The Shelayma Project

The Shelayma Project · motzaei Shabbos · forty chairs

The Melave Malka
Sessions

When Shabbos leaves, we don’t turn the lights on. A hundred tealights, forty chairs in a basement under a Crown Heights shul — and songs to walk the Queen out.

How the room works

Havdalah is the doorbell

Every session runs the same five movements. None of them are house rules; they are the instrument. The room only sounds like this because it always goes in this order.

  1. 9:40Havdalah at the doorWine, flame, besamim passed hand to hand down the stairs. You enter already inside the song.
  2. 10:00Doors close, candles onlyA hundred tealights and not one bulb. Your eyes take four minutes; give them the four minutes.
  3. 10:10First set, straight throughForty minutes, no talking between songs. The set is sequenced like a record side and played like one.
  4. 11:10The open roundThe room takes over — one niggun handed around the circle. Whoever starts it, starts it.
  5. 12:00SoupMelave malka is a meal, so there is soup. Real bowls. The walk to the train is part of the program.

Night Iנִגּוּן

Niggun

Wordless, all of it. Dov Lieber brings the harmonium down the stairs himself, and for one set the oldest melodies in the family get sung the way they were written — by everyone, or not at all. You will forget which voice is yours. That’s the point of a niggun.

Dov Lieber harmonium & voice · collects nigunim the way other people collect records

August set · sequenced by Dov

  1. 1Niggun Rikud (the fast one first)4:40
  2. 2The Alter Rebbe’s, in four gates7:10
  3. 3Dudele5:25
  4. 4Niggun without a name (Carlebach, maybe)6:05
  5. 5The slow one nobody starts on purpose8:30

Motzaei Shabbos

Aug 8

Havdalah 9:40 · first set 10:10
$36, soup included

11 of 40 chairs left

Motzaei Shabbos

Sep 5

Havdalah 9:10 · first set 9:40
$36, soup included

24 of 40 chairs left

A guitarist on a stool ringed by tealights, playing to rows of bentwood chairs in a dark basement room
The June room — forty chairs, one hundred and four tealights
A tall braided havdalah candle burning beside a brass candlestick and a silver wine cup
The doorbell — havdalah on the basement stairs

Night IIזֶמֶר

Zemer

The table songs, taken off the table. Akiva Berg plays the zemiros your grandfather hummed over cholent — slowed down, opened up, sung in the dark like they’re brand new. Everyone knows the words. That was never the point.

Akiva Berg voice & guitar · open D, capo wherever the room needs it

August set · sequenced by Akiva

  1. 1Ko Amar (the long way in)5:12
  2. 2Menucha V’Simcha4:36
  3. 3Kah Ribon, in three6:20
  4. 4Tzur Mishelo, unaccompanied verse5:48
  5. 5Eliyahu Hanavi (walking-out song)7:02

Motzaei Shabbos

Aug 22

Havdalah 9:25 · first set 9:55
$36, soup included

6 of 40 chairs left

Motzaei Shabbos

Sep 19

Havdalah 8:50 · first set 9:20
$36, soup included

29 of 40 chairs left

A mandolin resting on an empty bentwood chair, candle flames glowing out of focus behind it
“Whole songs, for people coming off broken weeks.” — the only ad we have ever run

Thirty of forty chairs go to the list first

Get on the list

One email a month, five days before havdalah. Pick your night — or take both and make a whole month of it.

Which night?

No countdowns, no “last chance” subject lines. If a month fills before we write, we just don’t write.

You’re on the list. We’ll write before the candles are counted out.
— The Shelayma Project