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Lifecycles
A mezuzah on the door, a kitchen that works, a Friday night that arrives on purpose, a box for tzedakah and a shelf of books. Practical first steps, in any order, at whatever pace suits you.
Judaism puts an unusual amount of weight on the house rather than the synagogue. The Shabbat table, not the sanctuary, is where most of what a family transmits actually gets transmitted; the kitchen carries more halacha than the prayer book does; and the single most visible Jewish object in the world sits on a doorpost rather than in a building.
So the list below is not a set of requirements to be satisfied before a home counts. Every item on it is complete in itself. A home with one mezuzah on one door is a home with a mezuzah on it. Do one thing, and then, whenever you feel like it, another.
Start here, because it takes an afternoon and it changes how a house feels immediately.
A mezuzah is a small parchment scroll, handwritten by a trained scribe, containing the two paragraphs of the Shema. It goes on the doorpost of every room in the house that is lived in — bedrooms, kitchen, living room, and the front door above all — but not the bathroom. It is fixed to the right-hand post as you enter, in the lower part of the top third, and Ashkenazi custom is to angle it inward, sloping towards the room you are going into.
The decorative case is a case. The kosher part is the parchment, and a printed scroll from a souvenir shop is not kosher no matter how nice the case is. Buy the scroll from a reliable source, and have the ones you already own checked — letters crack and fade, and the practice is to have them examined twice in seven years. The mezuzah page is where to arrange either, and what a mezuzah is goes into what makes a scroll kosher.
You say a blessing as you fix it. Someone will come and do it with you if you would rather not do it alone, and plenty of people would rather not.
The largest job on this page, and the one most worth doing in stages rather than all at once. In the order most families actually manage it:
First, shop differently. Buy only products carrying a reliable hechsher — the symbol indicating rabbinic certification. This changes nothing about your kitchen and everything about what enters it, and it is a habit you can start on your next grocery run. Kosher in Silicon Valley covers reading the symbols, where to shop locally, and who to ask when a particular product has you stuck — which it will, roughly weekly, for the first few months.
Then separate meat and dairy. Two sets of dishes, pots, and cutlery, kept apart and marked so nobody has to remember which is which — colour is the usual answer, and it works. Separate washing up: two basins or two racks if you have one sink, which most people do. Separate dish towels. Chabad custom is to wait six hours after meat before eating dairy; in the other direction, after ordinary dairy, rinsing the mouth and eating something neutral is enough, while hard aged cheese takes the full wait like meat.
Then kasher the kitchen itself. Surfaces, oven, sink, and the utensils you are keeping. This is a real process with real rules and it is genuinely not something to do from a website: a rabbi will come to your kitchen, look at what you actually have, and talk it through. That visit is free, it is unhurried, and nobody inspects your fridge and tuts.
And immerse new dishes. Metal and glass vessels bought new are immersed in a mikvah before first use — tevilat keilim. It takes a few minutes and there is a keilim mikvah for the purpose. See immersing dishes.
The thing that makes a Jewish home a Jewish home more than any object in it, and the one with the lowest barrier to entry of anything on this page.
Candles, eighteen minutes before sunset on Friday. A married woman lights two, and Chabad custom is to add one for each child; girls light their own from the age of three. If there is no woman in the house, a man lights. The time changes every week — it is on the times page and on the front page of this site each Friday, and it is worth putting a weekly reminder on a phone for the first year.
A table. Kiddush over wine, two challahs, a meal that is longer than a weekday meal because nobody is going anywhere. That is the whole architecture. Blessing the children, singing if you sing.
Then the day itself — which is where most people start smaller than they expect to. Some families begin with dinner and nothing else, and add later: no phone for the evening, then the whole of Friday night, then the morning. The Shabbat guide sets out the meals, havdalah on Saturday night, and what melacha actually means in plain terms.
And guests. Hachnasat orchim — hospitality — is not an add-on to a Shabbat table, it is close to the point of one. If you have room, say so here and somebody will be sent. If you do not yet feel able to host, go and eat at someone else’s table first, which is how nearly everybody learns what a Friday night looks like.
