Torah Portion:	Nitzavim-Vayelech
Synagogue:	Blake St shule
Walking time from home:	40 minutes
Reason for going:	Full circle
Kiddush:	Kiddush with multiple cholents

After two years, this is the 103^rd and final entry of this blog (though stay tuned next week for a post-script). In that time I have been to close to 70 different services, though of course I have come back to some for various reasons.

This week I came back to Blake Street, because two years ago when I was thinking of starting this blog, there was a speaker at Blake Street I wanted to hear – and often I have gone to various shules because there have been speakers – so this week, even with no guest speaker, it felt like a full circle moment to come to the place where I first started. In my mind coming back to the place where it all began was momentous, but when I got there and the service began, it felt very anti-climactic. It just felt like shule.

As a place for the final blog, Blake St was perfect. It is a relatively big space but if feels quite intimate and I know many of the people. I took my spot towards the back of the room with some people I know and spent most of the time when not engaged in prayer, talking to the people around me mostly about this blog. I arrived almost on time and already there were 30-40 people. Those numbers stayed relatively stable until the Torah reading, and then suddenly, as if the doors swung open, in the space of about ten minutes the crowd size increased at least two-fold, maybe close to three-fold. The regulars told me that when these is no celebration of special occasion, the Torah reading marks the time when the majority of the crowd starts to arrive.

One of the attractions of Blake St for many is that it is quite a social place. People sit with their friends or family, chat at times during the service, but also spend a lot of the kiddush time catching up with people they only see once a week. It is a place where many people feel comfortable, comforted and not judged. It is also a place where the rabbi is young, dynamic and very much in touch with his congregation, and with many of the visitors too. This week, completely unprompted, he started his sermon by welcoming me by name and commenting on the end of my blog, and that it was special that I had chosen Blake St to start and finish it. It was very humbling to hear, but shows the character of the man and for the first time, made me feel like coming back to the place where I had started it was as momentous in real life as it had been in my mind.

One of the phrases in this week’s portion is ‘Choose Life’, which the rabbi expanded on for the rest of his sermon. The Jewish way, he said, is to defend and protect as necessary, but to always remember that all lives are precious and were created by the Almighty. We have a privilege to live this life and we should make the most of it. For two years I have chosen to do that by visiting different shules and writing about them, in part because although they are all different, they are also part of the rich tapestry that makes up Judaism. Blake St is just one of many in Melbourne, but it was nice to be welcomed so warmly.

This hospitality extended to the kiddush. As is often the case at this shule, there were multiple cholents and many other foods, as well as people from the other services who joined the kiddush. It was great to chat to quite a number of people about the blog but also about other things, and it was nice to finish the blog on such a positive and welcoming note. The challenge for me now is to decide where to go for Rosh Hashanah and how to keep this momentum!