A reader from Israel wrote me to ask if I knew where he could pre-pay to eat Shabbat meals in Manhattan. If you know the answer to this question, please comment or email me. Also, I would love to list contacts in other cities where a tourist can pay someone to invite them to Shabbat dinner or lunch. I had some lovely meals with a woman in Amsterdam who does this.
Update: I have two leads, so far, on the Manhattan question.
There is a website, www.oneg_shabbat.org, that sets people up with hospitality. I went to check it and it is down right now. Bummer.
The Carlebach schul, the New York synagogue where the late R. Shlomo Carlebach was spiritual leader, hosts people. The website for that is here.
I will post more as I learn more, so please feel free to lay it on me!
I wish I'd known about the woman in Amsterdam. We were recently there for Shabbat, and I didn't bother to make contact with anyone, but I wish we had. However, we rented an apartment, went shopping on Friday, and had very nice Shabbat meals on our own.
Posted by: Lisa | May 19, 2005 at 02:11 AM
Hey Lisa! I believe that I got the name of the woman who hosted me from the NIK:
http://www.nik.nl/
This was ten years ago and I didn't have any internet at the time, I just got a booklet. I suppose that NIK is the first but maybe not the only place to check in Amsterdam for Jewish stuff.
I have a neat book Resten Van Een Taal about Jewish Dutch dialect. I'm mentioning it because I've blogged here about lost languages. The Jewish words aren't actually all lost from Dutch, they are still part of Amerstammer' (Mokumers') slang.
Posted by: balabusta | May 23, 2005 at 04:35 PM