One of the most anticipated, relevant and fashionable events on the Moscow Jewish calendar – Limmud Nobel Moscow – opened last night as over 500 participants gathered at the Polyana Holiday Hotel, some 40 kilometers from Moscow, for Moscow’s fourth Limmud program.

The central theme, as with all Limmud FSU events in 2010, is based on Jewish-Russian and Israeli Nobel laureates and their many global contributions since the first prizes were awarded in 1907. Limmud FSU has published a booklet in Russian and English giving details of 24 such laureates (available here shortly).

The conference, extending over three days, will encompass a wide variety of lectures, panels, workshops, film showings, and performances, on a vast range of subjects, such as preparing an Israeli breakfast, the Bible and Talmud, the Arab-Israel conflict, Russian Jewish theater, Israeli and Jewish dance, music and singing, arts and crafts, Jewish journalism, and the effects of the global economic crisis on the Jewish world.

Also participating in Limmud will be a large group of Israeli public figures who will join with their Russian colleagues in presenting, among them, Dalia Rabin and Zvia Walden-Peres. In addition, Herzl Makov, director of the Menachem Begin Heritage Foundation will speak about Begin and Yoram Dori, advisor to the President, will speak about Peres. The conference opening will be hosted by Kol Israel journalist and radio and television personality, Yaron Deckel, the newly named chair of Limmud FSU Israel. Video messages to the participants in the Conference from two other Nobel prize winners – Roald Hoffmann and Elie Wiesel – will be screened.

Matthew Bronfman, Chairman of the Limmud FSU Steering Committee, is a major supporter of the event, together with the Jewish Agency, the American Joint Distribution Committee, and foundations and organizations from all over the world. Bronfman is participating in the conference together with the young members and volunteers from the resurgent Jewish community of the Russian capital.

Limmud FSU (an offshoot of Limmud, founded in the UK some 30 years ago) is a unique international movement, founded in 2006 by Chaim Chesler, the purpose of which is to provide a widespread pluralistic social and communal educational and learning experience for young Russian-speaking Jewish people wherever they may be – in all the countries of Russia and the Former Soviet Union, in the USA and, of course, in Israel.

An event was recently held in Ukraine and additional Limmud FSU events this year are planned for Jerusalem, New York, Odessa and other centers of Russian-speaking young Jews.