Plan

And sit down she did. Esty drafted a list of her usual expenses, and then went through it, item by item, to see where she could budget. “Should I make food instead of buying prepared dishes? Get a cheaper cut of meat for the cholent? Make less?” she mused. All of the above, she decided as she got to work.

Esty wasn’t the only balabusta experimenting with her Shabbos fare. Participants across New York state used spreadsheets, calculators, and ingenuity to rejigger their menus. One day that same week, Esther Levine e-mailed detailed instructions to her friends who would be joining her that Shabbos. Esther often makes group meals, but this time, she was planning to feed her guests — five per meal — on a budget that was 30 percent trimmer than usual.

When she first heard our proposal, Esther was intrigued by the prospect of stepping out of her comfort zone and taking her friends along for the ride. While she usually asks people coming to a group meal to supply a kugel or cake, this time Esther found herself telling them to bring an $8 side dish or to spend no more than a certain amount on dessert.

“You can make whatever your little heart desires, provided it stays within budget,” she e-mailed one of them. Bring soda, Esther told another friend, but spend $2 total. “You can buy those 69-cent sodas in the huge bottles,” she suggested. And to another, who was buying challah: “If $3 is too steep, okay, but please, no more than $5.”

Her friends were also intrigued — and anxious. “I wasn’t the only one; everyone was getting nervous,” Esther remembers. “I talked it over with my mother and she suggested different things. It felt funny to keep saying, ‘I can’t afford it,” Esther says. “And right before I went shopping, I really started to freak out. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to afford Shabbos!”

Chaia Frishman of Far Rockaway, who describes herself as very on top of her budget, looked at the Family First Cook-off as a challenge.

“This is totally up my alley — I’m always trying to see where and how I can cut,” Chaia said when we contacted her. “On the other hand, I don’t like to think that Shabbos costs anything, because it says that money spent for Shabbos is repaid, so if I really want something, I think I would disregard the price.”

Kavod Shabbos was a factor everyone tried to keep in mind. After all, the challenge wasn’t to make a cheap, bare-bones Shabbos — it was to make a beautiful, enjoyable Shabbos with less money. A lot of thought went into what and where to cut. For example, there were some items Chaia just wouldn’t replace because she knew their absence would be keenly felt.

“I always want a good quality wine for my husband. He appreciates fine wine and has a really sensitive palate, and he won’t drink anything else,” she said, and she planned around that expense.

Menus planned, budgets perfected, it was on to the shopping.

Shop

That Thursday, Esther’s trip to the Key Foods near her apartment was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. Armed with a detailed shopping list, Esther combed the aisles with her phone in hand, frantically pecking numbers into the calculator app and trying to ignore the looks she was sure she was receiving from her fellow shoppers.

In the vegetable aisle, for example, Esther didn’t just fill a bag with tomatoes. She placed the full bag on the scale, shook her head over the numbers, replaced the large tomato that would tip her over budget with a smaller one, and reweighed the bag before putting it in her cart.

Later, when the register rang up and Esther saw she was actually under her budget, she was relieved. But she also left the grocery store slightly stressed; sure, she had spent less than usual, but she also spent more time shopping — and the process was more taxing. “I felt like such a weirdo!” Esther remembers. “Weighing produce and typing everything I wanted to buy before I took it. I must have looked so strange!”

But the shopping itself was a hands-on educational experience. “There were three big whoas, three things I wasn’t expecting,” Esther says. “First of all, deli roll. I thought it would be the cheapest thing ever. But it’s such an expensive side dish! Also salad, because fresh produce is so expensive, especially in Manhattan. Then I found meat at a better price than I was expecting, which was a happy surprise.”

Esty saved money by reducing portion sizes and the number of ingredients for other items on her menu. “You can serve gefilte fish without salmon. Yes, you can live without it. No one would die. But is it a heimishe Shabbos?” That wasn’t a place she wanted to cut, she decided, but she could easily cut back on portion size. “We always have leftovers. They don’t need the full-size portion,” she says. “Of course, I wouldn’t deprive them if they needed it. But they really don’t need it!”

She bought a smaller chopped liver and used fewer fresh vegetables and chicken bones in the soup, adding some chicken soup mix for taste. For Shabbos day, Esty used the cheapest cut of meat for the cholent.

Chaia gave up on pre-checked lettuce, despite the time it takes to check it for bugs — after all, unchecked romaine lettuce is half the price of the pre-checked. And instead of soda, Chaia prepared homemade mint lemonade — using fresh mint courtesy of her in-laws’ garden.

Prep

Esty cut the chickpeas and lokshen kugel, both of which she had been serving out of habit and tossing most of, anyway. She realized that a lot of the foods she was purchasing could easily be made at home, sometimes for less than half the price! For example, Esty made baba ghanoush and sweet-and-sour fried eggplant instead of buying just baba ghanoush, and she whipped up a mousse pie instead of buying ice cream.

She also nixed kneidlach from a mix and made them from scratch. “It’s the same amount of work — put in matzoh meal and spices and egg — and it tastes the same,” she discovered. “It really doesn’t make sense to buy the mix.” And her homemade kishke got rave reviews. “It was a hit!” Esty says happily. She’ll still keep a frozen one on hand in the freezer, but she plans to make kishke from now on.

Eat

In Esther’s Washington Heights apartment, the project made interesting table talk. “We were all joking about it — it was fun to talk about,” Esther says. For the most part, the pared-down menu worked well. Despite cheaper meat and chicken, the cholent and soup were tasty. Esther was nervous about using fewer vegetables in the soup and salad, but her guests complimented both, so she knew they were good.

