Delighting in Shabbat With or Without Meat — Limmud NY 2011
Throughout the centuries of Jewish tradition, we have celebrated holidays by eating festive meals. In many homes meat is the centerpiece on the table at these joyous occasions. This tradition originates from the book of Isaiah, “If you call the sabbath ‘delight,’ the Lord’s holy day ‘honored’; And if you honor it and go not your ways nor look to your affairs, nor strike bargains — then you can seek the favor of the Lord.” (Isaiah 58:13-14). Jewish sages have interpreted this text to say that we should “delight” in Shabbat by eating food that is special— for many centuries this has meant meat, which historically wasn’t eaten during the week but only on the Sabbath.
However, Limmud NY 2011, a multidenominational Jewish conference focused on Jewish learning of all kinds, held last week in the Catskills, proved that meat is not necessarily the only way that we can delight in Shabbat through food.
When asked why the weekend was meatless, conference organizers said the decision was not made out of environmental concerns, or to appease the growing number of vegetarians in the community. Rachel Dor, Limmud NY Co-Chair said, “The decision to go meat-free this year was a financial one. Ordering a set of meat dishes and cutlery for Friday night dinner added several dollars per person to catering costs. Using paper goods and plastic cutlery to serve all 700 people seemed too wasteful.”
Somewhat unexpectedly, the conference participants didn’t seem to mind the lack of meat. When the delicious Moroccan style fish was served on Friday night, one of my tablemates seemed surprised that we were only being served fish, but he was not unhappy. In fact, many commented on the high quality of the food throughout the weekend. One participant noted that, “there was so much spiritual food for the soul, meat wasn’t necessary!”
Dor explained that, “We considered that many people eat chicken or meat for a traditional Shabbat meal and learned that this is in fact a minhag [tradition] rather than Halacha [law]. Once we learned more about what it means to delight in Shabbat, we realized that being at Limmud NY on Shabbat is fulfilling the law of ‘delighting in Shabbat’ in so many enriching ways, with or without roasted chicken.”
Yet it was surprising that Limmudniks were not engaged in much education about the multitude of ways that you can delight in Shabbat observance besides eating meat. Organizers attempted to foster the conversation by providing text from Isaiah and discussion questions about delighting in Shabbat, on a card placed on Shabbat dinner tables, yet the vague language went over many participants’ heads. Putting health and environmental benefits of eating less meat aside, the conference could have engaged participants with ways of bringing Shabbat joy into their own observance. Is meat necessary to delight in Shabbat? How else can we celebrate one of our most important holidays with joy?
Limmud NY is one of the few successful examples of pluralism in action. Jews of all walks of life and all levels of observance come together. Yet the food that we ate was an afterthought. Our tradition teaches us to delight in Shabbat through the food that we eat, and I would hope that in the future, we are all encouraged to eat more consciously, no matter what our food choices.
Daniel Infeld is the Food Programs Fellow at Hazon and he is a recent graduate of Clark University in Worcester, MA.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 2
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Fast Forward A Chicagoan wanted to protest Elon Musk — and put a swastika sticker on a Jewish man’s Tesla
-
Fast Forward NY attorney general orders car wash to stop ripping off Jews with antisemitic ‘Passover special’
-
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.