Torah Portion:	Behalotcha
Synagogue:	Bentleigh Chabad
Walking time from home my sister’s:	Almost 30 minutes
Reason for going:	Nostalgia and something different
Kiddush:	Sit down kiddush with cholent and soup

After a lovely Shabbat dinner with family and friends at my sister’s house, I wanted to go to a shule on Saturday morning that was not too far away. Bentleigh Chabad is one of the oldest suburban Chabad houses in Melbourne, and for me it has special resonance. During my adolescence, my family lived less than a 15 minute walk away from Bentleigh Chabad, and for a number of years until my early 20s, that is where I went most weeks after I started going to shule regularly. I haven’t been back for the better part of 25 years and didn’t really even know how to get there because my sister’s family lives on the other side of Bentleigh, but once I got near, it all looked very familiar.

The outside of the shule building hasn’t changed much, and even the inside hasn’t changed a lot, but the grounds are very different. Most of the space these days – which was pretty much a playground and carpark in my day – is taken up with temporary or semi-permanent structures as part of a fairly comprehensive early learning centre. There are plans afoot for even further expansion and to turn some of the temporary classrooms into more permanent ones. But for me, the interest was definitely inside the shule and not on the exterior.

I arrived at about starting time and already there was a Minyan. No waiting around was required, and within moments the service began. As soon as I walked in though, I saw the familiar face of the founding rabbi, who is still there, along with one of his sons, who is now also a rabbi and the main Torah reader. Last time I saw him he was probably not yet Bar Mitzvah. Now he has boys that age of his own. Over the course of the morning I saw other familiar faces too, probably about half a dozen or so who are still there all these years later. That made the whole experience nostalgic, but the initial part of the service was not entirely familiar.

Whilst all the elements of a recognisable service were there, since there were about half a dozen boys who were pre- and post-Bar Mitzvah age, they very enthusiastically sang some of the prayers, including a number of sections that I didn’t even know had tunes associated with them. It didn’t quite make the service interactive, but it certainly enlivened the mood. By Musaf, they had clearly gotten bored, and other boys arrived too, so almost all of them went outside and we never saw them again until Kiddush, but for the first part of the service, it was definitely loud and enthusiastic inside. In fact, I was a little surprised by the number of people that were there. The room has seats for about 60 or so on the men’s side and maybe half as many on the women’s side. On this particular week, with no special occasion, the place was close to half full. Not bad for a suburban Chabad shule in Bentleigh, but then again, since this is one of the oldest and with the same director all of these years, it has probably taken many years of work on the part of the rabbi to get to this point of commitment.

As for the sermon, the rabbi gave an enlightening speech about the portion of the week, and specifically about second chances for people who couldn’t perform a Mitzvah at the right time. What surprised me though during the sermon was that the curtain between the men’s and women’s sides was not opened. In almost every other shule, during the sermon, the curtain is opened so that the women can see and hear just as clearly as the men. But here, the curtain stayed closed, and that was a portent for later on. When the service concluded, some of the regulars started moving tables around to prepare for the Kiddush, but I noticed that this was happening on both sides of the curtain. It was then surprising to see that there were essentially two Kiddushes: one for men and one for women. Both had cholent and hot soup, but it was a little odd that families couldn’t sit together. Nonetheless, it was very nice for me to be back in this shule and to see it still going strong.