(JTA) – On an episode of “Real Housewives of New York City” that aired Tuesday, Aug. 10, the cast of the Bravo reality TV series about socialites in the city is shown attending a drama-filled event described as “Black Shabbat” by its host.

Eboni Williams, the show’s first Black cast member, hosted the dinner at the home of Archie Gottesman, a founder of JewBelong, a nonprofit that set out to “rebrand Judaism” and recently took out billboards in several cities in an effort to combat antisemitism. Williams, who has described a 2016 trip to Israel as transformative, became close friends with Gottesman after a different Shabbat dinner some years ago.

The attendees noshed on challah and Leah McSweeney, a cast member who is in the process of converting to Judaism, recited a blessing in Hebrew. During the meal, Williams initiated a conversation about Black and Jewish relations in the U.S. But fans of the show have focused mostly on the behavior of cast member Ramona Singer, who mistakenly calls the dinner a “Black seder” (leading one New York Magazine commenter to write, “How can these women have lived so long in NYC and know so little?”) 

Gottesman jumped at the chance to host the dinner, which took place last December at her home in Summit, New Jersey, because of her belief – baked into JewBelong’s programming – that Shabbat meals are ideal venues for meaningful conversations. She said the discussion at her table had been more in depth than was depicted and that the Aug. 17 episode is also slated to include Shabbat content. Gottesman said she was grateful to Williams and McSweeney for representing Jewish life in popular media, especially after they told her that they received antisemitic messages after the show aired. There are currently no Jews on the local cast, although there have been in the past. “What’s interesting and fabulous about Ebony is that when she pitched Shabbat [to the show’s producers], she said they had never been pitched Shabbat before,” Gottesman said. “There have been Jewish Housewives and Jewish producers on the show, and I think it’s really beautiful that it’s a non-Jewish Black woman who said this should be on TV. It was brave.”

Main Photo: Eboni Williams, left, convened her fellow cast members for a Shabbat dinner on Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of New York City,” in an episode that aired Aug. 11, 2021. (Screenshot from show)