OneTable Shabbat Guides
At OneTable, we invite you to hold tradition in one hand and your beliefs, experiences, and passions in the other. Every week, Shabbat dinner and ritual offers a chance to be present and connect with yourself and others.
The OneTable Shabbat Guide
Shabbat, much like yoga or meditation for some, is an act of rebellion against a constantly moving world. We bring ritual to the table not because we have to, but because disconnecting in order to intentionally connect, separate from the work week, and build community is holy – and really good for you.
A Mindful Shabbat
This guide was created to help deepen your Shabbat practice with new teachings, movement meditations, and ways of looking at Jewish ritual as a gift from our ancestors to mindfully pause, reflect, celebrate and nourish yourself and your community each and every week.
Setting the Table with Gratitude
After a long week of work, a great practice to transition into Shabbat is to reflect on what we’re grateful for from the week past. It’s a way to honor the week, close that chapter, and enter into a new one: Shabbat.
Why Be Jewish
The guides in this series invite you to explore the question “Why Be Jewish?” in three different contexts: In a Time of Crisis, A Personal Response, and A Communal Response. There will be as many answers as there are guests, and that’s exactly as it should be.
Solidarity Shabbat
Whether Friday night is a time to engage in powerful conversation, or a time to take a break from the work of change-making, this is just the one of many ways we can amplify Black voices at our tables and prepare ourselves for the work — and the world — to come.
Shabbat Meditations
Meditate your way into the #FridayNightMagic of Shabbat dinner. Use this guide to center your mind, breath, and focus into Shabbat’s ancient rituals of wellness.
Guía de Cena de Shabbat: Edición Latina
OneTable’s Guía de cena de Shabat: Edición Latina! Share Shabbat ritual, songs, stories, questions, and recipes in both English and Español around your Shabbat table.
Mizrahi Heritage
In 2014, Israel declared 11/30 a day of commemoration for Jewish refugees displaced from Arab countries and Iran in the 20th century. We partnered with JIMENA to create this Mizrahi Heritage supplement to help you plan, frame, and cook for a special meal.
Queer Shabbat
This resource was created in partnership with Eli Gale & Ren Weinstock to help create intentional spaces for both queerness and Jewishness to come together over the rituals of Shabbat.
Pride Shabbat
We at OneTable and JQ International honor the many queer people who remind us everyday how to dream and laugh in spite of fear and oppression. So take a pause for Shabbat dinner, relax your body and mind, and join us in celebrating the resilient, sparkling, joyful LGBTQIA community.
Mental Health Awareness
This is an invitation to turn Shabbat into a time and the dinner table is a place to engage in powerful conversation, to connect with others, and to create a community of caring and inclusivity. Your outreach, your dinner table, and your kindness may impact someone more than you know.
Sober Shabbat
Every week Shabbat dinner offers a chance to take a break and be fully present. May we know peace even if we stumble, and may we find the light even amid the darkness.
Together at the Table
ADL, Repair the World, and OneTable, in partnership with Be’Chol Lashon and Keshet, prepared this guide for your Shabbat dinner table in honor of those we’ve lost in the face of hate.
Death Over [Shabbat Dinner]
The Shabbat dinner table is an ideal place for conversations about death, an invitation to use the end of the creation cycle and the end of the week as a setting to embrace the end of life.
Healthy Relationships
Celebrating Shabbat is about ending the week with intention and prioritizing your most important interpersonal connections. This resource is designed to guide you and your partner through Shabbat rituals and give you reflections and readings that we hope inspire you to check in with one another, celebrate your commitment, and share gratitude.
The Memory Dinner
The Shabbat table has always been a place where Jewish people have experimented and codified “Jewish food” — food that tells the story of what it means to be a part of this community. Now, we turn to our own Shabbat table as a place to elevate our own stories, prompted and inspired by dishes we feel connected to.
Tzedakah
While it may not seem intuitive to connect tzedakah and Shabbat, the idea of tzedakah —that the Jewish people are commanded to behave righteously — is intrinsically linked to the practice of Shabbat, stopping on the seventh day.
