Shabbat Project: Jews in Israel, abroad show solidarity amid Hamas war

On October 22, the Chief Rabbi of South Africa, Warren Goldstein, made an appeal to the Jewish world, emphasizing that the war against Hamas is being fought to preserve our very existence and survival as Jewish people. 

He states, “The barbaric attacks launched by the murderous Hamas terrorists were not about the borders of Israel, not about obtaining political or military objectives. Our enemies target the very existence of the Jewish people, and as antisemitism surges in capitals across the world, we are all on the front lines.”

Drawing attention to the fact that the terror attacks occurred on Shabbat, he adds, “It’s no coincidence that Hamas attacked on Shabbat. Shabbat is who we are. It is the very soul of the Jewish people. It is the God-given gift that has within it everything we need at this time of historic challenge, and forever: resolve and inner peace; faith and purpose; family and community; and the meaning of being a Jew.”

Rabbi Goldstein and his wife, Gina, started The Shabbat Project in 2013 – a global unifying movement to encourage Jewish people to keep Shabbat. 

This year, from sunset on Friday, November 3, until the stars come out on Saturday, November 4, they are dedicating The Shabbat Project to the people of Israel. This year was supposed to have been a celebration of The Shabbat Project’s 10th anniversary, but since the murderous October 7 terror attacks against Israeli men, women, and children, the focus will be on praying for and helping Israelis. 

Goldstein tells the Magazine that The Shabbat Project in Israel aims to “do something special for Shabbat for the wounded in hospitals, for soldiers in army bases, for the refugees who’ve been relocated from the Gaza border and the northern border to places of safety.”

The chief rabbi and his wife released a statement for all Jewish women on Shabbat, urging them to pray for Israel during this exceedingly dangerous time: “This is a spiritual war against those who seek to destroy Israel, not because of its borders but because of what it stands for as the world’s only Jewish state. Our response must be to reaffirm our eternal Jewish values through Shabbat. In the merit of our prayers and the mitzvah of candle-lighting, may God bring security and safety to Israel and comfort to its people.” 

This statement is accompanied by a candle-lighting blessing to God, and a prayer after Shabbat candle-lighting for those who lost their lives, the grieving families, the hostages, the wounded and displaced, and the soldiers fighting on the front lines of this war between good and evil. The prayer ends with a plea for God to “Speedily bring Your final redemption to the world, when ‘death will vanish in life eternal,’ when You will ‘wipe away tears from all faces,’ when ‘nation will not lift up sword against nation, neither will they learn war anymore, and the Earth will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the oceans.’”

THE SHABBAT Project begins every year following Parshat Vayera, which shows the hospitality of Abraham, whose tent was always open to welcome strangers. Goldstein explains, “It’s really saying, this tent of Shabbat and The Shabbat Project is open on all sides, to all Jews.”

The first Shabbat Project was held 10 years ago in South Africa, where 30,000 South African Jews, almost half of the country’s Jewish population, filled synagogues, sang along in post-Shabbat havdalah concerts, and attended a “dinner under the stars.” 

 Gila Goldstein invited Israeli educator, speaker, and one of Forbes’ Power Women 2023, Rebbetzin Yemima Mizrachi, to attend a Great Street Challah Bake in Johannesburg.

“They closed a whole street, and there were 3,000 women, each and every one of them having the flour, and the water, and the salt. It was huge. Long tables along this street, and they simply started making the dough, and it was full of happiness and full of songs. It’s such a big proof of women wanting the world to become a better place,” she says.

A year later, in 2014, The Shabbat Project became global. 

Today, there are almost a million participants from 1,500 cities spread across 100 countries and some of the most unexpected places. The Griqualand West Hebrew Congregation in the desert of Karoo in South Africa held a Shabbat service for the first time in years, and Jewish soldiers at a military base in northern Iraq observed the holiday together. 

A grandmother in the small desert town of Fernley, Nevada, welcomed six families carrying Kiddush cups and handmade tablecloths into her home after posting about The Shabbat Project on Facebook, proving to her granddaughter that they’re not the only Jews in the world. 

