Anyone in Israel who considers themselves a serious electronics enthusiast knows that a trip to New York is not complete without visiting B&H. The 53-year-old Manhattan electronics giant is owned by members of the Satmar Hasidic community, many of whom also work there. It sells plenty of products Satmar Hasidim themselves would never use, including televisions and unrestricted smartphones.
And, heaven forbid, it closes on Shabbat. It also closes during the intermediate days of Sukkot and Passover, including its hugely popular website.
Even New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has apparently resisted the temptation to attack it online. Had he done so, one suspects the backlash would have been enough to make anyone reconsider.
Yet here in our small country, the question of Shabbat has somehow become cause for uproar.
The relaunched Adika fashion website, built around clothing inspired by singer Odeya Azoulay, stopped sales last Shabbat at the singer’s request as she moves toward greater religious observance. And judging by the reaction, countless customers apparently spent the day staring helplessly into wardrobes devoid of clothes, with absolutely nothing to wear. Help!
The hysteria is spreading. Democracy is invoked as the supreme principle, and Shabbat is cast aside. But it is not only Shabbat. A restaurant owner who decides to make a struggling business kosher in hopes of attracting more customers, after years in which the industry has been battered by war, can now expect public condemnation. How dare they?
In my admittedly outdated understanding, someone who keeps kosher cannot eat in a non-kosher restaurant. I had not realized that the reverse had somehow become true as well.
Odeya Azoulay
(Photo: Tal Abudi)
In Tel Aviv, where I grew up, my family lived near the secular parents of a very prominent Israeli public figure who were themselves pioneers who came from observant homes. On Shabbat nights, they would sometimes send their young children to our house so they could experience a Shabbat meal. It mattered to them that the children knew where they came from. We all survived, with mutual respect.
In today’s Tel Aviv, some female residents are fighting the construction of a mikveh, a ritual bath that is an essential religious service for observant Jewish families, as though every woman entering one might emerge determined to drag secular girls into the water with her.
Have we lost our minds?
Women throughout Jewish history risked their lives to immerse in freezing water. Jews accepted poverty rather than violate Shabbat. I do not doubt that similar stories can be found somewhere in the family histories of some of those now horrified that Adika dared shut its website for a day.
Perhaps they have missed something else as well. Shabbat, historically one of Judaism’s extraordinary gifts to the world, has become fashionable again. Look at the number of Israeli Facebook groups devoted to Shabbat observance that have grown since October 7. Look at returned hostages and their relatives who have begun keeping Shabbat.
Adika's countdown timer showing when Shabbat ends and the website resumes sales
(Photo: Screenshot from the Adika website)
About 1 million Israelis took part in events connected to the global Shabbat initiative last November, out of some 3 million participants across 150 countries. The project began modestly in South Africa and has since expanded dramatically.
Charlie Kirk, who was not Jewish, also praised the idea of Shabbat and practiced what he called a technological Sabbath: disconnecting from devices and reconnecting with family. In the final months before his murder, he even wrote a book praising the practice.
What would today’s culture warriors make of Israel’s national poet Haim Nahman Bialik, who wrote of going out to welcome Sabbath Queen? For some Israelis, it now seems that shopping and spending money specifically on Shabbat have somehow become symbols of democracy and Jewish identity, while the extraordinary institution of Shabbat itself is mocked and pushed aside.
Jewish tradition famously teaches that more than Israel kept Shabbat, Shabbat kept Israel. But apparently we no longer need keeping. We need croissants, coffee and fashion, preferably on Shabbat.
What comes next? A public reprimand for returned hostage Omer Shem Tov? A boycott of the moving book he published because he, who was secular before his captivity, said this week that he now puts on tefillin, keeps kosher and tries, yes, tries, to observe Shabbat?
How many of those mourning the newly relaunched Adika site’s Shabbat closure have ever experienced the beauty of Shabbat for themselves? Perhaps before denouncing it, they should try it at least once: the experience Jewish tradition calls Oneg, a delight. Without shopping.