When it comes to weekends, Jerusalem isn’t the liveliest city for those who don’t observe the Sabbath. Most restaurants are closed, as are cafés, stores, nearly all movie theaters, clubs and malls.
“It’s kind of absurd,” said Matan Hayat, 27, a Jerusalemite who is a student and teaches at Revivim, a Jewish studies teacher training program at Hebrew University. “There’s a total halt of all culture in Jerusalem on Shabbat.”
In response, Hayat and a group of fellow, young secular and religious Jerusalemites created “Open for Shabbat,” a program to open cafés on Saturdays as a place to meet and spend time together, but not for ordering food or doing anything that would violate the observance of the Sabbath, which starts at sundown Friday to Saturday night.
“It’s a fact that cafés are a meeting place for people, and on the one day when people have free time, they’re not open,” said Hayat. “Our idea is to open those places and use them as a meeting place that is Sabbath observant, with no commercial usage. We’re just using the space.”
In Israel, people often stop to drink their morning cappuccino and eat a croissant at the local café instead of taking it out, or use the café as a makeshift office, for getting work done or holding meetings.
“The café is like an extension of our homes,” said Hayat.
But in Jerusalem, where a majority of residents are Sabbath observers and where the Orthodox rabbinate controls nearly all aspects of Jewish observance, nearly everything is…read more at Times of Israel
