Torah Portion:	Bo
Synagogue:	Chabad St Kilda
Walking time from home:	35 mins
Reason for going:	An invitation / close to the beach
Kiddush:	Sit down meat lunch

Melbourne has an uncanny ability to support and sustain a surprisingly vast number of shules. I’ve said it before but it never ceases to amaze me, especially since every now and then I hear of new shules popping up, especially Chabad ones. About three years ago this happened in St Kilda, a suburb that is already teeming with shules and Jews. The task of setting up such a shule was given to a young, dynamic local rabbi, and the initial shule was moderately successful but in an area in the middle of the suburb that was hard to get to. Since then, the rabbi and his family have moved into a much larger house, about as close the beach as I can imagine anyone can live. Within a minute of leaving the house, after negotiating traffic, you can be touching the sand.

But that the rabbi and his family don’t live there because of the beach; they live there because their goal is to attract Jews. It is true that there are at least a few other shules within a short walking distance, but as one of the suburbs with a large number of Jews, are all of them engaged or attendees of those shules? Apparently not, and that is why this shule and Chabad centre was set up. I first encountered the shule and the rabbi on Chanukah a couple of years ago, when he arranged for large candelabras to be placed in iconic sites across the suburb (like in front of Luna Park). I have since been to a Shabbat dinner at the house, where he told me about the shule service and urged me to come, especially in summer. So this week, with nowhere else to go, that is where I went.

I arrived a little after 10am, and though there were 8 males sitting around the dining table, it didn’t look like the start of the service was imminent. They were all reading or engaged in conversation. The rabbi said that last week for the first time in months, there was no Minyan, so this week he invited a few teenagers from Yeshiva to join them. As it happened, with myself and some other non-regulars, there were actually 14 men a few minutes later, but the boys kindly stayed for the whole service. Apart from the Chabad boys and one other Chabad guest, the rabbi didn’t know the religious leanings of the rest of us so he ran the service on the assumption that not everyone reads or understands Hebrew and that not everyone needs to read every word. As such, sections were skipped and other bits were read out loud in English by the attendees. The rabbi enthusiastically exclaimed that this is probably the most interactive service in town, especially since we were sitting around the dining room the whole time and it felt very homely. In that sense he might be right, but ironically because we skipped so much, the Chabad boys didn’t join in with us and prayed at their own slower pace, plus bizarrely, there was a lot more English throughout the service than in most reform shules. However, unlike in other shules, there were no women. The rabbi’s wife dipped in and out in between motherly duties, whilst the only other woman was the non-Jewish housemaid who was busy in the kitchen the whole time.

Like in most such places, the rabbi conducted most of the service, and though he officially appointed one of the Chabad boys to be the Chazan, he still explained every section, told us what and when to skip, and was the reader of the Torah. He also chose who to call up and recited all the communal prayers. Because of the interactive nature, there was talking throughout the service, but not in an interruptive kind of way. Congregants asked questions or discussed issues as a result of what the rabbi said and thus there was no sermon, but there was a discussion about the portion of the week, and especially about the end of the ten plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea, as well as about Passover. Moreover, in the Chabad doctrine, this was considered an auspicious Shabbat because it marks the date that the Rebbe took over the mantle as leader of the Chabad movement, and also the date of the Yahrzeit of one of the previous leaders. There was thus a more sumptuous lunch than usual, with multiple course and much more discussion, and overall, there was a fun and welcoming spirit.