Holocaust survivors from Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania who had subsequently lived under communist regimes were overcome with emotion as they baked challah, said Kiddush, and sang Jewish songs together. On November 3, in France, 20 young Ukrainian refugees will be participating in Shabbat Project events at the Adath Israel Synagogue in Strasbourg. 

Shabbat Project shows solidarity with Israel

This year, some 1,000 Shabbat Project partners around the world will be hosting events to show solidarity with Israel. 

Prayers for Israel will be said during the challah bakes and Shabbat dinners, and videos of the Shabbat festivities will be sent to people in Israel, so that they can see how the events were held in their honor. There will also be a “mitzvah auction,” with lists of mitzvot to choose from, such as keeping kosher or not gossiping. Each mitzvah will be dedicated to an IDF soldier. 

Rabbi Goldstein hopes to inspire people to keep Shabbat all year round; his book Shabbat. A Day to Create Yourself: Building character, shaping perspectives, and finding happiness through Shabbat is a key element of his future vision. 

“The focus will be the big annual festival about Shabbat, but then, throughout the year, to have people learning about Shabbat and keeping more of Shabbat in their weekly lives,” he says. 

More than 400 reading groups and over 1,000 study partnerships have sprung up internationally since his book’s release in March. A powerful testament to how important Shabbat is to soldiers who are fighting, even if they can’t be observant themselves, is that four days after the terrorist attacks, 400 copies of the chief rabbi’s book were requested to be sent to the IDF in Hebrew and English.

ROBIN MEYERSON, the founder and director of Project Inspire Arizona, started Shabbos Project Arizona in 2014, becoming the director of The (North American) Shabbat Project in 2022. She hosts weekly learning groups, where she and seven other women of different levels of Torah observance read Shabbat. A Day to Create Yourself. 

Meyerson says that a first step for people who have never observed Shabbat is to experience how lighting candles brings a sense of peace into their home. 

Donors are providing candle kits. Meyerson says, “Can you imagine the light that will come into the world on November 3 before sundown? We’re doing The Shabbat Project for our brothers and sisters in Israel. They’re on the ground fighting physically, and what we’re doing is fighting spiritually.”

One of Meyerson’s students, Bella Felicia Inka Hauser, has been participating in The Shabbat Project since it began. She is the daughter of Auschwitz survivors. Her grandparents, sister, and cousin were all taken to the gas chambers. “I was born with ashes in my mouth, one year after the war,” Hauser states. She suffered from debilitating depression for most of her life until a few months ago. She says that becoming closer to Judaism is healing her.

She describes going over to Meyerson’s house on Shabbat. 

“She took me outside in her backyard, and we climbed 15 stairs to her praying pavilion. She [had] built an outdoor deck where she goes to daven [and] directly in front of her pavilion, there are two palm trees which are [symbolically] her Shabbos candles.” 
Hauser felt a sense of peace there as she did at the worldwide challah bake she attended at the Jewish Community Center in Scottsdale, Arizona, the night before The Shabbat Project. In the midst of a crowd of people, she remembers seeing “a glowing light. It was the first time that I saw this light, and [felt] the comfort and the peace.”

Hauser is reading Shabbat. A Day to Create Yourself in Meyerson’s learning group; she says it has given her “a moment of revelation that I didn’t have before.” She adds, “Depression completely removed me from living. The more I learn, the greater the light within me starts to sparkle.” 

Observing Shabbat in Israel is a spiritual experience that connects people more deeply to their history and homeland. Last year, Ari Shabat, an educator at Momentum, a nonprofit organization that empowers Jewish people worldwide, took 200 men from the United States and Canada to Israel on a week-long trip that overlapped with The Shabbat Project on November 11-12.

“The trip starts up north, and the goal is to kind of build towards Shabbat,” he explains. The men visit Yad Vashem and Mount Herzl in Jerusalem before going to the Kotel (Western Wall) for the first time. He describes the sudden dramatic shift that happens in Jerusalem as Shabbat approaches. 

“The whole country is going to go from the most insane, crazy, hustle, move, fast, go; then in an instant, it goes quiet. It just goes silent, the whole city.”

