Torah Portion:	Yitro
Synagogue:	KOD@Mizrachi (Modern Orthodox)
Walking time from home:	20 minutes
Reason for going:	A call up
Kiddush:	N/a

After a wonderful celebratory Friday night communal Shabbat dinner at a very welcoming shule, I decided to go to Mizrachi on Shabbat morning. 

It is said that there are about 60 shules in Melbourne, but the truth is that there are actually quite a few more because that is the number of synagogue buildings, and doesn’t take into account the various congregations within each one. On the Mizrachi campus alone, on a Shabbat morning there are 4 services. One for early risers and then three more simultaneously. I went to Kehilat Ohr David, named after a young man who died, and mainly attended by young people in their 20s and 30s.

On this occasion, one of these young people was being called up ahead of his wedding, and though I don’t really know the couple, I know the groom’s parents and they invited me to the call up. Thus this week there were quite a few people much older than the usual crowd. Nonetheless, the vast majority of the congregants – this week and always – are from religious homes, mostly went to Jewish schools and have spent significant time in Israel. As such, they are very familiar with the way a shule service runs, and thus don’t want anything extraneous in their service.

Kehilat Ohr David therefore does not stand on ceremony. There’s no one that calls out page numbers or explains what each of the Torah readings is about. In fact, there was no announcements at all, but that is how the regular congregants like it. The service simply moves from one stage to the next with no fuss and at quite some speed. The only exception is that there is a sermon, and this week, a guest rabbi close with the engaged couple gave the sermon and related it both to the couple and the rest of the congregation. 

The portion of Yitro is famous for the Ten Commandments, which are contained within it, but other things happen too. One of those things is that Jethro (Yitro, the father-in-law of Moses) collects Moses’ entire family and brings them to Mt Sinai. The rabbi’s question was why? Why was Jethro the one that brought Moses’ family to him, and why weren’t they with him already?

One of the possible answers is that Moses was so preoccupied with being one of the greatest Jewish leaders, that he all but neglected his wife and kids. In fact, in another passage it says that Moses and his wife had separated. The task placed upon Moses was so important that he couldn’t think of anything else, including his own family. In a similar sense, there is a story told about Albert Einstein that claims that he was so intelligent and that all his brainpower was put into his theories, that he often wore mismatched shoes or socks. In other words, things that distracted him from his main task were unimportant. So too for Moses, but Jethro noticed this and didn’t want anyone to miss out on Moses’ big moment, so he arranged for them all to come to Moses.

The lesson for a couple about to get married, and for all of us, is that even if we get to the level of a Moses or an Einstein, we should still prioritise our family and our other interests, and never lose sight of the important things in life. They are not distractions but integral to our lives.

Once the sermon ended, the service continued as before, and though the community was then invited to a kidddush at the groom’s parents house, I went to another shule to meet friends, and arrived well before that service ended because of how quick the one at KOD had been.