17 Celebs Who Are Reppin that #fridaynightmagic

Here’s a secret, y’all, and it’s been right in front of us the whole time. Shabbat is kind of famous. Like, repeatedly in the mainstream media famous, and it’s mostly thanks to celebrities who are speaking openly about their Shabbat practices, experiences, hopes, and dreams. These 17 celebs are all about repping that Shabbat spirit, and lemme tell ya, they’re collectively turning it into a movement.

1. Troye Sivan

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Troye is pretty down with Shabbat. The singer/songwriter tweeted, “I’m not a religious person, but modern Jewish culture is so lovely sometimes. Shabbat dinner is where we get together as a fam w no phones, no TV, & just hang with us and family friends, every Friday night! Some of my best memories are from nights like these.”

2. Gal Gadot

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Wonder Woman needs some Friday night mindfulness too. The actress has shared many Friday night posts like this one of lighting Shabbat candles with her daughter.

3. Amar’e Stoudemire

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This former Knicks player and NBA All-Star is just a little bit in love with this powerful piece of Jewish tradition.

4. Madonna

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And of course, the queen of pop can’t get enough of Shabbat either.

5. Mark Zuckerberg

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Deciding to go public with a message about Shabbat on Facebook, Zuckerberg posted a photo of his baby daughter Max drinking from a kiddush cup, explaining that it “has been in our family for almost 100 years.”

6. Judy Gold

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Standup comedian and television producer Judy Gold is loving her Shabbat practice. She told the Forward, “We have this crazy life, live in this crazy apartment, but Friday night we sit down, eat great chopped liver and chicken and drink the wine.” She adds in a separate interview, “It’s the greatest. When the kids were younger I didn’t even work on Friday nights. Like, here we are, this non traditional family… I want them to know they are Jewish.”

7. Mila Kunis

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Kunis has some Jewish roots, and we’re here for it. She said in an interview with actor Dax Shepard, “I love the idea of — regardless of where we are in the world, regardless of what we’re doing, on Friday night, we take a minute to just acknowledge one another, to acknowledge our children, to acknowledge our family, say I love you, apologize for all the dumb shit that we did, and move on.” She and her two young children even know the Hebrew blessings over the Shabbat candles by heart, she says, though she lets husband Ashton Kutcher take care of the rest of the Shabbat traditions.

8. Ben Platt

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Actor, singer, and Broadway star Ben Platt grew up in a home that practiced Shabbat, and he had some pretty special guests over for dinner. “My dad’s a producer [Marc Platt],” he told Broadway Buzz. “So during Legally Blonde, we had Reese Witherspoon over for Shabbat.”

9. Drake

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On the flip side, this bar mitzvahed rapper is a popular request for a Shabbat dinner guest. He told XXL magazine, “I get Jewish people coming up to me proud like, ‘Mazel Tov, bro. Come to my house for Shabbat dinner.’”

10. Paula Abdul

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Abdul’s got a passion for letting the world know what Shabbat means to her. The dancer and television personality said in a video, “[Shabbat] is very important to me because it’s my time to be just me — no paparazzi, no invasion of my privacy. I can always look forward to the end of the week and say, ‘Thank God I have [Shabbat].”

11. Julie Rice

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The co-founder of SoulCycle is all for Shabbat mindfulness. She told Tim Ferris that on Friday night, “It’s almost like I’ve given myself permission for the evening to shut down. The minute we light the candles [something inside of me] says, ‘It’s cool till tomorrow. The world’s gonna wait for you.’ There’s something about that ritual [of lighting the Shabbat candles] for me that’s really one of the times that I look forward to most in the week.”

Shabbat dinnertime is just as important to Rice. “It just feels like there’s no bullshit at the table,” she says. “It’s a really relaxed ‘bring your real self.’”

12. Karlie Kloss

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Even supermodels need a Friday night mindfulness break. “I think we all have a tendency to just keep going,” she says. “Some people find grounding through meditation. Some find it through exercise. And to each their own, but for me, Shabbat has brought so much meaning into my life. It helps me reconnect to the actual world.”

13. Adam Neumann

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The CEO of WeWork told Yediot Aharonot, “”During Shabbat I am completely cut off, there is no one to talk to, and I do not compromise about it. At first it felt like a tough assignment, but it gives me time with my children, my wife, my friends. Last week I had a crazy week in which I was flying and working a lot. On Friday morning we got up and said to each other, ‘We are ready for Shabbat.’ Shabbat arrives, we light candles, relax, friends come over, we eat a meal that we cooked beforehand. We are cut off from the rest of the world, but in reality connecting with each other. I spend more time than I ever did with my family and even phone and see my mother more. And the real magic is that the more I do it, the more successful the company is. Go figure.”

14. Natalie Portman

Photo by Jim Smeal/REX/Shutterstock (9376223ao) Natalie Portman 'Annihilation' film premiere, Arrivals, Los Angeles, USA - 13 Feb 2018

This actress is bringing Shabbat to a new, poetic level. In an email exchange with author Jonathan Safran Foer, Portman writes, “I love that Erich Fromm thing about Shabbat being the ability to suspend time. The reason we aren’t allowed to move a book from one place to another on Shabbat, or turn on a light, or buy something — it’s not because it’s ‘work,’ and work isn’t allowed on the Sabbath. It’s because those things would show the passage of time. And Shabbat is the one day when we can stop time.”

15. Mayim Bialik

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Bialik takes that poetic lens one step further. She writes in an article for Kveller, “Shabbat is an island of stillness in a week of frenetic movement, a respite in the madness of our culture’s obsession with consuming, creating, spending, making, and doing. Shabbat is a day of simply, gloriously, and beautifully just being. We are, after all, human beings, not human doings.”

16. Arianna Huffington

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The founder of Huffington Post and CEO of Thrive Global says of Shabbat, “The wisdom of the Shabbat is very important. You do something very profound by asking people to disconnect from all the work and reconnect with something deeper.” She adds, “When you honor the Shabbat you don’t say you shouldn’t do anything for seven days, you say that you need a break for one day. You realize that turning off the light helps you get a better sleep, that doesn’t make us anti-electricity.”

17. Katy Perry

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Finally, this pop star knows what’s up when it comes to spreading the love of Shabbat to the rest of the world. “I wish there was a thing like Shabbat that wasn’t particularly religious-based, that was kind of a worldwide day where we’re not on our phones — like a movement,” she told Cosmopolitan. “I just think something like this would be really great for our minds, especially because kids today — if they weren’t born in the 80s — don’t even know what a life without internet is like. And I think it’s going to be really difficult for our focus and our attention spans moving forward. So I’d love if the world implemented an actual day of real rest.”

Brocha is excited to be a summer intern for OneTable in NYC, mostly because the concept of OneTable is incredibly meaningful to her, but also because her hometown of Chicago suburbia is the Audrey Hepburn of the season: overwhelmingly hot and dishearteningly dead. Her favorite part of Shabbat is sitting around the Friday night dinner table with friends, singing songs together after indulging in maybe a little too much yummy food.

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