Australian Limmud Scraps Controversial Panel
Limmud Oz, an offshoot of the international festival of Jewish learning, cancelled a panel featuring several controversial Jewish speakers for its upcoming conference in Melbourne.
The Jewish panelists no longer speaking, though they initially appeared on the Limmud Oz website, include Vivienne Porzsolt, a spokeswoman for Jews Against the Occupation who was detained in Israel last year en route to the flotilla to Gaza, and who recently marched in Sydney alongside Hezbollah supporters; Avigail Abarbanel, who renounced her Israeli citizenship in 2001; and Dr. Peter Slezak, a co-founder of the far-left Independent Australian Jewish Voices.
Although Limmud Oz officials have declined to comment on the controversy, they appear to have decided that the panel about “Beyond Tribal Loyalties” – a new book of essays by dissenting Jewish peace activists from America, Israel, Australia and elsewhere – was beyond the pale because many of its speakers support boycotting Israel.
The program, which includes some 200 presentations from about 150 speakers, still includes sessions featuring the president of the Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network, a representative of the Islamic Council of Victoria, as well as a Palestinian academic.
The decision sparked mass debate in the blogosphere, with one blogger describing it as the latest example of a “culture of censorship within the Australian Jewish community,” while another defended Limmud Oz, saying it “includes sessions on the Holocaust, but need not include sessions that promote Holocaust denial.”
Limmud in Australia began in 1999 and now rotates annually between Sydney and Melbourne, drawing about 1,000 participants each year.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
