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Every week
Candle lighting, the three meals, what is and is not done — and, at the end, a realistic way to begin if you never have. No guilt anywhere on this page.
This year
Candle lighting
7:13 PM — Friday, September 4
Shabbat
Shabbat ends (havdalah)
8:09 PM — Saturday, September 5
Computed live for San Jose. Full zmanim for today, and Shabbat times for the coming weeks, are on the times page. Our service times are on the schedule.
One day in seven on which you stop making things. It runs from a little before sunset on Friday to nightfall on Saturday — about twenty-five hours — and it is the only ritual observance in the Ten Commandments.
The reason given in Exodus is the creation: six days of making, one of stopping. The reason given in Deuteronomy is different — you were slaves in Egypt, and slaves do not get a day off. Both are read every week, and the pairing is the whole idea. Shabbat is simultaneously a claim about the universe and a claim about what a person is worth.
In practice it is an evening and a day in which nothing is bought, nothing is written, nothing is switched on, no screen is opened, and the phone is somewhere else. What fills the space is food, conversation that goes on far too long, sleeping in the afternoon, walking places, and reading.
Candles are lit eighteen minutes before sunset. That time moves every week and is the one thing worth checking — it is on the times page, computed for San Jose. If you miss it, you have missed it; the candles are not lit afterwards.
The custom is:
Light first, then cover your eyes, then say the blessing. The reverse of everything else, and for a good reason: the blessing accepts Shabbat, and once you have accepted it you can no longer strike a match. So you light, hide the flames from yourself, bless, and then look.
Many women add a private prayer at that moment, hands still over their eyes. It is one of the few completely unscripted moments in the week.
In shul: Kabbalat Shabbat — six psalms for the six weekdays, then Lecha Dodi, in which the community turns to the door to greet Shabbat as a bride — followed by the evening service. It runs about forty-five minutes. Our times are on the schedule.
At the table:
The meal is the institution. Everything else on this page can be learned later; a Friday night table with people at it is the thing that actually changes a household. If you do not have one to go to, we will find you one — that is what the hospitality page is for, and it is used far more than people assume.
Havdalah closes it: a cup of wine, a box of spices passed round so the smell carries the day a little further, and a braided candle with more than one wick, held up so the light catches your fingernails. Four blessings, and the week starts.
The word usually translated “work” is melacha, and the translation is what confuses everybody. Melacha does not mean effort. It means constructive, purposeful activity — specifically, the thirty-nine categories of activity that were used to build the Sanctuary in the wilderness, which the Torah places immediately next to the command to keep Shabbat.
So the test is not “is this hard”. It is “am I making, changing, or fixing something”.
Which produces a set of results that seem strange until the principle lands:
The categories that come up in an ordinary week:
Saving a life overrides all of it. Call the ambulance, drive to the hospital, switch on whatever needs switching on, and do not pause to work out whether it is serious enough. The halacha is explicit that hesitating in order to ask a question first is the error, not the action.
This section exists because the usual presentation of Shabbat is all-or-nothing, and all-or-nothing reliably produces nothing. It is not how anybody actually starts, including people who now keep it fully.
Three principles first.
A workable sequence, at whatever pace suits:
Our service times are on the schedule, this week’s candle lighting on the times page, and what to expect as a first-time visitor on the visitors page. There is no membership and nothing to pay.
And if what you want is not a service but a table with people at it — say so. It is the most common request the office gets and the easiest one to answer.
Candles are lit eighteen minutes before sunset on Friday, and Shabbat ends at nightfall on Saturday — around forty to seventy minutes after sunset depending on the reckoning used. Both times move week by week with the season. This site computes them for San Jose on the times page.
The custom is that the women and girls of the household light: a married woman lights two candles, and girls light one each from the age of three. Where there is no woman present, a man lights with the blessing. The order is unusual — you light first, then cover your eyes, then say the blessing — because saying it first would begin Shabbat and lighting would then be forbidden.
Not “work” in the sense of effort. Melacha means constructive activity, and the thirty-nine categories are drawn from the activities used to build the Sanctuary in the wilderness. So carrying a heavy table across the room is permitted, and striking a match is not. The test is whether you are changing or making something, not whether it is tiring.
Kindling a fire is one of the thirty-nine categories, and completing an electrical circuit is treated as falling within that family of prohibitions. In practice households set timers before Shabbat, leave a lamp on, and put the hot food on a covered heat source that was turned on beforehand.
You act, immediately and without hesitating. Saving a life overrides Shabbat completely — you call the ambulance, you drive to the hospital, you do whatever is needed. This is not a grudging exception; the halacha is that someone who stops to ask a rabbi first has done the wrong thing.
With one thing, this Friday. Light candles at the right time. That is a complete mitzvah on its own and it takes ninety seconds. Add a Friday night meal when you are ready, then try putting the phone away for the evening. Doing one part of Shabbat is not a half-measure; it is the part you are doing.
Possibly, and nobody is keeping score. A shul is full of people at completely different points, most of whom were where you are at some stage. Tell somebody it is your first time and they will find you a seat and the right page.
What runs on Friday night and Shabbat morning, and how long it takes.
A Friday night table and somebody expecting you at it.
What carrying on Shabbat means, and who to ask about the boundary.
How the calendar underneath all of this works.
Anything on this page that is a question about your situation — a fast you have been told not to keep, a kitchen you are not sure how to handle, a custom your family does differently — is a question for a person, not a page. Ask the Rabbi, or call the office. Nobody will think less of you for asking; the questions on this list are asked every single year.