Many of the men had never observed Shabbat before, and saying prayers at the Kotel, dancing and singing together, and lighting candles for havdalah (after Shabbat) on the porch of the Aish Global Building overlooking the Kotel was extremely emotional for them. Their experience of participating in The Shabbat Project was something they took home with them. 

Shabat describes, “For some, that might mean that they go home and talk to their wife about lighting candles every Friday and just have candles lit in the house. There are others that do a Friday night family dinner, or we’re just going to make Kiddush, or I’m just going to give a blessing to my children, or I’m just going to serenade my wife.”

CEO of the Jewish Zionist Movement of Eilat and head manager of The Shabbat Project in Israel, Aaron Ackerman emphasizes the close bonds that formed through The Shabbat Project experience, which had 220,000 participants last year. 

“It touches so many people,” he says. There are over 100 municipalities that work with The Shabbat Project in Israel, such as the Education Ministry’s Jewish Identity unit and Zehut’s National Service Girls, which teaches about Jewish values and Shabbat in schools.

Since the terrorist attacks, the southern city of Eilat has doubled in population by taking in 60,000 refugees from towns on the Gaza border that were decimated by violence. Many of these people have lost their families and their homes; hundreds are wounded and being cared for in hospitals. They are staying in hotels, Airbnb rooms, and with host families. Ackerman states, “It’s amazing to see how Jewish people’s hearts just open, and everybody’s offering help and wants to be part [of it], and it’s really beautiful.” 

This year’s Shabbat Project in Eilat will include many displaced people who are desperate for connection and consolation.

THE SHABBAT Project has a history of offering support to those in need of healing who are uprooted from home. 

Writer Ellie Grossman Cohen from St. Louis, Missouri, remembers attending a challah bake in 2019 that her friend hosted in her home for around 100 people, some of whom had traveled from all over the world to receive medical treatment at St. Louis’ specialized hospitals. 

Two young girls with cerebral palsy were there with their mothers, and another guest was recovering from having a lung transplant. Grossman Cohen remembers, “One of the girls was in a wheelchair, and we were pushing her around in the big circle and singing and dancing.” 

She adds, “We practice the mitzvah of bikur cholim [visiting the sick]. The Jewish community is so generous with acts of loving-kindness, and during some of the worst times in these people’s lives because their loved ones are sick, or whatever crisis they’re going through.”

The Shabbat Project can also help people to find their beshert (soul mate). 

Rebbetzin Joanne Dove, a South African senior educator at Seed – a UK organization that fosters Jewish learning and values – promotes The Shabbat Project and reading groups in Europe. She has dedicated four challah bakes to the people of Israel and is getting involved with challah-matchmaking. She and her friend, who helps single people from all different Jewish religious backgrounds find marriage partners, are organizing a challah bake with live music for several hundred singles at a school in Northwest London on October 31, before The Shabbat Project. 

Dove remembers how, after the first UK challah bake in 2014, a single, non-observant woman found unexpected romance when she went to a friend’s house to bake the leftover dough. A few years later, she was married and had a baby boy. When the family went to shul for the pidyon ha’ben (redemption of the first-born son) ceremony for their son, the shul was preparing a challah bake for the UK version of The Shabbat Project. 

Dove says, “They did the pidyon ha’ben in the middle, while they waited for the dough to rise.” She reveals: “In each and every challah bake, I know and have heard that at least five or six people have had whatever they prayed for at the time of the challah bake. They’ve told me personally that those things have happened.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, 99-year-old Auschwitz survivor Lily Ebert participated in The Shabbat Project with her grandson Dov Forman, author and social media creator, and their TikTok videos about it got over 100,000 views. Ebert grew up in an observant home and credits her faith with helping her to get through the unimaginable cruelty and loss that she endured. Her mother, younger sister, and brother were killed in the gas chambers, but she says that human beings carried out the Holocaust, not God, and her message is to love.

With words that are prophetic and pertinent to today, Ebert says, “Shabbat plays a crucial role in preserving Jewish identity and heritage. For someone who has witnessed attempts to annihilate Jewish culture and faith, observing Shabbat becomes an act of defiance against those who sought to erase Jewish history. It serves as a reminder [of what] the Jewish people have endured throughout centuries, even in the face of adversity.” 