Shabbat dinner in a former Danish church
On Friday night in Copenhagen, I went to Shabbat dinner. Nobody else there knew that’s what it was.There were no candles, no Kiddush, no challah. Instead, I found myself at Folkehuset Absalon, a community house created inside a former church by Danish Jewish entrepreneur Lennart Lajboschitz, the founder of Flying Tiger Copenhagen. There was already something unusual about a Jewish Israeli spending Friday night over dinner in a former Christian sanctuary.Absalon is built around a remarkably simple idea. Bring strangers into the same room. Feed them. Give them a reason to talk.Every day, tourists sit beside Copenhageners, young visitors beside pensioners, friends beside those they have never met. Large dishes are passed around. You do not choose everyone around you. If something you want is beyond your reach, you have to ask someone else to pass it.It sounds almost embarrassingly simple. It also felt strangely familiar.Around me were tourists from…
A Jewish Israeli writer describes attending a communal dinner at Folkehuset Absalon in Copenhagen, a community house founded by Danish Jewish entrepreneur Lennart Lajboschitz in a former church. The concept, which involves strangers sharing a meal and conversation, felt familiar despite the absence of traditional Shabbat rituals. The author notes that such encounters allow individuals to connect before categorizing each other by nationality or politics, fostering a modest form of “repairing the world” by enabling disagreement within shared space. The experience highlighted that “I was an Israeli having dinner, not Israel having dinner,” emphasizing the importance of individual interaction over political identity.
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