Torah Portion:	Naso
Synagogue:	Kehilat Chazon Ovadia (Sephardi)
Walking time from home:	Just over 15 minutes
Reason for going:	Something completely different
Kiddush:	Sit-down kiddush with cheesecake

This week was the festival of Shavuot, and as is my way, over the course of two days I went to five shules, though some of them just for lectures. I’m not going to write about them here because I have been to all of them before. However, this week I also heard of the Kehilat Chazon Ovadia shule for the first time, so as soon as I had an opportunity on Shabbat morning, I had to visit.

I had thought for many years that there were two Sephardi shules in Melbourne: Sassoon Yehuda, the traditional Sephardi shule, and Rambam, the Sephardi Chabad shule. Whilst these are the two main ones, a third one had popped up in recent years, and as is typical of the Melbourne synagogue scene, it is essentially a breakaway from the former. It is also more closely related to the teachings of the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, one of the most revered Sephardi leaders of the 20^th century.

The shule is housed in a very interesting building, known as the Aliya Youth Centre. During the week it is a hang out space for Jewish teens, but it has a library-cum-sitting room at the back, and that is where the shule is based, since the Centre is generally closed for kids on Shabbat. The room is small, and with a curtain to separate the men and women, it is even smaller. I’d be surprised if more than 30 people could fit into the whole space, and with chairs and tables, there is room for much fewer.

Though I had never been there before and didn’t even know it existed until a few days earlier, as soon as I heard where it was housed, I knew where to go. Luckily for me, an older gentleman was walking a few paces ahead of me and opened the door for both of us, and then the two of us were very warmly welcomed since although it was more than 15 minutes after starting time, we were the eighth and ninth men to arrive. One more and there would be a Minyan. Some small shules continue with the service even when there is no Minyan, but this one waits. Everyone quietly read to themselves confident that a tenth man would soon arrive. And so it was. Eventually there were about 14-15 on the men’s side and about 5 women, with a bunch of little kids running around too.

The service proceeded as expected, but with no rabbi, it was entirely lay led, though there was one man who seemed to be more informed about some of the practices than the others, so he not only led the service but read from the Torah as well. But because it is lay led, there was also no sermon and no stoppages during the service. All the discussions were left to the kiddush at the end. I was probably only one of two or three who weren’t Sephardi but I was made to feel very welcome and the atmosphere in general was intimate and inviting. However, for someone who is not Sephardi, I am not entirely clear what the differences in practice were between this shule and the other traditional Sephardi shule, though I suspect it is more about a personality clash than a difference of practice that really separates the two, and if intimacy is what they want, this shule provides it.

Either way, about halfway through the service, whilst the men continued, most of the women left the room to set up the kiddush. The tables and chairs were already in place, but the food was not. The Centre is a hang out space for teens, and as such, there is a gym, a music room, a room for pool and table tennis, a room with a large TV for kids to play computer games, and a main open area with couches. This is where the kiddush was set up on fold out tables. This is also the only time that everyone was in the same room at once, including all the adults and all the little kids. As such, there were more people at Kiddush than in the service. And because it was just days after Shavuot, there was a lot of cheesecake and other dairy products at the Kiddush. I’m not sure if they were leftovers or new purchases, but they tasted fresh and in general, it was nice to see this small shule.