SWF Gathering Hosting Support
Rick Hammer, SWF Host, welcoming Naomi to his Shabbat gathering.
Updated 1/21/23
Hosting a Shabbat with Friends Gathering
The goal of Shabbat with Friends is to recapture the joy of Shabbat together. The way we do it is by recruiting, training, and supporting hosts who with our help, hold joyful, engaging Shabbat gatherings at their homes. Shabbat with Friends Gatherings are always on Shabbat and Jewish festivals usually in homes, sometimes in special venues. SWF Gatherings center on a shared sacred meal and traditional Jewish activities such as Jewish table singing, interactive Torah study, and rich and topical discussion. These gatherings are purposely low tech, while cultivating an environment of joyful, meaningful and interactive fellowship between people. Hence our name Shabbat with Friends.
What is involved in hosting a Shabbat with Friends Gathering?
Contact Rabbi Dov to set up your Shabbat with Friends Gathering. We would love to share the joy of Shabbat together with you.
Hosting a Shabbat with Friends Gathering
The goal of Shabbat with Friends is to recapture the joy of Shabbat together. The way we do it is by recruiting, training, and supporting hosts who with our help, hold joyful, engaging Shabbat gatherings at their homes. Shabbat with Friends Gatherings are always on Shabbat and Jewish festivals usually in homes, sometimes in special venues. SWF Gatherings center on a shared sacred meal and traditional Jewish activities such as Jewish table singing, interactive Torah study, and rich and topical discussion. These gatherings are purposely low tech, while cultivating an environment of joyful, meaningful and interactive fellowship between people. Hence our name Shabbat with Friends.
What is involved in hosting a Shabbat with Friends Gathering?
- Our invitation for you to host with SWF support. SWF actively recruits hosts to share a Shabbat experience at home. Some of our hosts are conversant in Jewish hospitality traditions from childhood. Other hosts are doing a Shabbat gathering for the first time. We work hard to make it possible for every host household to experience the joy and fulfillment of “sacred hosting.”
- Overcoming impediments to hosting: We also work with hosts whose residences are of all sizes. If your space is small, we have a variety of strategies to help make your gathering happen. We also help with “affordable” and “easy” tools to take reservations, to organize a potluck, and ensure support for setup and cleanup. The great thing we have learned is that these tools can grease the wheels for friend making and community building.
- Choosing a time to host on Shabbat. SWF encourages hosts to schedule a Shabbat with Friends Gathering at one of the three traditional Shabbat or Festival hosting times: Erev Shabbat-Friday evenings; early Shabbat afternoons; or late afternoon before nightfall on Saturday evening which usually includes the Havdalah ceremony.
- Determining the number of guests at your gathering. We leave it to the hosts to determine the number of guests they feel comfortable having in their home. We ask hosts of Shabbat with Friends Gatherings to have a minimum of 12 people. The average number of guests over the past year has been between 20-25. We have had gatherings of around 40 as well. We have hosts interested in a special venue to be able to host more. Everyone who wants to attend must pre-register online prior to Shabbat. We do contact guests who are unknown to the host and to SWF to ensure that all guests come in the spirit of Shabbat.
- Who is invited? The great majority of our Shabbat with Friends Gatherings are open to the community, free, and are kid friendly (We are even able to find trained childcare support if desired.). Hosts have a lot of leeway to choose a format such as arranging to have our Oneg Shabbos Ensemble, request group singing, want adult-oriented Torah study, of seek child centric formats. We recommend that hosts also directly invite a core of family and/or close friends. This creates a mix of familiar and unfamiliar, 'new faces' (in Hebrew, Panim Hadashot, our founding name) and old friends.
- Private Shabbat with Friends. Hosts who are more comfortable holding a private Shabbat event at home are welcome to request to cohost it with SWF. We do understand the varying needs for privacy among our hosts. At all of our SWF gatherings we work with all hosts to foster a rich Shabbat experience and to instill a love of Shabbat in everyone participating.
- Organizing Shabbat meals: Over time SWF has accumulated a lot of experience helping hosts to plan meals. Some of our hosts prefer potlucks. Other hosts prefer to prepare the meal for their guests. We even have had some hosts who have hired kosher or vegetarian caterers. There is not one way to do this. We also anticipate how to help hosts with set-up and cleanup so that it is not an undue burden. We will also help with approaches to honoring Jewish traditions around food and cooking that gives hosts some flexibility, while preserving basic standards of koshrut. SWF is unable to support hosted meals that are clearly not kosher such as meals that mix dairy and meat, or repasts in which non-kosher meat, fowl or meats from prohibited animals and seafood are served.
- What are the costs of hosting? A host needs to dedicate some time to planning and anticipating the flow of the gathering including setup and cleanup. Shabbat with Friends is a partner all the way, helping to make your hosting pleasant, meaningful, and fulfilling.
- Rabbi Gartenberg’s role. Rabbi Dov is an experienced and enthusiastic Shabbat host. His rabbinate centers on making the Shabbat meal and gathering joyful, spiritual, meaningful, and Jewishly authentic. He collaborates with each host to help make each gathering “shabbasdik”and “leibedik”.
Contact Rabbi Dov to set up your Shabbat with Friends Gathering. We would love to share the joy of Shabbat together with you.