A pushke in the kitchen and one in the children’s room, and coins into it before candle lighting on Friday and on weekday mornings before prayer.
The amounts are trivial and that is deliberate. The point of the box is not the sum in it, it is that giving becomes a small daily physical act rather than an annual decision made with a bank transfer — and that a child grows up in a house where the first thing that happens on a Friday afternoon is somebody putting money in a tin for a stranger. It is the cheapest and most effective Jewish object you can put in a home.
A Jewish house looks like something, and a shelf is most of it. A starting five:
And a Jewish calendar on the wall — the kind with candle lighting times and the portions on it. It is the cheapest thing here and it quietly reorganises a household’s sense of the year, because the festivals stop arriving as surprises.
Ask about any of these before buying. There are good editions and there are bad ones, and the learning page is the other half of this: books help most when somebody is reading one with you.
Accumulated slowly, usually as gifts, and each one is the reason a festival happens in your house rather than somewhere else: candlesticks, a kiddush cup, a challah board and cover, a menorah, a seder plate, a sukkah eventually, a lulav and etrog each autumn. Nothing needs to be expensive and nothing needs to be bought all at once. Buy the one for the festival that is next.
If you want one instruction rather than a page of them: put up a mezuzah on the front door this month, and light candles this Friday. Those two take an afternoon and eighteen minutes respectively, they require nothing else to be in place first, and between them they mark the two things a Jewish home is organised around — the door, and the week.
Everything else can follow whenever it follows. There is no order it has to be done in, no schedule you are behind on, and nobody keeping track. Call 408-910-2034 when you want a hand with any of it.
Every doorway of a home that has two doorposts and a lintel and leads into a room used for living — bedrooms, kitchen, living room, hallways, and the front door. Bathrooms and very small rooms do not. If you are not sure about a particular archway or a doorless opening, that is a genuinely common question and a five-second answer from a rabbi.
The decorative case is only the case. What matters is the parchment inside, which must be handwritten by a trained scribe on the skin of a kosher animal, with every letter formed correctly. A printed scroll, or one sold cheaply in a souvenir shop, is not kosher and does not fulfil the mitzvah. Buy the scroll from a reliable source, and buy any case you like.
Three things, in order of how much work they are: buying only certified products, which is a shopping habit; separating meat from dairy, which means two sets of dishes, pots and cutlery and a way of keeping them apart; and kashering the kitchen itself, which is a one-off process a rabbi will walk through with you in your own kitchen. Most families do them in that order, over months rather than in a weekend.
Chabad custom, and the widespread Ashkenazi custom, is six hours after meat before eating dairy. Some communities — Dutch and German among them — wait three hours or one, and those are established customs rather than leniencies. In the other direction, after most dairy, it is enough to rinse the mouth and eat something neutral; hard aged cheese is treated like meat and takes the full wait.
Yes. Metal and glass vessels bought from a non-Jewish manufacturer or seller are immersed in a mikvah before use — tevilat keilim. It takes minutes, and there is a keilim mikvah for exactly this purpose. See the keilim page for how it works and what does and does not need immersing.
Eighteen minutes before sunset, which means the time changes every week and is different in every city. The candle lighting time for San Jose is on the times page and on the front of this site every Friday. If you are ever running late, light before sunset rather than after it, and if sunset has passed, do not light — ask instead.
Get one, or have the ones you already have checked.
Where to shop, how to read a label, who to ask about a product.
Candles, the meals, havdalah, and what melacha means in plain terms.
Tevilat keilim: what needs it, and where to do it.
Both directions — somewhere to go, or guests at yours.
A weekly class or a chavruta, which is how most of this gets easier.
Nobody does all of this, and nobody does any of it in a weekend. Pick the one thing on this page you can actually see yourself doing this month, do that, and leave the rest. If you want somebody to come and look at your doorposts, walk your kitchen with you, or simply sit down and work out what a realistic first year looks like, call 408-910-2034 or write to the office. It is an ordinary request and it is made often.