(JTA) – Limmud Colorado, after several years of conferences, is shutting down.
The announcement appeared last week in the Boulder Jewish News.
“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to inspire a large enough and stable enough core community of volunteers to plan and run our annual conference, and each year we ended up with a small, passionate group of individuals doing the work of many,” said the item, which was signed by Gregg Drinkwater, David Shneer, Ed Sitver and Cynthia Weinger. “That model was not sustainable, and more important, it didn’t fit with the vision of Limmud as a community-led experience with content inspired by the entire community.”
They said the decision to shutter the annual confab was made last summer, though they didn’t share the news with the public until recently.
The volunteer-based Jewish learning festival debuted in England more than 25 years ago and has spread to dozens of cities around the world.
In Colorado, the last full Limmud conference took place in February 2013 in Englewood, a Denver suburb. The state’s first Limmud conference was held in 2008 in Keystone, about an hour and a half west of Denver.
The assets left in Limmud Colorado’s control were distributed to a small group of people who had received Limmud-inspired Jewish learning grants via the Rose Community Foundation or “shown their ability to transform Jewish life in the region, and to foster volunteerism and community engagement,” the announcement said.
Hundreds of people had participated in the state’s Limmud conferences, which were meant to foster “cross-communal conversation, Jewish engagement and Jewish learning,” according to organizers.
“We know so many of you have loved participating in Limmud and learning at Limmud events,” the group of four wrote in their announcement. “But without the year-round commitment of a solid group of dedicated volunteers, the annual conferences were becoming too stressful for those intimately involved in planning them and were not reflecting the Limmud commitment to grassroots leadership.”
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