus was huge, damp, and very cold. Like most places on Sydney, Moriah was unheated, and we all shivered together through the rainy first day. I waited in the cafeteria line for twenty minutes for pumpkin soup and bread, sat myself down in the chilly cafeteria, and felt grumpy. At least the sun came out for the second day. The only real meeting place was the cavernous gym, which wasn't exactly condusive to lingering conversations. But for the most part, it was a really good time, and I urge all of you Aussie Jews out there to put it on your calendar for next June.

By the way, the occasion for the conference was the Queen's Birthday Weekend, including a day off on Monday. A very small amount of research reveals that Queen Elizabeth's birthday is actually April 21. Apparently, the weather is so terrible for the queen's real birthday that it has been rescheduled to the second Monday in June. I think it's very classy to have one's birthdate changed during one's lifetime, don't you?