This morning, 2,500 people will be checking out of the halls of residence of Warwick University and heading home after five days free of carol songs and mince pies.

They are the participants at this year’s Limmud conference, the world’s biggest Jewish educational get-together and one that is neatly scheduled over the Christmas break.

Limmud, run almost entirely by volunteers, has grown from small beginnings in 1980 – when the present, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, was one of the first attendees – into a startlingly rich programme of nearly 800 seminars, workshops, gigs, debates, films and outings. Sessions start at 8am and finish sometime past midnight – after which the bar stays open and there are plenty of opportunities to schmooze into the early hours.

This year, sessions have ranged from debates about prayer and intermarriage to seminars on the Palestinian cause and a presentation about Israel’s Jewish/Arab version of Sesame Street. There have been plenty of erudite – and measured – responses to Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion. There was even a scratch performance of Fiddler on the Roof, cast on Sunday and performed last night.

And across all five days volunteers took turns working shifts at a local drop-in for homeless people. So many Jews in one place can, by everyone’s admission, become a little argumentative. But, as one delegate put it, running between a talk on mathematics and the Talmud and a session on environmentalism, that shouldn’t put nonJews off.

“At Limmud,” he said, “everyone is welcome. You just need to be ready to be shocked into a new way of thinking.”

Which sounds a lot more stimulating than rummaging around the bottom of the Quality Street tin while waiting for yet another repeat of Only Fools and Horses to pop up on UKTV Gold.

Limmud: 020-8438 6555; www.limmud.org

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