Shavuot (2 days of Yom Tov)

Day 1 (morning): Mizrachi; Day 2 (morning): Sassoon Yehuda Sephardi

Across the two days of the Yom Tov of Shavuot (which included Shabbat), I went to four different synagogues for four different services (Thurs night, Fri morning, Fri night and Sat morning). Each was very different, but in their own right interesting and inspiring.

I started at South Caulfield shule, where I went to support my friend who was on a panel later in the night, but in the meantime we had a lovely dinner, listened to a fascinating speech by a convert to Judaism, then a comedy routine and then there was a panel about organ donation from a Jewish perspective. It turns out that in most cases, it is allowed and is even encouraged. My friend was then on a panel about the upcoming referendum on the Voice for Indigenous Australians, and despite the potential controversies that such a topic often induces, it was lovely to discuss it in such a lovely and respectful way, with insightful questions and answers.

I later went to some other panels and lectures until I met another friend and we ended up chatting together and with other people much of the rest of the night at Mizrachi, with people all around us, until the early morning service soon after 6am. Given the hour, it was one of the most no-nonsense services I have ever been to, but we still got through the Ten Commandments and all the other elements of a regular service on a festival. The rest of the day was all about sleep!

On Friday night I was invited to the ARK in East Hawthorn, about an hour’s walk from home. Though I have been there on many occasions, I am yet to go there on a Shabbat morning, but I was excited to come for this Shabbat and Shavuot dinner because there were two very special guests in attendance. They were two fathers visiting from Israel, one Jew and one Palestinian, both of whom have lost a child in the conflict between their two nations. They are now ‘brothers’, as they said, and spend most of their time travelling around Israel and the rest of the world spreading their message of love and peace.

It was not only a privilege to hear them, share a meal with them and the rest of the guests, but each of the guests was interesting in their own right. It wasn’t a huge crowd for dinner so there was time and opportunity for each person to introduce themselves. Within the crowd there were two MPs, several Muslims, numerous Christians and of course the rest were Jews. One was a climate change musician, and once she said that, there was a musical interlude where she taught us a song about carbon reduction. It was by far the most unexpected moment of the night, but also a wonderful and necessary antidote to the stories we heard about murder and terrorism. All in all, I was very grateful to have been invited and to have heard the very positive and encouraging stories emanating from the land that I recently returned from.

On Shabbat morning I went to the Sassoon Yehuda Sephardi shule, very soon after my last visit there a couple of months ago, but this time for a very specific reason. Following my last visit, I became friendly with the president of the congregation, so knowing that I had recently participated in March of the Living, she invited me to be the guest speaker at the lunch after the service, where I had the chance to talk about some of my experiences. Although it was still Shavuot, the meal was meat rather than dairy – as is the Sephardi tradition, but I didn’t mind because I had a lot of cheesecake (my favourite type of cake) over the previous few days. It was also a lovely crowd with some familiar faces, and at one point I made some of the congregants cry with some of the stories I told, but in a good way. They felt the emotion I tried to relay, which I think means that I told the stories well.

All in all it was a busy few days, and I am now looking forward to a regular Shabbat next week.