Camp OneTable
“Though camp rules and mentality might not be possible all year round, it was at least waiting for us to return to its sweet playfulness and joy whenever we were ready. This is what Heschel meant when he called the Sabbath a palace in time…There’s no need for a physical temple or a church, or even a beautiful forest. That is the beauty of sacred time: it stretches across all places and is accessible to us, wherever we are.” -Casper ter Kuile, The Power of Ritual
From Generation to Generation
May this intergenerational experience be an opportunity to welcome the wisdom of our elders, inspire the energy of our youth, and learn from one another with joy and openness as we celebrate Shabbat.
Holiday Shabbat Guides
Valentine's Shabbat
What’s Jewish about Valentine’s Day? A lot, actually, particularly its potential as a day to flip the script — let go of cards, candy, coupledom, and capitalism — and love each other and the world just a little bit more.
Passover Shabbat
Now more than ever, coming together — whether in person with your housemates or virtually online — matters. This guide is an invitation to infuse your Shabbat dinner with the magic and mystery of Passover. With light, wine, and matzah, we honor where we have come from, share where we are, and imagine true redemption — a better future for ourselves and others.
Seder 2020
This is not a Haggadah, but rather a real time supplement that offers first person introductions — poetry, lyrics, mindful reflections — for you to read before each section of the Seder. Choose the Haggadah that works for you, and use this resource to add meaning, set personal intention, and make your Seder of One a testament to the timeliness and power of ritual.
Solo Seder 2020
Three days after the US entered WWI, the National Jewish Welfare Board was founded; among their first large scale projects was the Solo Seder kit so military personnel could celebrate Passover alone. For many, the idea of Seder alone is anathema to everything Passover represents: performance, participation, peoplehood. Don’t these things require an IRL experience? This year, just like in 1917, the answer is no. Meaning can be made on your own, with the right intention and the right tools.
El Seder de Rosh Hashaná : Edición Latina
While Rosh Hashanah Seders are more typically celebrated in Sephardi and Mizrahi homes, more Jews from around the world are starting to incorporate this practice into their New Year celebrations. This year, we want to invite folks preparing a Rosh Hashanah Seder to do so Latinx style.
Shabbat Shuvah
Falling between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat of Return, ushers in a unique weekend, an incredible opportunity to reflect on the year that was and welcome the year to come. We hope that this guide helps you and your guests imbue Shabbat Shuvah with intention and give the Friday night rituals an extra layer of meaning by incorporating the themes that make the High Holidays so sacred.
Sukkot Shabbat: Resilience in a Time of Pandemic
OneTable x Mitsui Collective | During this year of tremendous challenge, as we prepare to bring in Shabbat — the proverbial “Temple in Time” — within the holiday of Sukkot, we honor all of the ways in which we have had to create impermanent shelters that have enabled us to weather the wilderness of the pandemic. Let us celebrate ourselves and each other — whether you have a physical Sukkah in your yard, patio, or balcony; or your Sukkah exists only in the metaphysical realm of your imagination, we celebrate the creation of sacred space and time and the opportunity to dwell within its midst.
Shemini Atzeret
In Hebrew, Shemini Atzeret literally means the Eighth (Shemini) day of Assembly (Atzeret) — an eighth day of gathering and celebration that follows Sukkot. Both connected to Sukkot and a distinct holiday of its own, Shemini Atzeret exists to elevate the spiritual aspects of this seven day festival, among them our connection to the natural world
Friendsgiving
While in the United States we have an annual refrain of gratitude, in Jewish tradition, we have a weekly opportunity: Shabbat. This year, we hope you’ll gather the people who mean the most to you and celebrate Friendsgiving, an evening of gratitude not only for what you have, but who you have to share it with.
Shabbanukkah
It’s no coincidence that Hanukkah, or chag urim, the “festival of lights” in Hebrew, falls every year on or near the winter solstice. Most faiths that originated in the ancient Near East, including Christianity, embedded within their religious calendars a practice to create warmth and light at the darkest time of the year.
Shabbat Alone, Together
Friday night is an invitation to elevate time and encounter joy. This guide can help you do that while alone, together.
Solo Shabbat Guide
Whether you are celebrating on your own, virtually with others online, or in person with your housemates, we hope these resources connect you to the experience of Shabbat in a way that is new and — perhaps surprisingly — sacred.