TABLET MAG
You Don’t Have to be Jewish to Love Shabbat Dinner
by Sara Toth Stub
January 11, 2016

On a recent Friday evening in Jerusalem, more than a dozen participants from a Chinese business delegation snapped photos of each other waiting outside a house in Nachlaot, a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood best known for the famed Machane Yehuda outdoor food market…This meal was organized through Shabbat of a Lifetime, a company the Cohens founded in 2011 to provide Sabbath meal experiences for predominantly non-Jewish tourists in the homes of traditionally observant Jerusalemites. Michelle Cohen would not disclose the price, saying it often depends on what deal they work out with the tour companies that send them most of their guests, but she did tell me that it’s “equivalent to the cost of a Shabbat meal in a hotel.” This fast-growing company has served 20,000 tourists and employs a network of about 60 hosting families all over the city. READ MORE