So I just went to my first session here at LimmudNY 2011. It was called Relationships and Sexuality Consumerist Culture Creating a Contemporary Sexual Ethic (I assume there are supposed to be some colons in there, but they aren’t in the program). It was a good session—an interesting discussion of the economics of relationships, hookups, sex and FWB (friends with benefits). The teacher tried to bring in some traditional sources, and at the end she read a quote from a 14th century Jewish commentator, but honestly, I don’t think any of those sources had anything particularly helpful to say in this context. It was a good discussion that didn’t really need any Jewish texts to make it great. (Also, in my opinion, it was pretty heavy on the “Kids these days with their cell phones and their facebook!” rhetoric.)
One of the amazing things I’ve found about Limmud is that there’s so many great people here that I inevitably have awesome conversations with people, in and out of sessions. But it makes me kind of sad, because some of the conversations, like the one about sexuality, or one I had last year about education and schooling, are not specific to Jews at all. I wish there was a way for me to meet lots of non-Jews and have these kinds of discussions with a wider range of people. That said, I’ll take a great weekend with smart interesting people in Hudson Valley for now.
