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Shabbat Shalom!

Every Friday, I host a Shabbat for my friends, family, business associates, and other people I like or want to get to know.

Here’s a picture I did from a recent shabbat with friends — including Neville Medhora, David Hauser, David Kelly, and Billy Murphy.

The Shabbat dinner with friends recently

Our Shabbat dinner recently with friends

The point of our Shabbat is to go DEEP into conversations, help each other in business… and just relax after a long week.

Shabbat isn’t only if you’re Jewish. Anyone can do their own Friday dinner to grow relationships and business partnerships.

Today, I’m going to show you how I do my Shabbat — so you can copy it.

Here are the 14 key parts:

  1. Phones off. Start with everyone turning off the phone.
  2. Warm up. I ask everyone to say “Oh yeah!” as a warm-up.
  3. “Why do you do Shabbat?” Even if people have never done Shabbat before, I’m curious what they expect.
  4. Three prayers. Candle prayer, wine prayer, and bread prayer.
  5. Start dinner. At this point, people start eating — and chatting about things. I try to keep the agenda moving along, and let people have open discussion at the end instead.
  6. Highlights of the week. Everyone shares something interesting about their weeks. After someone shares his or her highlights, everyone says “Dilly dilly!”
  7. Kvetches time. For people who want to share their biggest complaint of the week. It could be anything. Whenever someone says a kvetch, we say “OY VEY!”
  8. Thought of the week. I put a 15-minute timer on to discuss a specific topic. For example, recently we talked about how to balance work and a relationship. When people go deeper, it strengthens the bonds.
  9. Financial session. Anything about money: financial questions, “Jew” hacks, lifehacks, books, stock picks, or financial sites that you found.
  10. Single session. I’ll get people who are single to describe what they want in a partner. So if someone sees or knows someone who fits the description.
  11. Announcement. Open session for anyone who wants to say something or anything.
  12. Moment of silence. For 30 seconds, go around the room, look at every person’s eyes, but stay silent. This is AMAZING!
  13. Blessing. Point out someone in the room, say something positive. And at the end of it, say “BLESS!” out loud.
  14. Take a group photo. As my buddy Neville says, “Selfie or it never happens.” To end the Shabbat, we would do a group hug and then a group selfie.

Shabbat Shalom!

Challenge: Instead of doing the same stuff this Friday, host a dinner party this weekend. How did it go? Leave a comment below.

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7 responses to “Shabbat Shalom!”

Luke
August 31, 2019 at 4:56 am

Hey Noah! I arranged a Friday night dinner for six of us in London last night at my placeinspired by your Shabbat format. I adapted the agenda a little (made it more ‘British’!) but the essence of it was still there – and it went brilliantly. No one wnated to leave! We’ve all agreed to do it again. Thanks for the tips – and keep going with the podcast!

Bar Bruhis
August 13, 2019 at 2:17 pm

Stealing for this weekend 🙂

Jakub
May 23, 2019 at 11:25 am

I like this concept. I realized, that people – good friend “deep friends” (if you know what I mean) is what I am missing. Not saying I am weirdo without a friends. But I mean this concept of friend coming for dinner is great. My long term goal is to establis new connections and friendships. Calm dinner is super cool, BUT I dont’t know how to establish agenda without freaking people out. Or without looking like some kind of fanatic… 🙂

Tips would be great. Definetly think, that deeper friendships is something what modern wester society is kind of lacking.

Charlie Riley
May 16, 2019 at 9:20 am

Love this idea, what would you say is an ideal number of people so side conversations don’t occur and everyone feels involved?

David
May 16, 2019 at 11:18 am

Hey, Charlie! David here, part of Team Dork. I was also at Noah’s Shabbat mentioned above. It was a BLAST. 🙂

We were at 11 people during our Shabbat. I think that’s just about max capacity — maybe even a little too much. I’d say maybe 8-9 is the ideal number for deep conversations without people feeling too left out.

Charlie Riley
May 17, 2019 at 9:47 am

Thanks David, great feedback. I read somewhere that 6 should be the max for a dinner party, but this is a little different. I love this idea, I would agree 8-9 could make this not last 5 hours! Looks like a blast.

Crystal Sellers
May 15, 2019 at 2:17 pm

Great episode! I’ll definitely be hosting a dinner like this. I also like the tip about one table. I’d never heard of it before this podcast, and will definitely try it out on my future travels.

Cheers and dilly dilly!

Crystal Sellers

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