Dalia Boteach did not expect to spend Friday night explaining two thousand years of Jewish practice to her Christian dinner guests. But that is what happened — and nobody planned it.
The evening started the way every traditional Shabbat does. Boteach lit the candles, blessed the wine, and led her guests through the hymns that welcome the Sabbath, prayer booklets in Hebrew and English open in front of them so they could follow along. Then came the meal: challah, chicken soup, brisket, kugel. And then the conversation took a turn.
Every Israeli soldier is sworn into the army with a hand on the Hebrew Bible, yet most have never opened the books of Jewish law that grew out of it. That contradiction came up at the table, and before long, Boteach pulled one of those volumes off the shelf and set it down in front of her guests. Her Christian guests have heard plenty about these books online — most of it negative, slanderous, and inaccurate. What they saw at Boteach’s table was not a secret. It was an argument: generations of Jewish sages debating, disagreeing, and illuminating each other across two thousand years.
“Jews don’t shy away from hard topics,” Boteach told them. “Every question gets brought to the table.”
This is what it looks like when Christians actually sit together with Jews at the Shabbat table, rather than simply admiring it from a distance. And it happened because of two things coming together at exactly the right moment.
President Trump’s call for Americans to observe Shabbat on May 15-16 was the first in American history. Israel365 Action had spent months building the Shabbat Table, a program that brings Christian families into traditional Jewish homes for an authentic Friday night experience, and timed its launch to coincide with this moment. This past weekend, Jewish families in ten communities across America — Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Atlantic Beach, Dallas, Nashville, Columbus, and more — opened their doors to Christian guests for Friday night Shabbat dinner.
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None of this surprised Rabbi Tuly Weisz, founder of Israel365. In his book Universal Zionism, he argues that we are living through the third stage of Zionism — the stage in which Israel turns outward toward the nations, fulfilling the promise God made to Abraham: “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). The Jewish-Christian alliance, in his reading, is not a feel-good interfaith project. It is a civilizational partnership, and it is built not at conferences but around tables. “The Jewish-Christian alliance that is essential to Israel’s future cannot be sustained by conferences and newsletters. It is built around tables, and Shabbat has been setting those tables for three thousand years.”
The prophet Isaiah saw this moment coming. “As for the Nations who attach themselves to the Lord… all who observe the Sabbath and do not desecrate it… I will bring them to My sacred mountain… For My House shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:6-7). For millennia, that was a promise. Last Friday night, in ten cities across America, it was a dinner.
Ahad Ha’am, the great early Zionist thinker, wrote that more than the Jews kept the Shabbat, the Shabbat has kept the Jews. What happened last Friday suggests something more: that the table Jews have been setting for three thousand years may be exactly what Christians need now.
