CJFS CARES Respite Is Growing!

Registration open for Limmud New Orleans

Registration is open at limmudnola.org for LimmudFest New Orleans, a regional weekend of Jewish learning, and after Mardi Gras the schedule of over 70 sessions is set to be released.

To learn about volunteering at CARES, email lise@cjfsbham.org or call 205.879.3438

To learn if CARES is right for your loved one, email pam@cjfsbham.org or call 205.960.3411

Local, regional and national presenters, all of whom are volunteering their time, will speak on a wide range of subjects, with sessions for all ages and levels of Jewish knowledge.

The festival will be March 17 to 19, with Shabbat events at Gates of Prayer in Metairie and Sunday sessions at the Uptown Jewish Community Center. For those around the region wishing to attend, home hospitality can be arranged, within walking distance if needed.

Organizers have been releasing two presenter profiles weekly.

Mikhl Yashinsky will present “Laughter, Tears, Curtain: A Yiddish Theatre Workshop” and “Reporting Live from Yiddishland.” With the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, he performed in the Yiddish-language “Fiddler on the Roof” and in “The Sorceress,” for which the New York Times hailed him for bringing a “keen, if malevolent, psychology” to the title role. He is the coauthor of “In eynem: The New Yiddish Textbook.”

In 2019, he was named to the Forward 50, the newspaper’s annual list of “influential, intriguing, and inspiring” American Jews.

Merissa Nathan Gerson is the author of “Forget Prayers, Bring Cake: A Single Woman’s Guide to Grieving.” She was the intergenerational trauma consultant to Amazon’s hit show “Transparent” and has had writing featured in the New York Times, Playboy Magazine, Atlantic, Elle.com, Tablet Magazine, Lilith Magazine, and beyond. After releasing a 2018 ELI Talk on consent and Talmud, she founded www.KenMeansYes.org to address the need for consent education in Jewish spaces. Gerson is Visiting Assistant Professor of Communication at Tulane University, and will lead “Grief and Joy: On Mourning in 2023.”

Early-bird adult registration through Feb. 22 is $100 for the weekend, $65 for Sunday only. Young adult passes are $50 for the weekend and $36 for Sunday, for ages 30 and under. A children’s pass for ages 3 to 18 is $18, and ages 0 to 3 are free. Rates will increase after Feb. 22.

There is also a Limmud Boneh (Builder) level at $180, which includes a Zoom session the week before LimmudFest with Rabbi Yaffa Epstein.