To Connect Young Adults With Jewish Traditions, OneTable Helps People Find — And Fund — Shabbat

Many Fridays at sunset, Elizabeth Grossman, who’s 25, invites her friends to her West Hollywood apartment to light two candles, sip wine, eat a home-cooked meal and de-stress from the week.

Understanding Shabbat

The ancient practice of Shabbat, often called the centerpiece of Jewish life, is a 25-hour weekly day of rest beginning at sundown on Friday through nightfall on Saturday. These days, many Jewish people mark the occasion simply with a Friday night dinner.

“A big part of my Judaism is through the culture, the food and my community,” Grossman says, serving the pesto-stuffed challah she baked earlier that day for her friends. “Hosting Shabbat allows me to do all three because there's the community of all of our friends together, we can sing, and then the food.”

Growing up, Grossman’s family regularly hosted Shabbat dinners. But as a young adult, with limited disposable income and the need for an easy way to include her peers — particularly those who might not be familiar with the service — she needed tools to carry this ancient tradition forward.

To assist, she hosts Shabbat dinners through the social dining platform OneTable, a nonprofit that supports mostly younger Jewish people to find, share and enjoy Shabbat dinners.

“I’m not in a place where I can make a full meal for this many people with my own income,” Grossman says. “It just feels really nice to be able to welcome people to my home and to provide for everyone and to give them food, comfort and community.”

How OneTable is an AirBnB for Shabbat

While OneTable provides many tools to help people connect to this ancient practice, including a certain amount of money per head to absorb some costs, the key feature of the work is its social dining platform. Described as Airbnb for Shabbat dinner, the platform helps users connect to Shabbat dinners near them across the country. Other tools include Shabbat service guides, as well as the blessings that are traditionally used throughout the dinner.

The goal is especially to support Jewish people in their 20s and 30s — those most likely to have disassociated from both their Jewish roots and the “art of gathering.”

“We're really all about empathy and finding solutions for helping people find connection and a feeling of belonging, especially around the Friday night Shabbat dinner table,” says Dani Kohanzadeh, Field Director at OneTable.

Lighting Shabbat candles is a central ritual of Friday night dinner

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LAist

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How growing loneliness inspired OneTable's founder

Aliza Klein, who founded OneTable in 2014 in New York, was motivated by emerging studies that showed young people were disassociating from Judaism at record rates, and that young people were facing epidemics of loneliness and isolation. Nearly ten years later, particularly in post a pandemic times, those rates are even worse.

“She was really thinking about the recent grad who didn't have a lot of disposable income, didn't have a lot of space in their apartment, didn't have time on their hands and wasn't necessarily jumping at the opportunity to pay for dinner for all of their friends or their friends friends,” Kohanzadeh says. “She was thinking about the easiest, barrier-less way to make hosting a Shabbat dinner feel real and possible and repeatable.

Kohanzadeh also grew up watching her parents host giant Shabbat dinners, but did not host her own dinners until she began working with One Table, which is a typical story for younger Jewish people these days, she says.

A hand-written menu shows what's for dinner

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“Millennials, Gen Z, I don't think that we're known for being really good at prepping,” she says. “We are all about helping weave in that Shabbat feeling throughout the week. Because you have Shabbat, you have a week of thoughtfulness around it. And because you have a week of thoughtfulness around it, you have a really beautiful end of week practice.”

Kohanzadeh adds that they encourage users to make Shabbat their own unique experience.

“I really had to think: What did I want my Shabbat dinners to look like? Not my mom's, not my sister's, not the Shabbat dinner of my childhood. But now, in my adulthood, what it means to do something special on a Friday night.”

Togetherness and thoughtfulness

While One Table aims to bring the ancient practice of Shabbat to the younger generation, its mission is much broader than Shabbat dinner. By highlighting ideas of hospitality, togetherness and thoughtfulness around gatherings, Kohanzadeh says the goal is simply to promote rest and connection, in whatever form that may be.

“The ideas are about rest, relaxation, taking a moment for something special. That couldn't possibly be bad for anyone,” she says.

“We're really here to just help people find more intention and meaning in the rhythm of their lives. For us, that's punctuated by Friday night. For others, maybe it's punctuated by Saturday morning when you always go out for coffee and take a long walk, or Sunday evening when you chill out and think about the rest of your week.”

Ultimately, the sentiment is around forging stronger community connections, whether one is Jewish or not.

“I’m really thoughtful about how special community is in reflecting joy back into your life,” Kohanzadeh says. “To be able to watch people connect over good food and good wine, it's just good for you. There's no way it's not.”