On the First Friday of each month, Ma’alot hosts a musical service in the round to welcome in Shabbat. This week we are excited to partner with North Highland Moishe House to offer Shabbat in the Dark: a new experience. It’s exactly what you picture—dark room, cozy vibes, resounding voices and instruments carrying use into the arms of the Shabbas Queen.
Services are followed by a dairy potluck - register to receive details and the sign-up sheet!
Ma’alot’s Shabbat in the round is led by a circle of song-holders elevating our prayer. The circular seating is an invitation to everyone to bring their whole selves to the moment. In this service, you are invited to be yourself. And anyone can be a song-holder in the center- you just come Thursday night, the evening before Shabbat, to sing together in preparation.
Our shabbats services are soul-full. We believe that it’s better to offer a few words of prayer with kavvanah (intention and feeling) than many words without it (and the great Rambam agrees). So we sing just one verse from various psalms of Kabbalat Shabbat, and we sing it over and over so we can really feel it. No need to flip through a heavy prayer book, all the words you need are on one sheet, complete with English transliteration and translation.
You can dance and jump, cry and laugh, or sit in silence and stillness. We embrace it all, the highs and lows, the joy and the grief, together.