I grew up in a pretty traditional Jewish home and Shabbat was the focal point of my family’s social and culinary life. I’m no longer Orthodox, but Shabbat has endured as an important part of my connection to my culture. I took for granted how incredible it was to have a built-in 24-hour bubble with friends and family that revolved around amazing food and unplugging. So many concepts that now are quote-unquote trending are things that Shabbat had built into it from the get-go, so it’s interesting to see traditions that are thousands of years old recirculating. But I think the reason that Shabbat resonates with people is because we need opportunities like it more than ever.
How did your practice of Shabbat change when you moved to Israel, if at all?
It made me see Shabbat in a different light. I think that in the United States and in the West, Shabbat is framed more as a religious concept and in Israel, it’s like a national holiday every week. The whole country shuts down and people really take relaxation and family time very seriously. I’ve been working for myself for 25 years, and in Israel, I sort of had to relearn my weekend mores because people really don’t work on weekends. It’s very sacred—the time to unwind and relax and gather at the table with food.
I also very quickly realized that I really liked the way Shabbat is observed in Israel, because there’s a whole range of ways that it can be done. Some of them might be more traditional, but really, it’s a cultural organizing principle that everyone participates in in one way or another—in Israel, 21 percent of the country is Arab and Palestinian, but 80 percent of the country is Jewish.
I agree—there’s a nice feeling about the way that in Israel, everyone mutually agrees to this concept.
It’s like a social contract of relaxation. I live in a very busy, noisy part of town. But the whole country takes a deep breath and you can hear a collective sigh of relief as the sun goes down, and it’s just quieter; the pace is slower. It’s not like Tel Aviv is a ghost town—there are restaurants open and things happen—but the majority of people are staying home and eating dinner with friends and family. It’s a very special time and I have really come to enjoy it.
Walk me through your weekend.
Because our weekend starts here on Thursday night and goes into Friday night, Fridays have become a time when I have brunch with friends and then I go to the shuk, and I buy all of my produce and meat and cheese and all of my supplies for the weekend and then I just go home and I sometimes have an open-ended cooking session. Sometimes I have a meal plan; sometimes a meal comes together spontaneously. In Israel, there’s another social contract of spontaneity. So if a lot of people don’t have plans, then you can make plans with a lot of people at the last minute. I’ve had dinners for 13 people come together that I had not realized were gonna happen at 10 in the morning. I have a lot of Israeli friends and I get invited to Shabbat dinners—and my father actually moved to Israel last year and lives in Jerusalem with my stepmom—but I also have a lot of expat friends and not everyone has a family to go to. My husband and I invite a lot of people over to make them feel at home.
