Torah Portion:	Matot-Masei
Synagogue:	St Kilda Shule, traditional orthodox
Walking time from home:	A little over 20 mins
Reason for going:	I was the guest speaker
Kiddush:	Diverse, plentiful

The goal of this blog is to allow me the opportunity to visit as many shules as possible and to experience the diversity of synagogue practices, particularly in Melbourne. Each week I try to go to a different one, unless I have a compelling reason to come back to one that I have already been to. This week there was such a reason, which was that I was invited to be a guest speaker – to talk about my recent March of the Living experience in Poland and Israel.

St Kilda shule is one of the old, traditional ones in town. Though it has a large membership and beautiful, updated facilities, it has a relatively small crowd on Shabbat morning when there is no simcha. On such rare occasions when there is nothing else going on, they often invite members of the broader Melbourne Jewish community to speak about something interesting, and having already done so in other shules over the last two months, the rabbi invited me to be the speaker this week. I readily agreed, but it was only after I agreed that I realised that I would be ‘competing’ with Rabbi Lau, the former Chief Rabbi of Israel, who was in town and speaking at another shule up the road. I was certain the crowd at St Kilda would have been even smaller than usual on a non-simcha week, but I needn’t have worried. There were at least 70-80 people, which was a very decent number according to the rabbi and board.

Before it was my turn to speak, the rabbi gave an interesting and relevant sermon, bookended by melodious tunes from the choir. The double portion this week closes out the book of Numbers and is therefore a final section about the journeys of the people, beginning with a listing of all the tribes. The rabbi said that in Hebrew, there are two words that mean tribe, and although they are often used interchangeably throughout the Torah and this portion, there is a subtle difference between the two. Both words are derived from words meaning the branch of a tree, but one implies that the branch is still attached to the tree and therefore still alive and malleable, whereas the other implies that it is no longer connected and therefore stiff and brittle. The point is that sometimes the tribes, and we as people, need to be absolutely certain of our path, and sometimes we can be a bit more flexible and adaptable. The key is to know which one to be when, which is why it seems that the words are used interchangeably, but in reality they are used to teach a very specific lesson.

My talk later was about my experiences as a participant in a very impactful program that I am still processing. In a way, it reinforced some of my learnings and beliefs, but in other ways, it opened my eyes to new experiences and new ways of seeing people and the world. This was the third time that I have spoken in a public forum about my experiences on the program, and though I have essentially shared the same stories and anecdotes each time, each experience has also been different. I have grown more confident in my telling, and I have phrased certain experiences in new and different ways. I have also focussed on some issues more than on others based on the setting, and the questions too have also been very different on each occasion, meaning that as always, the story may be the same, but everyone hears it differently. In a way, I have lived the notion of the two meanings for the same word. I have told the same story, but have adapted it slightly each time, and that is what always happens – everything is always about the setting and the circumstances. 

Which is why I agreed to come back to St Kilda this time, and I will be back at this shule in a month or so for another occasion, and also why I will be back at another shule I have already visited next week. The buildings may be the same each time, but the experience is always different, as is the intention.