That’s always the question when you go away for Shabbos: “What should I bring?” There’s no easy answer. The hosts are providing the food. So what do you bring? And usually you’re like, “Oh, I should bring food!”
Of course, you can ask them, “What should I bring?” But then you get, “Oh, just bring yourself.” Which sounds super passive aggressive. Like, “All of a sudden, you’re offering to bring us food? The week we’re feeding you? Where are you all the other weeks?”
One of these times I’m going to show up without a suit.
“What?! You said to just bring myself!”
Anyway, there’s no way I’m not bringing anything. It’s like when your wife says, “No, you don’t have to get me an anniversary present.” No good can come from listening to your wife. In this situation, I mean.
And anyway, asking, “What should we bring you?” takes away the surprise.
“Here’s that thing we told you we’d make.”
“Okay, the fridge is over there.”
It’s all a very exciting exchange.
Flowers
A lot of people buy flowers, which are nice because they get to sit right in middle of the table so that nobody can see each other.
But then the host has to keep them alive. At least as long as you’re there. Also, you have to keep them alive. There’s nothing else that you have to keep alive all the way to where you’re going, sometimes in a suitcase on a bus. You’re not bringing them a pet…
Flowers are an easy decision, though. You think, “Everyone can use flowers. No one says, “But we already have flowers!” because flowers die.”
Okay, what if this is the type of family that the husband buys the wife flowers? Then they have to find a second place for your flowers.
“Well, I’ve been to their house before; the husband doesn’t buy the wife flowers.”
But what if this is the one week that he actually did? Maybe to make an impression on the guests!
And forget surfaces to put the flowers on -- who says they have enough vases? Maybe get them a vase.
Make something for the seudah
Like you can bring a kugel or a salad or something. And the nice thing about bringing a salad is that that you can assemble it when you get there. You can’t do that with a kugel.
“I hope your oven isn’t fleishig!”
Though if you’re making part of the seudah, you do have to ask. You can’t just show up with something. Because the seudah can’t just have, for example, two soups.
“It’s okay, we’ll have two soup courses; it’ll be fine. You know what? We’ll put them in the same bowl. Or we’ll give people a choice. Put every single person on the spot.”
Also, asking, “What dish can we bring?” is a lot of times putting the host on the spot. They say, “I guess you can make this…”
If they say, “I guess,” you might as well not make it. They are not counting on your thing. I went to my sister the other week, and she said, “We don’t really do desserts, so I guess you can bring a cake if you want.” I got to their house, and they had three kinds of cake. I’d brought the fourth.
Candy platter
If the host has kids, you might want to bring a candy dish. With mechitzahs, so the candy doesn’t touch. That way you can be annoyed later when you just want to relax after the seudah and schmooze with the adults, but the kids are still making a racket because of all the candy. And the kids will latch on to you and climb all over you because you’re the one who brought them candy!
Adults can like candy too, let’s be honest. But if adults like a candy, they buy that candy. They don’t buy a dish of six types of candy of which they like maybe three. Every adult has made their peace with the fact that they can’t just eat any candy they want, so they’ve decided which candies they make exceptions for. And you’re bringing six types. You’re playing the odds. You can ask ahead which candies they like, but then they’ll say, “Please don’t bring candy.” So definitely don’t do that.
Okay, but you’re saying, “Well, I know him, and he likes that kind of candy.”
Yeah, so he probably has it in the house. See, when he comes to your house, you can put out things he likes because he probably didn’t travel with every item he likes. But if it’s his house, he’s thinking, “Well, I have 5 pounds of this in my nosh closet, but these twelve pieces have been personally touched by you!”
And anyway, nothing that people really really like is going to be in a candy dish. There’s no room in there for sour sticks. Or that string candy that looks like you put your tzitzis in the washing machine.
And once the hosts finish the four candies they like, the dish has to sit in their closet forever, in this big container with four empty slots. Or they can dump all the remnants of the various platters into one platter later and give that away. Which is the other nice thing about candy dishes -- you can make your own candy dish. Most stores don’t tell you this.
Every candy dish must have:
- Something chewy.
- Something sour.
- Something chocolate-covered. Is it pretzels? Is it cookies? Is it nuts? I hope no one’s allergic.
- Lentils, in case they’re in mourning.
- Some kind of candy that is one color on the outside and another color on the inside.
- Something you’ve had in your closet forever that you sure were not eating, but maybe they will. Or they’ll pass it on to the next person.
And not every house wants candy. Either their kids have enough candy, or your hosts are the kind of parents who end up fighting with their kids about it the entire Shabbos.
“You can only take 3 pieces.”
“There are 6 sections!”
“3 pieces. We have to save for the guests.”
“The guests brought it!”
And the parent is thinking, “I didn’t tell the guest to bring 6 kinds.”
You don’t bring 6 kinds of wine.
Wine
I don’t know much about wine, so I always feel weird buying wines for people, because I’m going to people who actually know their liquors, and I’m showing up with something that I thought looked pretty good, and they’re like, “I think your wine is a joke.” And I’m like, “Well, I hosted you last time, and I thought your candy platter was a joke.”
You don’t go to somebody who knows more than you about a category and bring them something in that category. “I know you spent your whole life developing opinions about this, but here’s what I decided on in the five minutes I had in the store. That the guy helped me find. And he saw me coming a mile away. Add it to your collection!”
“Here’s my $10 wine; where should I put it down? Should I put it between your $75 wines, or what?”
Like to me, the difference between two wines – any two wines – is not really more than the difference between Coke and Pepsi, where it’s like I know there’s a difference, but not enough that if Coke was $50 more than Pepsi, I would choose the Coke.
The host is thinking, “We wanted to show him what a good wine was, but now we have to drink his stuff.”
I do know that it doesn’t have to be wine; you can bring whiskey or bourbon or schnapps or—I’m actually not sure if schnapps is a separate thing. All I know is that some people love one and hate another. I have one brother-in-law who’s a bourbon guy, and another is a whiskey guy, and they’re like, “Oohh, is that single malt?” And I don’t know the science. I don’t know how they make the booze.
“Well, single malt is better.”
In what way? I would think that the more malt the better. If you don’t like malt, don’t drink malt. Is malt an ingredient? I don’t…
Also, if you can only tell how many malts there are because you read the label, you don’t really like it better.
I don’t know what to buy these people. “Do you have a registry at a liquor store?”
And if it’s a family that doesn’t drink, you don’t want to buy any wine. Maybe a nice sparkling grape juice. There is literally one type of sparkling grape juice, and it’s $3. And then they can say, “Ooh, peach!” It’s a nice change, because most wines are grape.
So overall, I say that maybe as a guest you should bring something you know that you will eat or drink. That way it will get eaten, and you won’t be upset that the host had nothing you could eat. Of course, if that’s how it is, it can get insulting.
“I brought my own cholent. I know I don’t like yours…”
“Not insulted. The cholent goes by the guests.”
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia, a monthly humor columnist, and has written six books, all published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
