We invite everyone to join the conversation about observing Shabbat today. This is the place to discuss everything from ways to celebrate at home to our relationship with God and Jewish community, as well as recipes and Jewish art projects - all in the context of Shabbat.
What Makes it Jewish?February 11, 2008Every Friday night, I get a message from one of my friends. He has something called movie night. I have no illusions that they are having any discussions about religion; in fact, I know they are not. They are young American Jews and exiled Israelis. And every Friday night they gather for movie night. My friend is an artist and he creates this beautiful poster for movie night, a different one every week, and they gather. And it is a group of Jews being Jewish together. They are watching a movie that has nothing to do with religion and they are talking. From what I gather, sometimes those conversations are about Judaism but, more often, they are not. (Rabbi Josh Rose)   So what do you think? Is this a celebration of Shabbat? 
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"it is a group of Jews being Jewish together" = how? I think it's nice that we want to classify this as "celebrating Shabbat" but if it's just a convenient night to get together, then it's really not a celebration of Shabbat as much as it might be an acknowledgement of SHabbat. I don't think that they're in any way "celebrating" the idea of Shabbat. If they made mention of it, or even called it a "Shabbat Movie Night" then I think that there might be more justification for calling it a Shabbat celebration. But from this description, no.
P.S. I think that there are lots of creative and out-of-the-box ways to celebrate shabbat but most of them require at least an awareness and acknowledgement that it IS shabbat while doing the activity.