My father is a courteous man. This is why, before beginning the maftir on Shabbat, he did not turn around and announce, “If the gentlemen conducting the parallel service would care to finish first, the rest of us can wait.”

Instead, he asked the gentlemen to please conclude their conversations before he commenced the maftir.

It was magnificent. Polite, precise and carrying just enough paternal steel to remind everyone that punctuation can, in the right hands, become a weapon.

Talking in shul is one of those Jewish traditions nobody admits is a tradition. We complain that the service is too long while personally extending it with a detailed discussion about property prices, somebody’s cholesterol and the scandalous thing somebody else’s child has done at university. The Almighty may be everywhere, but apparently even He must compete with communal breaking news.

Dad waited, the conversations ended, and he began.

And he was wonderful. This was the maftir he had recited at his bar mitzvah, and he delivered it with clarity, confidence and the ease of something carried intact across a lifetime. Decades may affect knees, eyesight, and one’s tolerance for men talking in shul. Still, apparently they have very little authority over a bar mitzvah maftir once it has lodged itself properly in the Jewish brain.

What struck me was not only how at home he looked at the bimah, but how warmly I had been welcomed into the place that is part of his life here. The Rabbi and Rebbetzin, the chazan and his wife, and members of the community received me with the particular warmth that cannot be manufactured by a hospitality committee. It was not the bright, professional welcome one gets from someone wearing a name badge. It was a Jewish welcome: questions, introductions, interest, food and the immediate suspicion that one has not eaten enough.

There is something profoundly moving about visiting a parent’s shul as an adult. When we are children, parents appear to exist entirely in relation to us, rather like household appliances with opinions. Then one day, if we are lucky, we get to see them inside the communities they have built, among people who know and value them independently of their status as our father or mother. I watched my dad take his place, claim the silence and recite the maftir of his bar mitzvah all over again, and I felt absurdly proud.

The sacred soon gave way to the commercial, as it so often does.

Shopping for kitsch Australian presents was enormous fun and an outrageous rip-off. The tourist-gift economy rests on a flawless principle: take an object nobody needs, attach a koala to it and charge as though the koala personally completed a postgraduate degree. A perfectly ordinary trinket becomes a “memento” and immediately acquires the retail value of minor surgery.

Naturally, I loved it.

Tourists are not merely customers. We are emotionally compromised, hostages. Somewhere at home is a person to whom we have promised “something Australian”, and the shopkeeper knows we cannot return with a supermarket receipt and a photograph of the Opera House. So we pay the kangaroo tax, the koala levy and the boomerang surcharge, and stagger out delighted with our tiny collection of overpriced proof that we went somewhere.

My bonus mom and I then took the light rail to Circular Quay and the ferry to Manly. Both journeys were terrific. Sydney is shamelessly beautiful. It does not reveal itself gradually or pretend to be modest. It places the Harbour Bridge and Opera House in front of you, adds water and winter sunlight, and waits for you to concede that the city has won.

The ferry to Manly is public transport in the same way that champagne is technically a beverage. Yes, it gets you from one place to another, but that is hardly the point. The harbour opens around you; the skyline rearranges itself; the wind insists upon ruining your hair; and for the duration of the trip, everybody becomes a slightly more cinematic version of themselves.

In Manly, I ordered popcorn fish and chips.

The fish had been deep-fried. Then, apparently concerned that the message had not been sufficiently clear, it had been deep-fried again. And again. This was not merely deep-fried food. It had entered the Mariana Trench of frying. Somewhere beneath several geological layers of batter, a fish had once lived a blameless life.

There was far too much of it, including enough chips to resolve several regional food shortages, so I began throwing some into the air for the seagulls.

This was not my most responsible contribution to Australian wildlife management. It was, however, hilarious.

Within seconds, the seagulls assembled into an aggressive flying syndicate. They jostled for height, reach and tactical........

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