How to prepare for the Sabbath (Jewish)
What to eat, wear, and pray about on the most gorgeous day of the week
“If you keep shabbos, shabbos will keep you,” is something a lot of us heard growing up. Not me, personally. But a lot of us.
Shabbos is the glue that keeps our community together in an era where people are disconnected and lonely and boring, in a nation where nobody has dinner parties organically and when they do, it’s a whole to-do and some people hire consultants to make it happen.
While some people find shabbos to be a relief in a hectic world, others find the whole affair to be oppressive and horrible. Rightfully so: Some people don’t even hold by the eruv and get stuck at home with toddlers for 10 years because they can’t take out their strollers to go to shul. Some people love “snap chatting” so much that they sneak off to their bedroom at night to do it. Others will gather outside storefronts with TVs (if they still exist) to catch the big game.
I’m not interested in the big “why” behind keeping shabbos. Personally I’ve contended with that whole idea and put it behind me. I’m more interested in the “how”. The other day, the French kiruv Instagram page Torah Box informed me that one can only load the dishwasher on shabbat if the dishes are not arranged perfectly. If we load the dishwasher too perfectly, we’re preparing for a weekday, which is forbidden. This is amazing news for those of us who live in households where one person knows how to load a dishwasher and the other person has never worked in a restaurant, but terrible news for those of us who just discovered another way we have unintentionally been breaking shabbat. But that is also not what I mean by the “how”.
If you’re curious about keeping shabbat, I’ve put together this easy-to-follow guide based on personal experience and strong preferences. Much of shabbos is baked into the preparation – but the real preparation happens in the eighteen minutes after candle lighting before shabbos officially sets in.
To start, pick out a nice outfit. I’m actually begging you: Please put on something nice. Some people only ever wear real shoes on shabbos because they spend their whole life in Uggs and Tevas. And then on shabbos they put on their special tevas. And then you talk to them and they’re like, “My parents are lawyers and they pressured me to go to law school but now that I’m done I’ve decided to follow my passion of pressing my own essential oils.” And then you overhear them say to somebody else that they went to Yale. That’s fine. Maybe that’s you. But you could wear real shoes, too, and that would be so lovely.
When I don’t want to put any effort into my shabbos clothes, I wear Lululemon pants and a shirt made out of a weird athletic fabric. It feels like I’m wearing the future. And yet it is so so deeply unflattering. Before the pandemic I wore a similar thing to the office every day but back then we wore tighter clothes and I was extremely skinny. And then I wrapped myself in a fuzzy jacket (all the rage back then, I can’t even explain) and wore chunky ugly gigantic sneakers.
These days when I go into the office, I have to go all the way to San Francisco, the outermost circle of hell, and then I spend as much time as humanly possible “running to get coffee.” The problem is that there are no coffeeshops in the immediate vicinity of my office so each time is an adventure. Last time I popped out for a coffee I watched two teenagers try and carjack an old lady. They ran into the street and started trying to open all the doors of her car and then tried to break the windows, and she wouldn’t move. I was wearing my shabbos Lululemon pants, an oxford cloth button down I bought in 2012, and a Uniqlo cashmere sweater with moth holes in it – all in different shades of blue. I pulled down the sleeves to hide my watch in case they suddenly decided to rob me instead, and then I walked into a hotel lobby until the coast was clear and I went back to my desk. My coworkers kept telling me I looked exhausted, which was true because I fly in very early in the morning and then leave after happy hour. But what I told myself was that from now on, when I go to the office, I’m going to let myself have as many cigarettes as I want. I’m going to stand outside the door and smoke and watch everyone walk in and out and then chew gum all day. And I’m going to wear tighter clothes.
Back to reality, I love to host shabbat meals but not everyone does. A lot of people love to host but hate to cook, which is criminally insane behaviour, and a lot of people love to host and cook but they are NOT good at it. Here’s what I recommend as a really safe, easy menu that will please a crowd and also not be fucking DISGUSTING.
