Largest Shabbat dinner ever sets new Guinness World Record

A feast in Tel Aviv featuring 2,266 people has smashed the Guinness World Record for largest Shabbat dinner.

A year’s preparation went into the five-course meal for the mass gathering, which included over a thousand pieces of beef, 1,800 pieces of chicken, 2,000 chollah rolls and 800 bottles of wine, with people seated across 80 long tables.

With the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv in attendance, organisers not only had to adhere to strict Kashrut laws, but also to the onerous regulations set out by Guinness. All participants had to be served within five minutes of being seated, and remain at the table for an hour.

Table captains were appointed to make sure that the meal adhered to traditional Jewish customs for Shabbat, including the proper prayers, Kiddush, HaMotzei, and that no Jewish religious laws were broken.

The event, which was funded by crowd-sourcing, was still some way off in size to a 2012 undertaking in Turkey, when over 20,000 people sat down together to celebrate the end of Ramadan.