Record-breaking Shabbat dinner

On Wednesday night, Nov. 19, antisemitic protesters blocked worshippers from entering Park East Synagogue, a Modern Orthodox congregation on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and called for violence against Jews. Two days later, Temple Emanu-El, a Reform congregation four blocks away, hosted a Friday night dinner which drew so many people that it set a new Guinness World Record. 

Seated for dinner were 2,761 people — 439 more than the prior record of 2,322 at a Shabbat gathering in Berlin on July 31, 2015 during the European Maccabi Games.

The Emanu-El event, in planning for several years, took on new significance in the current political climate and following recent events in New York City.

“We didn’t anticipate the environment and the historic moment in which the event would take place, particularly given the tensions in New York City around the increase in antisemitic violence and the divisions sparked during the mayoral race,” Joshua Davidson, senior spiritual leader of Emanu-El, told JNS.

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has said he would have the Israeli prime minister arrested, and his press secretary said after the Park East Synagogue protest that the Nefesh B’Nefesh event, which addressed Jews moving to Israel, amounted to a “violation of international law.”

“We certainly didn’t anticipate that two days before the event, there would be a very disturbing antisemitic protest at one of New York’s own synagogues,” Davidson said of the Shabbat gathering.

The record-breaking event, which drew Emanu-El members, New Yorkers from different Jewish denominations, international visitors and non-Jews who came with their Jewish friends, “turned out to be more poignant and more powerful than any of us could have imagined,” Davidson said.

“It wasn’t just a celebratory dinner,” he told JNS. “It became an important demonstration of Jewish pride.”

The freed hostage Omri Miran and his wife Lishay lit candles, and prominent Jewish chefs recited other blessings prior to the meal. Two stars from “Fiddler on the Roof” on Broadway sang Shabbat songs during the meal, as did an a capella group, Davidson said.

“The power of the event was the statement it made at this particular moment in Jewish history,” he said. “It all made the evening an especially poignant statement of Jewish solidarity.”

Frank Greenberg, 68, a Temple Emanu-El member, attended the “spectacular” with his family members and 30 friends who they invited.

“It was incredibly well organized. The security was perfect,” he told JNS. “Everybody was concerned about security. The flow of the evening was better than we expected. No other event I’ve been to comes close to this.”

Everyone was very excited when there was an announcement that a Guinness record had been set, he said.

A spokesman for Mayor Eric Adams praised the event and the message it projected at a tense time for New York Jews.

“New York City is home to a vibrant, eclectic and diverse Jewish community — the largest one outside of Israel,” said the spokesman for Adams, who visited Israel last week.

Rabbi Aharon Slonim, who runs the Chabad at Binghamton University, told JNS that “if every Jewish community continues to break records in this vein, the world will be that much more of a brighter place.”

The Binghamton Chabad began hosting “Shabbat 1,000” dinners in 1994, and one such event drew more than 2,000 people, according to Rabbi Slonim. The event brings Jews together in a “meaningful way” and builds on the vision of the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, he said.