Bread: Challah and dips – hard to fuck up unless you serve sourdough
Bad appetizer: Salad with red onion and fruit
What to make instead: Get a grip! Massage a bag of kale and make tahini caesar dressing
Bad soup: Chicken soup with a single giant matzo ball that is never made the way you like it.
What to make instead: Don’t over complicate it. Onion, carrot celery, zucchini, Osem MSG bouillon, blend. People love purées because it reminds them of being a baby. And MSG is sexy!
Bad main: Chicken drumsticks baked in sauce
What to make instead: It seems effortless, but consider what you’re doing. Do not make your guests fight with bones on the day of rest. Or at least give them thighs. Braise them. Find a recipe from Bon Appetit and do that.
Bad carb: Potatoes chopped and roasted in the oven, often with rosemary and olive oil
What to make instead: While you can never go wrong with a potato, this is dry and exhausted. I love mashed. For fleishig meals, cook potatoes in Osem MSG bouillon, then add garlic, chopped fresh herbs or scallions, and nondairy milk. If you are extremely decadent, mix with pareve Boursin.
The dessert question: Dessert is for babies. Outsource this or consider skipping. I have no talent for baking so if somebody asks me to bring dessert (psychotic) I usually buy something called an “alligator” from the kosher section and then slice it before serving. If you must bake, do something with sour fruit so people can say, “this is so interesting, is it seasonal?” but turn down seconds. Don’t serve with pareve ice cream.
Nearly all of these things can be accomplished about an hour before shabbat if you are focussed and coordinated. I haven’t been blessed with children so that’s an extenuating factor that might affect your prep time. Ask every guest to bring a bottle of wine (they should know to bring this without being told – did you think to bring a bottle of wine without being told? You should. Only American Modern Orthodox people do not do this automatically, which is the worst thing about this community, but I believe we can institute change from the ground up. Baron Herzog is like $9) It’s a good idea to have one ready for kiddush just in case. What you don’t drink, save for another dinner.
The big question on everyone’s mind right now is whether or not to serve cocktails before dinner. I personally do not because I cannot handle that much alcohol, but I think it’s so chic when people do. It’s not nice when the host gets drunk really fast and falls asleep on top of his bed with all of his clothes on and leaves their partner to chit chat until everyone leaves.
With your meal prepared and your outfit chosen, you need to begin to prepare spiritually for shabbos. I do this by learning the shortest byte of Torah possible, usually from an Instagram infographic. For example, I just saw one that said that we shouldn’t assume Hashem listens to our prayers. This is major for me because I find prayer can be deeply boring and I don’t want to bother him. I assume he has access to my notes app and can therefore intuit my desires and wants. Assuming you’re not stepping out before a lively kabbalat shabbat at a neo-chasidic shul around the corner from your house, I recommend listening to music at home. It doesn’t have to be religious music but I find Hebrew really transports me into that mental space I need to be in to cultivate a sense of mindfulness. For example, I love listening to Ana Zak because she’s so beautiful but I don’t understand anything she’s saying, which is also what a lot of davening can feel like, so it is effectively the same.
I love benching, but I wait as long as humanly possible to do it so that people don’t leave. Benching can be a huge mood killer because it sends the signal to your guests that shabbos is almost over. For all the anticipation throughout the week for shabbat, benching is the first sign that shabbos is beginning to end. The first meal is finished and people need to go home and sleep. It always makes me feel a little bit sad. Then it’s like… now what! All of this running around for people to just go home? It’s not my style. So at 3am when I’m finally ready to let people leave, we sing Shir Hamalot to the tune of We’re All In This Together from High School Musical and we get the whole thing over with. You can, of course, bench earlier, but that sounds not super fun and I would interpret it as a dig.
And then when you wake up, you have to put together another outfit (nice), real shoes, and walk briskly to shul in time for the end of musaf. Hopefully you were invited out for lunch because hosting two meals in a row is a lot. And then you nap with your contact lenses in and when you wake up, hungover and dry, it’s night time! Shabbat is over. You text your friends to see what’s happening, and they invite you over to eat the most expensive and mediocre pizza you’ve ever had in your life. And why do we do it? So we can live in a walkable neighbourhood.
Have a fab shab!