In the land of fog

England is enveloped in fog this holiday season. It sticks to the ground in the cold night air, so thick you can't see 50 meters ahead on a 150-kilometer drive northward from London's Heathrow Airport to the outskirts of Coventry. Along the way, coalescing out of the fog like carefully orchestrated cinematic hints, road signs offer up town names that are unabashedly lyrical to an American ear: Abingdon, Weston-on-the-Green, Oxford, Banbury, Little Chesterton and Stratford-Upon-Avon.
 
The pervasive quaintness of all things English has been drilled into the American mind at every opportunity, from the strange notion of the 16-country "realm" over which Queen Elizabeth II presides to the Hollywood portrayals of English countryside cabins set in lush green valleys (during, one assumes, some unknown English season not dominated by fog or snow) and sometimes occupied by plucky, furry-footed adventurers.
 
But, as with many of life's assumptions, these whimsical notions of "Englishness" on this, my first visit to the British Isles, are misleading, if only because everything I am here to see is new.
 
Limmud Conference 2007 is the latest incarnation of a quarter-century-old annual tradition of British Jewry. Begun as a program for upgrading the Jewish educators in a country that lost almost 40 percent of its Jews to assimilation since the 1960s, Limmud is becoming the non-hierarchical battle cry of a generation of British Jewry.

'Adapting to a very changed world'

In just under a week, the biggest annual event in the Jewish world - at least in terms of donor money and activist causes represented - will take place in the unlikely venue of Music City USA, more commonly known as Nashville, Tennessee.

Practically, the annual three-day General Assembly of the North American Jewish federation system will bring together the Jewish world's major donors, both institutions and individuals, with many of the activists and thinkers in Jewish life in North America and Israel. The event is well-publicized, with appearances expected from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, along with MKs, Tennessee's governor and many others.

But, according to Joe Kanfer, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the United Jewish Communities, the federation umbrella organization holding the event, the GA will be about something much more down-to-earth and practical. In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Kanfer promised the GA will be about creating and disseminating practical ideas for improving Jewish life in the communities the UJC represents.