This is the Shabbos meal I will prepare on Friday:

• Canapes of white bean spread with carmelized spring onions with a minty Meyer lemon spritzer
• Passed hors d’oeuvres: Fresh spring rolls and Smoked salmon with lemon-scented goat cheese and dill
• Creamy celery root and parsnip soup
• Salad of frisee, blood oranges, oro blanco (a fancy type of grapefruit), avocado and fennel in citrus vinaigrette
• Vegetable terrine of greens, millet and sweet potatoes, with pea shoots and crisp shiitake mushrooms on a bed of mushroom masala sauce
• Rose geranium sorbet
• Port-poached pear parfait (say that one five times fast)

And I will make this Shabbos meal for almost 40 people. Really, I will. I’m not kidding.
Well, I’m only partially exaggerating. Actually, I am only responsible for the soup and part of the terrine, and I have nine other people helping me between today and Friday. But the real truth of the matter is, it’s not a Shabbos dinner at all – it is our “final showcase” dinner at Bauman College, where only three of the guests will be mine, and the rest will be total strangers, invited by my classmates.

Alcohol is forbidden, so there will be no Kiddush (but there wouldn’t be one anyway) and no challah will adorn the tables. There certainly will be no acknowledgment of Shabbos.

I remember when picture day once fell in elementary school on Rosh HaShanah, and I had to get make-up photos. Of course when major events were scheduled on High Holy Days, my mom made a fuss.

But this is different. Shabbos happens every week. And technically speaking, I’m not even observant. I drive and talk on the phone. I even do laundry sometimes on Saturday afternoon, if I feel it is the only time I will have.

Yet, Friday night is sacred. I almost always mark Shabbos in some way, even if it’s just lighting candles before I go out. Now, I am asking my husband and two dear friends – who I often celebrate Shabbos with — all to break it to come to my final dinner.

They are all doing it, of course, and I know it is just this once…until the next time something we want to do conflicts with Shabbos. But I don’t like it, even though they will all enjoy a lovely meal (not me – I will be working in the kitchen).

They will sit and eat and be amazed by the Shabbos meal that I made with my classmates that isn’t a Shabbos meal at all, even though there will be no wine and no challah and no Jews who care except us. To them, and to me, it will still be Shabbos.