Shabbat Games and Activities: No Electricity Required

The Gift of Boredom

Here is a confession that every Shabbat-observant person eventually makes: the first few Shabbatot without screens are hard. The silence feels strange. The hours stretch. Your fingers itch for a phone that is not there.

And then something happens. The silence stops being empty and starts being full. The hours stop stretching and start deepening. You discover that boredom is not the enemy — it is the doorway to a different kind of engagement with the people around you and the person inside you.

Shabbat afternoon — that long, golden stretch between lunch and havdalah — is not a problem to be solved. It is a gift to be unwrapped. Here is how.

Board Games and Card Games

If there is a single activity that defines Shabbat afternoon in observant Jewish homes around the world, it is the board game. Specifically, it is Rummikub.

Rummikub — the tile-based game invented by an Israeli-Romanian Jew named Ephraim Hertzano — is arguably the most popular Shabbat game in the Jewish world. It requires no writing, no electricity, and no particular skill beyond pattern recognition and a willingness to destroy your grandmother’s carefully planned sequence. It is perfect.

Other beloved Shabbat games include:

Chess — the ultimate Shabbat game for the intellectually inclined. Jews have a long and distinguished history with chess, and a Shabbat afternoon game can stretch for hours in the best possible way.

Settlers of Catan — wildly popular in observant communities. No writing required, deeply strategic, and social enough to fuel conversation.

Card games — Rummy, Gin, Canasta, Spit, War. A deck of cards and a kitchen table is all you need. Some families have Shabbat card game traditions that span generations.

Checkers and Backgammon — simple, portable, and endlessly replayable.

Puzzles — jigsaw puzzles are a perfect Shabbat activity, especially for families with children of different ages who can all contribute at their own level.

Trivial Pursuit and similar quiz games — as long as no writing is involved. (Use tokens or memory instead of pencil scoring.)

A note on halakhic considerations: games that require writing or erasing are generally avoided. Games with electronic components are not used. Some authorities discourage games that might lead to anger or excessive competitiveness, though this is more of a spiritual guideline than a strict prohibition.

The Sacred Art of the Walk

A Shabbat walk is one of the most underrated spiritual practices in Judaism. Without a phone buzzing in your pocket, without a destination requiring a GPS, without the urgency that characterizes every other walk you take during the week — a Shabbat walk becomes something else entirely.

You notice things. The architecture of a street you drive down every day but have never really seen. The trees in a park. The faces of neighbors. The sky.

In Israel, the Shabbat walk (tayul Shabbat) is a national pastime. Families stroll through neighborhoods, visit parks, walk along the beach. In the diaspora, Shabbat walks through the neighborhood, to a friend’s house, or through a nearby park are a weekly ritual for many families.

Walking with a partner or a friend turns the walk into a conversation — the kind of unhurried, screen-free conversation that barely exists anymore during the rest of the week. Walking alone turns it into meditation.

Reading

Shabbat is reading day. Without the competition of screens, books reclaim their rightful place as objects of sustained attention and deep pleasure.

What to read on Shabbat is a personal choice. Some people stick to Torah commentary, Jewish philosophy, or religious texts. Others read novels, essays, poetry, or anything that nourishes the mind and soul. The tradition encourages oneg Shabbat — Shabbat pleasure — and if a good book brings you pleasure, it is in the spirit of the day.

Children’s reading on Shabbat is especially important. Without screens as the default entertainment, children are more likely to pick up a book, and the habit of reading for hours can take root in ways it rarely does during the busy week.

Singing

If your Shabbat table does not have singing, you are missing perhaps the most joyful element of the day.

Zemirot — Shabbat songs — are traditionally sung at the three Shabbat meals. The songs range from medieval liturgical poems to Hasidic melodies to modern Israeli compositions. You do not need a good voice. You need willingness.

Beyond formal zemirot, Shabbat afternoon is a natural time for music. In Hasidic communities, tisch gatherings involve hours of group singing. In less formal settings, families sing folk songs, camp songs, or whatever brings joy.

The prohibition on instruments on Shabbat (in Orthodox practice) means that all Shabbat music is vocal — which makes it more intimate, more communal, and more accessible. Everyone has a voice. Not everyone has a guitar.

The Nap

Let us be honest about the Shabbat nap. It is not laziness. It is one of the most spiritually refined activities available to a human being.

The Hebrew concept of menucha — rest, tranquility, peace — is the essence of Shabbat. And sometimes the purest expression of menucha is lying down on the couch after a good meal, with a book on your chest and sunlight on your face, and sleeping.

The Shulchan Aruch acknowledges that sleep on Shabbat is a form of oneg (pleasure). The Talmud considers Shabbat rest to be a foretaste of the World to Come. If the World to Come includes naps, it is worth looking forward to.

Hosting and Visiting

Shabbat afternoon is social time. In many communities, families visit one another, children play together in the street or the park, and the community comes alive in a way that screens and schedules usually prevent.

Hosting friends for Shabbat lunch — or for seudah shlishit (the third meal, eaten in the late afternoon) — is one of the great mitzvot of Jewish life. It creates community, strengthens friendships, and provides the kind of face-to-face connection that social media cannot replicate.

If you are new to Shabbat observance, inviting friends — even friends who do not observe Shabbat — to share a meal is one of the best ways to experience the day. Shabbat is contagious. The candles, the challah, the wine, the singing, the conversation, the slowness — they work their magic on guests as surely as on hosts.

Storytelling

Before there were books, there were stories. Shabbat afternoon, with its unhurried hours and its gathered family, is the perfect time to revive the ancient art of storytelling.

Tell your children stories about your childhood. Tell them about your parents and grandparents. Tell them the stories of Jewish history — the Exodus, the Maccabees, the immigrants. Tell them Hasidic tales, Talmudic legends, family lore.

Storytelling on Shabbat connects generations. It transmits identity. And it requires nothing except a voice, a listener, and the willingness to say: “Let me tell you a story.”

The Secret of Shabbat Afternoon

The secret that Shabbat-observant families know — and that everyone else is slowly discovering in the age of digital detox retreats and screen-free Sundays — is that removing technology does not create a void. It reveals a fullness that was always there, hidden behind the noise.

Shabbat afternoon is where you rediscover that your children are hilarious. That your spouse has opinions about things you never discuss during the week. That you can sit in a chair for an hour without producing anything and still feel that the time was well spent.

It is not always easy. It is not always exciting. But it is always, in the deepest sense, restful. And rest — real rest, the kind that restores not just the body but the soul — is what Shabbat was made for.