My life as an intentional synagogue cruiser

ALEX KATS, who has visited more than 60 synagogues across Melbourne, believes every stream of Judaism provides a place where Jews can participate in an observance of their Jewishness.

Sometime in the early 2000s I became aware of meeting a “Conservative” Jew, someone whose commitment to Judaism lies on a spectrum between Orthodox and Progressive. I knew about the different strands of Judaism and had attended a large Progressive synagogue in Melbourne many years ago for bar mitzvahs (there was no Conservative synagogue at that time), but otherwise I had little to do with non-Orthodox Jews.

Like the majority of Jews, I grew up secular, but the synagogues we attended once or twice a year, or for simchas, were always Orthodox. In part this was because most shules in Australia are Orthodox, but also because that is the way things always were, especially in Melbourne.

For most Jews in my circle, life-cycle events took place in Orthodox settings irrespective of religious practices at home. Anyone other than Orthodox was seen as an anomaly.

It was at an international Jewish seminar that I met Jews who were not Orthodox. By this time, I was much more religiously observant than my family, and definitely under the influence of traditional Orthodoxy. Some of the people I met were religious but attended a Conservative synagogue, and others were secular but observed their life-cycle occasions at Progressive or Conservative congregations. I was fascinated and began to explore.

Initially, I did some reading to familiarise myself with the ideas and practices of the non-Orthodox, and through my communal work I visited many of the Jewish schools in Melbourne, including King David School, under the Progressive banner, but had yet to visit a Progressive shule.

Then one Friday night about 15 years ago, I went down the road to Temple Beth Israel, the Progressive congregation I had only seen the inside of on two previous occasions for bar mitzvahs. But this time I didn’t go out of obligation or through coercion. I went because I wanted to, and with an open mind. What I found surprised me.