Shabbat is over. It’s Saturday night, Motzei Shabbat! You’ve probably eaten 4 meals in the last 25 hours (dinner, maybe breakfast, maybe kiddush at synagogue, lunch, dinner again – we say three meals are halachically required, but your body also counts breakfast and kiddush and any snacks in between.)
You look famished. You should eat some more. After all, with that Shabbos nap, you’re going to be awake until 2am anyway.
No really.
Eat again. Preferably greasy pizza. But this isn’t for your own benefit, you’re doing this solely for the sake of heaven. Right?
Melave Malka means “escorting the Queen,” as in escorting out the Shabbos Queen as you would walk a Shabbat guest to the door after lunch. It’s intended to extend the Shabbosdik feeling into the less-holy hours that aren’t Shabbat and in a way, it also helps you transition back to the rest of the week more smoothly.
Thankfully, it’s a very casual affair, and it may be used as the platform to build a motzei Shabbat social event at your local shul or Jewish organization.
My research (remembering that I am not very fluent in original texts) seemed unclear what its status is: is it halacha or a very strong custom? Is it a custom that should be treated as halacha? These are thorny questions. My research seemed to suggest that it is a very strong custom that one is encouraged to do. I laughed at this characterization on Halachipedia: “Even though many aren’t careful about it, a Yireh Shamayim (a G-d fearing person) should make an extra effort to keep it.” (I’m probably just too jaded for those kinds of statements anymore. #BadMiddos) But everyone agrees that the things actually done at a Meleveh Malkah are custom and widely variable.
Interestingly, there is no Melaveh Malkah after yom tov (though apparently the Chazon Ish did). I think some people do just out of habit without realizing this, especially the insane pizza store lines after Pesach is over.
There are no rules here; it’s all custom and probably a little whatever works for your family that week. And not everyone does it, and even those who do it…don’t do it all the time. It may be that a person gets hungry (especially on early winter nights) and just calls dinner or a late-night smoothie run a Melavah malkah even though it isn’t eaten with any special intention to be such. Many people simply say they can’t stand to eat anymore. They may even be physically uncomfortable. Whether these perspectives is right or wrong depends on your posek, but this is an accurate description of what I’ve seen people do.
Another interesting side point: in my research for this post, I came across several mentions that it’s a common practice to light two candles at this meal to mirror the Shabbos candles. Personally, I’ve never heard of this, much less seen it done. Your mileage may vary. If I came upon this unawares (aka before today), I would have looked very confused and wondered if I’d wandered into a time machine back to Friday night.
A common minhag is for the meal to be dairy, and among those who do so, it is a very common thing to eat pizza. Preferably greasy pizza from a pizza shop (an ice cream store will do in a pinch). I don’t know how this came to be, but that’s what it is. In all honesty, since so many people believe halacha requires all three Shabbos meals to be meat and/or want those meals to be meat, I’m not sure how so many people are capable of eating dairy on a Saturday night, especially the people who hold 5-6 hours between eating meat and dairy. But obviously they make it work, judging by the lines outside pizza shops on Motzei Shabbat. I never was very good at math.
I had pretty much given up all hope of ever seeing another post here, but I stopped today just in case, and lo and behold, found 2 pages worth of new posts. Welcome back!
Thanks! It's been a crazy road. Who knows what the future holds?