Limmuded Edition

The frozen chosen dance a hora to keep their spirits high and their bodies warm. More photos here.

[UPDATED] This post has been updated to correct erroneous information.

I’m at the Nevele Grand Hotel in the Borscht Belt for Limmud NY, where the boiler went bust on the eve of the conference leaving hundreds of attendees with limited heat and hot water throughout the duration of the weekend.

As of Saturday evening, only some bedrooms had working heat (attendees have been squeezed into a limited number of heated bedrooms, with, in some cases, 5 to a room) and most classrooms are being heated by electric space heaters.

According to organizers, roughly one-third one-fourth of the participants (700 out of 900) — including some featured presenters — have either left or didn’t bother showing up. (This official estimate is based not on the number of check-ins, but the number of empty seats in the dining room during one meal. This, to me, seems to be an exceptionally flawed system of measurement.) And on Friday, event organizers sent frigid Shabbat-observant participants home with whole roasted chickens to compensate for the time they would not have to prepare dinner.

Seeing as how organizers say that refunds will not be issued, it better have been the tastiest chicken ever. After all, it cost about $1000.

[UPDATE 1/22] Limmud organizers have told The Fundermentalist (who will have a story up on the subject later today) that some refunds may be issued once matters are rectified with the Nevele, against whom they are pursuing legal options. They also deny ever stating that refunds would not be issued, though I must then wonder why I witnessed a Limmud board member explicitly tell one indignant attendee that they would not. I also think that whichever LimmudNY staffer spoke to Lilit at Jewcy didn’t help matters when he or she expressed hope that no one would request a refund because Limmud “is a fundraising organization.” That said, I do apologize for giving the impression that I had received an official statement from LimmudNY on the matter, because I did not.

I also apologize for previously mentioning only the downside to this year’s LimmudNY in my tweets and in this post, because despite the craziness, there were a lot of great people, great classes and fun times to be had. Though I froze my keister off for a day-and-a-half and was disappointed with the turnout to my first two classes — which I chalk up to unintentionally crummy scheduling — I still had an enjoyable time and appreciated the efforts of the LimmudNY staff to make the best of an extraordinarily shitty situation. I did not leave this event with a negative impression of Limmud so much as a negative impression of the Nevele, and I am sorry if my posts came across otherwise.

I hope they’ll have me back next year so that I can experience Limmud under normal circumstances, whereas I’d prefer to spend a weekend blogging only about how awesome it is. I still think they’re a great organization and that Limmud itself is a fantastic event. The situation this weekend was just incredibly unfortunate. I hope they come out on the other end of this a stronger organization, with more experience in handling such difficult and unexpected scenarios.