Hebrew at Dartmouth/Taste of Hebrew

November

Se'udá Shlishít (Ashkenazi: Sháleshúdes) 'the Third Sabbath Meal'
'It's beginning to get dark, so we'd better begin Se'uda Shlishit. Where's the herring?'

The Se'uda Shlishit has powerful associations for anyone who has experienced this traditional Sabbath custom. It's not just 'a third meal', which is what the words literally mean -- it's the intimate meal or snack taken in the twilight, at home or in the synagogue, as the Sabbath begins to slip away. Wistful Hebrew spirituals, the twenty-third psalm, chala and herring, bits of this and bits of that, Chasidic tales and a devar Tora. Jewish blues.

I come to do the mitsva of the Se'uda Shlishit of Shabbat in commemoration of Jacob, father of a throng of seventy souls. By his virtue may we be spared the wars of Gog and Magog and merit the fulfilment of the verse 'And I shall feed you the heritage of Jacob your father, a heritage that has no bounds'...

Introductory words to the Se'uda Shlishit meal

By kind permission of Oxford University Press,
publishers of The Joys of Hebrew by Lewis Glinert.

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Last Modified February 12, 2006