24 1/2 Hours in Perth

Posted at 11:00 AM, Monday, March 30, 2009

Hi all,
Thanks for all of those sweet comments to my last entry, and thanks especially to all those mysterious anonymous people out there who are following our continuing adventures on the dry continent. I have been busier than busy for the last two weeks, including a baby naming, the festival of Purim, a funeral, a number of sick congregants, two upcoming weddings, and a whopping six conversions--three here in Adelaide, and three in Perth. It was those three conversions that found me in Western Australia for 24 1/2 hours, not including three hours' flying time each way.

Standards of the Council for Progressive Rabbis mandate that at least two rabbis be present as a conversion candidate is interviewed by a Beit Din--a religious court. The Beit Din comes at the very end of a process which lasts at least a year and often two. It is quite rare for a person to be turned away by the Beit Din after already completing several written assignments on top of many months of study and participation in the synagogue community. Temple David, the progressive synagogue of Perth, currently has no rabbi, although they are currently at the end of their interview process and hope to have a rabbi soon. In the meantime, I wasy the closest progressive rabbi at a mere 1700 miles away, so I hopped on an airplane to join the synagogue's consulting rabbi Fred Morgan from Melbourne.

I had two goals for the long flight: to fly over the famed Nullarbor Plain and to see a movie. I didn't get either wish. The plane flies over the Southern Ocean for much of the journey and only turns north towards land when the great emptiness of the Nullarbor has been left behind to be replaced by farm land closer to Perth. I waited patiently for the flight attendants to start walking through the cabins with earphones for hire, but no such luck. Time was when everyone got to choose to see or ignore the same movie,which was played on a video player on the plane. No longer. Australian airlines mostly depend on the Foxtel Cable service to provide both short TV shows and pay-per-view movies. Depending on which flight attendant I asked, I heard there was no video service on the plane either because a) the plane was new, and it hadn't yet been outfitted with the right antenna and equipment or b) there is no reception between Adelaide and Perth. Either way, three hours of silence.

I found Perth quite underwhelming. A wave of urban renewal tore through the city in last century and swept away a large number of its beautiful old buildings. Only a small handful remain, and they are dwarfed by blocks of concrete and glass highrise office buildings and condos. My evening hosts, veteran Temple David teacher and mentor Helen Bryant and her husband Harry, gave me a driving tour through the city and up to beautiful Kings Park beyond it. Thank goodness they've mostly left the park alone! We had dinner at their favourite Greek restaurant, then off for an early bedtime to compensate for the disorienting 90 minutes time change.

I was up at 7:00 a.m. the next day and still felt like I was sleeping in! Time for a final read-through of the conversion candidates' essays, a leisurely breakfast in the dining room, and a walk. The lovely Swan River winds through the city, but from my hotel it was quite difficult to get to the paved footpath that runs next to it. I found the one stoplight with a pedestrian crossing in the vicinity and so made it across the busy expressway that parallels the river. But of course I could only walk so far before I had to just turn around and walk back the same way I had come.

Residents and visitors to Perth alike are spooked by the city's traffic,and so I was delivered to the airport a full two hours before my plane was due to leave. Plenty of time for a wander, a very delicious dinner of beer-battered fish and chips,and souvenirs for the kids. Shopping for tchotchkes in an airport is pretty depressing, especially since I have a sense that the Chinese manufacturers just take off the Adelaide tag and slap on a Perth label. I finally settled on to half-snow-globe refrigerator magnets with a cartoon view of downtown Perth and the river. The kids were absolutely delighted!