Every week, for the past 20 years, my parents have taken a photo documenting Shabbat evenings. My mom explains that these pictures are a unique collection of the many people with whom my parents have shared a Shabbat meal – some appear repeatedly in the album, and some appear only once. She calls the album a “tribute to the central role that Friday nights play in our family life.”
This dedication to Shabbat ingrained in me (and my siblings) a love of Shabbat dinner. Even after leaving my home in Toronto, Friday nights remain a necessary time of Jewish connection and ritual. Many of my Jewish peers in Montreal feel similarly and regularly attend Shabbat dinners.
Sarah Mautner-Mazlen is a second-year Political Science and Geography student at McGill University, a fellow writer for Nu Magazine, and an organizer of the McGill Chavurah (meaning “group” in Hebrew). She explains Chavurah as a “student-run feminist egalitarian Jewish community at McGill” that regularly hosts Shabbat dinners. “Chavurah was the most consistent egalitarian Shabbat dinner I could find,” Sarah remarked. When I asked her why she loves Shabbat dinners, she said, “growing up, I had to be home for Shabbat dinner. At home, and at my camp, Kabbalat Shabbat was such a special thing… At Chavurah, we do what we can to have a homey environment.”
Mel Elbaz is an organizer of Shabbat Club MTL, which hosts Shabbat dinners at Jewish-owned restaurants. “We mingle, and meet other people in the community. Then we’ll sit down, do the prayers, and eat. We like to have gifts for all our guests, like Shabbat candles. And then there’s a DJ, there’s dancing, there’s a photographer – it’s like a party.” I asked Mel about a specifically queer-inclusive Shabbat dinner that Shabbat Club MTL hosted earlier this year. She said that the need for queer-inclusive Shabbats emerged from antisemitism within the wider queer community. “We made the Shabbat as non-binary and inclusive as we could,” Mel said, reminiscing on what she described as an enjoyable and bonding experience.
Montreal’s “fairly upscale” Jewish club Montefiore even hosted Shabbat dinners. Jeffrey Feldman, who regularly attended Montefiore with his family, explains that “even as a child, you had to wear a suit – this was a formal club, and it was for that reason my brother hated going to it. He would curse 20 different ways over having to get in a suit to go to this club.” When I asked about the experiences of Shabbat dinners at Montefiore, Jeffrey said, “there were all these different families at the tables. They would put out little candles that families could bless. Everyone kind of knew each other. You had the sense of being in a safe environment, part of a community.”
The last person I spoke to was Anna Gonshor, a retired professor of Yiddish culture and language. Anna’s parents grew up in traditionally religious homes, but in their young adult life became Bundists who were, in Anna’s words, “committed to the Jewish people.” In Anna’s childhood home, Friday nights were “very special.” Her family would spend the night singing, reading, and engaging in discussion with guests. Her mother always lit Shabbat candles, but never blessed them; rather, she lit them because “that’s what Jewish women had done throughout history.”
She explained that as a “community of survivors…there were often people at our table who didn’t have a table of their own… My Jewish identity was shaped at our Friday night dinners, where we would sing for hours.” As an adult, Anna began hosting her own dinners, which became the “focal point of the week.” She considers her Shabbat dinners a “time to stop the world and create our own little world.” I was fortunate enough to attend a dinner at Anna’s home. The experience was precisely what she described - a night in which I learned a little more about the beauty of Jewish life.
These stories highlight the versatility and personal importance of Shabbat dinners. The tradition has uniquely managed to evolve over time, with each individual, family, and community adding more depth while maintaining its historical roots. I hope to continue attending and hosting Shabbat dinners as I grow older, creating new and personal meanings for this sacred ritual.
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