Tenenbom said he believes Kahn-Harris “was afraid I would talk about self-hating Jews.”
Tenenbom told the JewishPress.com that during one of his talks when he discussed both growing anti-Semitism in Europe, in particular in Germany, and also in the United States, someone, “a former Limmud macher” started yelling at him: “you are a xenophobe, we regret you were invited.” That session was about Tenenbom’s next book which is based on his experiences traveling throughout the United States for six months.
“My findings were not what I expected.” Tenenbom said he was surprised to learn that there is a growing problem with anti-Semitism in America. What he found most frightening “was what Jews themselves are doing” the anti-Israel Jews, is what he means.
And with that, Tenenbom launched into what he saw as a huge problem with much of what took place at Limmud, not just with his own experience of being disinvited. Tenenbom said that people were verbally abusive towards him because he “dared to say negative things about Germany.”
“And they twisted my words, yelling at me that I said ‘Germans are born anti-Semitic,’ but what I said was that ‘the German culture is anti-Semitic.'”
“The loudest and the nastiest were the Brits and the Americans,” Tenenbom said. “They think you cannot criticize anything but Israel.”
“They were loud, nasty, ugly, they think they have manners, they think they are open-minded,” Tenenbom continued, “but only if you agree with them, can you talk.”
“We were in a Jewish setting and you can only criticize Israel,” Tenenbom said, “for me, that was the worst.”
After Tenenbom left the conference he said someone he thought was a Limmud trustee, Steven Fischer, told him he was removed from the JNEB session because he “criticized a European country.”
Kahn-Harris said he heard reports back from Tenenbom’s sessions. He said he heard there had been a lot of heckling and there were insults back and forth between Tenenbom and audience members. Others at the conference said Tenenbom’s behavior was shocking, although several said his sessions went very well, but things turned bad during the Question and Answer sessions. Kahn-Harris described the atmosphere as “turbulent.”
Tenenbom acknowledged that he did his fair share of the yelling, but people must not expect “if I treat you nicely, you’ll treat me badly and get away with it.” At one point Tenenbom said to an audience member who was attacking him, “from a fat man to a fat man, shut up!”
After the session, when many people left the room, Tenenbom said other audience members quietly came up to him and thanked him for not putting up with the abuse and for calling out the anti-Israel agitators.
“Kids were there, this is what they learn at a Jewish conference? That Israel is an evil occupier?,” Tuvia exclaimed.
Another participant at Limmud whose observation of at least some of the participants seemed to mirror Tenenbom’s was Ruthie Blum, an Israeli journalist and web editor of the Algemeiner. Blum wrote an article titled, “Defending Israel to Diaspora Jews at Limmud” shortly after her experience as a presenter at the same conference Tenenbom attended.
The bottom line for Kahn-Harris, as he repeated several times, is that what happened just wasn’t that big a deal. “It was blown up out of proportion.” According to Kahn-Harris, “Tuvia had several sessions and they were tough and he didn’t always get positive reactions, they didn’t all go smoothly and Tuvia felt quite wounded. Therefore the group I was putting together seemed to gain more importance.”