“There was definitely enough food — everyone felt full — but it was just enough,” Esther says. “At one point, I was wondering if I shouldn’t eat, because I worried there wouldn’t be enough for everyone, but there was. Typical Jewish mother host-type guilt, I guess.”

While Esther missed drinking juice, which she usually enjoys, no one else seemed to. However, they did want other things she didn’t serve. “I regretted cutting dips, especially since one person asked about them,” she says. Also, her friend who made dessert Friday night told Esther she couldn’t make Oreo pie, Esther’s favorite, because it was too expensive.

At the Frishman house, there were mixed reactions. “My kids love salmon noodles — it’s their favorite food in the whole world.” Chaia says, so they enjoyed the fact that she made salmon noodles, although her husband missed gefilte fish. They all agreed that freshly sliced turkey is better than prepackaged, and the kids weren’t big fans of chicken on the bone. Although some of the replacements weren’t popular, the carrot muffins were a hit.

Evaluate

Will our three balabustas stick to a Shabbos budget in the future?

Esther isn’t sure. “We’re making a group meal again this Shabbos, and it’s on my mind. I’m thinking, How should I do this when I go shopping this week? I know I don’t have to spend as much as I always thought, but I don’t know if I’ll shop with that restraint, calculating and everything. I like to make Shabbos meals extra-special, and at the cook-off I felt bad I couldn’t do that,” she says. “I like to have a lot of food, a big meal, and I like to entertain and get into it. It’s part of the whole Shabbos feel — company around a table full of food.”

The logistics of budgeting were hard, too. Even though Esther had asked her friends to keep track of their costs, many didn’t, so she couldn’t compile an exact final tally. “It’s tough to stay on top of someone else’s expenses, so this is based on my friends’ estimates,” she apologetically explains.

For Chaia, the money saved was a trade-off she’s not sure she would make. “Checking lettuce, homemade drinks — they’re both time-consuming. Maybe I’d do it in the summer when there’s more time and business slows down, but in the winter, not really,” Chaia says.

Esty, on the other hand, plans to incorporate a lot of what she did for the cook-off into her weekly Shabbos plan.

“I really learned a lesson that week,” Esty reflects. “Cutting back doesn’t mean the meal won’t be nice. With the chicken cutlets, I saw that you use a lot less chicken and you get more of the crunchy coating — the kids loved that! — and it looks just as nice and full on the plate.”

Not only did the Mandels not miss the food Esty decided not to get or make, they appreciated the homemade food, and Esty didn’t have to throw food out after Shabbos. And she didn’t stop at 30 percent; Esty actually cut back a full 45 percent, spending $88 on Shabbos instead of her usual $160.

“I can honestly say we didn’t feel like it was an experiment Shabbos. No one was hungry, and no one felt cheated,” she says. “We had fun. It was a project, and the whole family was excited about it.”

Several women, invited to join the Family First Cook-off, expressed reservations about budgeting for Shabbos. “Hashem is the King and He’s inviting you to His table — He pays!” says Janet Esses of Brooklyn. “A lot of Syrians, no matter their religious level, when it comes to Shabbat they give a lot of respect. They try to set a beautiful Shabbat table. It’s rich with tradition and culture.

“If you’re cutting so it doesn’t go to waste, fine. If you’re struggling and cutting your corners during the week, but going out of your way to make a beautiful, presentable Shabbat, fine. But just to make it cheaper? That’s not where we’re going to cut,” she says adamantly. “Tell me Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday how to make your menu cheaper — not Shabbat!

“Give kavod to Shabbat, and Hashem will give you kavod,” Janet concludes.

Kavod Shabbos is a mitzvah held dear throughout the generations. From Shammai, who bought a new calf every day of the week l’kavod Shabbos, to shtetl Yidden who scrimped and saved all week to be able to afford Shabbos delicacies, and the legendary Yosef Mokir Shabbos, stories abound of the love and honor invested in Shabbos.

Family First asked Rabbi Avraham Neuberger, the rav of Congregation Shaarei Tefilla of New Hempstead, to help put kavod Shabbos in perspective.

“Some people,” says Rabbi Neuberger, “will wonder whether kavod Shabbos is the place to cut back. They’ll say, ‘Cut back on camp, on fancy houses, on extra cars, but not here!’ And they very well may have a point.”

Yet there is also an obligation to live within your means. In fact, in discussing the mitzvah of kavod Shabbos, Shmiras Shabbos K’Hilchasa states, “The poor person should spend according to his means, and the rich one according to his.”

Kavod Shabbos, explains Rabbi Neuberger, is a gray area even in our sources. There is a famous Gemara stating whatever you spend on Shabbos gets repaid. “But at what point does someone abuse this guarantee?” he asks. After all, this isn’t a carte blanche to spend indiscriminately! Unfortunately, sometimes kavod Shabbos is used as an excuse for something that has nothing to do with kavod Shabbos and everything to do with the person’s own kavod.

Rabbi Neuberger recommends the following litmus test. Compare what you serve when you don’t have Shabbos guests to what you serve when you do. If you put on a sumptuous spread for company, but skimp when it’s just your family, it doesn’t seem that you’re spending the extra money l’kavod Shabbos.

There are also other factors to take into account. For example, if you make lavish meals, half of which end up in the garbage, there’s a serious issue of bal tashchis. “In such a case, you should definitely scale back,” says Rabbi Neuberger.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 276)