My wife sent me a list. It was a subtle nudge for us to reconnect by doing something different from our routine.
It was essentially a list of things to do with your spouse that have nothing to do with work, news, group chats, or the endless scroll. Reading it hit differently than I expected. Because when you really think about it, how often do we actually put the phone down and just be somewhere with the person we chose?
For the frum crowd, there’s a built-in framework for this that we don’t always appreciate: Shabbat. Twenty-five hours every week, forced disconnection. No phones, no notifications, no “just one more email.” And yet somehow, even Shabbat gets consumed by seudos at other people’s tables, kids, shmoozing with friends during kiddush, taking a longer-than-expected nap, mincha, and board games… and a nice long walk with my wife if we’re lucky.
But what does intentional connection actually look like on the other six days?
Here are thirty ideas, adapted for our world, that are actually worth doing.
1. Go on a Phone-Free Date and Mean It
Not “I’ll just check it once.” Leave it in the car. Or at home. Use KosherNearMe to find the restaurant before you leave, make a reservation, and show up with nothing but your wallet and conversation. Once you’re out, the phone is off.
2. Plan a Weekend Getaway Somewhere New
It doesn’t have to be international. A kosher-accessible city a few hours away that you’ve never explored counts. Baltimore, Detroit, Houston, Denver. There are thriving Jewish communities in places most people fly over. Plan around a community you’ve never experienced. Stay somewhere with a kitchen. Cook Shabbat for two.
3. Build a Shared Bucket List for the Next Five Years
Sit down with coffee and actually write it out. Where do you both want to go? What do you want to do together? For the kosher traveler, this takes real planning: kosher infrastructure, Shabbat logistics, what you can source locally. Make the planning part of the experience, not just the obstacle. The YeahThatsKosher destination guides and itineraries are a good place to start browsing together.
4. Take a Cooking Class Together (or do a themed dinner at home)
Kosher cooking classes exist in more places than you’d think. But even without one, picking a cuisine you’ve never made and building a full themed dinner night around it is genuinely a great evening. Japanese. Moroccan. Persian. Pick something ambitious, make it a project, and cook together, possibly on Sunday afternoon.
5. Watch Sunrise Together at Least Once
For the frum world there’s a natural hook here: Vasikin davening. There are few things as legitimately beautiful as catching netz from a good vantage point and getting breakfast after. Find a spot with a view. Plan it. Go.
6. Start a Tradition That’s Just Yours
Not something you do with the kids. Not a family minhag. Something that belongs specifically to the two of you. A restaurant you go to every anniversary. A walk on Motzei Shabbos. A couple’s trip every July when the kids are in camp. It doesn’t need to be profound; it just needs to be consistent.
7. Have a Real Goals Conversation Over Something Good
Find a kosher wine you’ve been meaning to open, or a coffee shop, and actually talk about where you’re going. Not logistics. Goals. What do you want your life to look like in five years? What do you keep postponing? These conversations happen in the car sometimes, or never. Make one intentional.
8. Take a Spontaneous Day Trip With No Plan
Pick a direction. Drive. See what you find. I’ll give you permission to use the KosherNearMe app to locate whatever kosher food exists in whatever town you end up in, but otherwise, you figure it out as you go. Some of the best discoveries come from searching a zip code you’ve never been to before.
9. Recreate Your First Date
This one takes some detective work if it’s been a while. The restaurant might be closed. The neighborhood might have changed. But even recreating the spirit of it, the same type of cuisine, the same general vibe, is worth doing. Bonus points if you can actually get back to the original spot.
10. Learn a New Skill Together
A dance class, a new language, pottery, a cooking technique, an instrument. Anything where you’re both beginners and you get to be bad at something together. There’s something disarming about both of you learning something new alongside your significant other, together.
11. Write Each Other a Letter to Open in One Year
Write it now. Seal it. Put it somewhere you’ll find it. Write honestly: what you’re grateful for, what you’re hoping for, what you want to tell them a year from now. Open them together on the same date next year. Few things are more grounding than reading what last year’s version of yourself wanted to say.
12. Have a No-Spend Date and Get Creative
No reservations, no tickets, no budget. A walk somewhere you’ve never walked. A park you always drive past. Cooking something together from whatever’s in the fridge. The constraint is the point.
13. Do a Digital Detox Weekend
For the frum world this is literally just Shabbat, which means you already have the infrastructure. But there’s something different about choosing to extend it: letting Motzei Shabbos arrive and not immediately reaching for your phone. Staying in that headspace a few hours longer. Try it.
14. Volunteer Together for a Cause You Care About
Gemachs, food banks, chesed organizations. Most communities have more need than volunteers. Doing something together that’s entirely about someone else, with no social media documentation, is a different kind of shared experience. (Note: if you’re documenting the experience for social media, is it really l’shma?)
15. Take a Road Trip and Build a Shared Playlist
This is really just permission to go somewhere and curate the soundtrack together. The playlist-building is half the fun. Start it a week before the trip. Add songs. Argue about songs. Sing it aloud together in the car.
16. Try Something Slightly Outside Your Comfort Zone Together
Doesn’t have to be extreme. A cuisine you’ve avoided. A hike longer than you’d normally attempt. A neighborhood you’ve never explored. Slightly uncomfortable together is often where the better memories get made.
17. Have a Home Spa Night
Order in from a kosher restaurant you love, turn your phones off, and just be home together without the to-do list running in the background. Run the bubble bath, light some candles, and ignore the outside world for a few hours. The bar for this one is lower than people make it.
18. Go Stargazing or Watch a Meteor Shower
This requires getting out of the city, which is its own benefit. Find a dark sky spot within a couple hours of home. Pack food. Bring a blanket. There are several major meteor showers every year that are genuinely worth catching. The Perseids in August are the most reliable.
19. Plan a Dream Trip Even if You Can’t Take It Yet
This is one of the most underrated date activities for the kosher traveler. Pull up a destination. Research it together. What’s the kosher infrastructure? What would you do there? What would Shabbat look like? The planning itself is a shared experience, and when you do eventually go, you’ll go better prepared. Start browsing the YeahThatsKosher destination guides and itineraries together and see what sparks something.
20. Do a Vision Board for Your Future Together
Old-school but effective. Even if you’ve been together for 10, 20 or more years. Where do you want to live? What does your future home look like? Which trips are on the list? What do you want to build together? Putting images to a shared future is a different kind of conversation than talking about it abstractly.
21. Start a Shared Journal or Memory Book
Keep a running log of things you do together. Restaurants you loved, trips you took, moments worth remembering. Even a simple notes document you both add to works. A few years from now, that archive is worth something.
22. Go on a Double Date With Another Couple You Admire
Not the kind you do out of social obligation. An intentional one, with a couple whose dynamic you genuinely respect. Good conversations are contagious. Being around people who are clearly invested in each other tends to bring that out in you too.
23. Attend an Event or Concert Together
Jewish music events, comedy nights, concerts, whatever the local community has going on. The shared experience of being in a room enjoying something together, without being the hosts or the guests at someone’s table, is underrated. And if it’s a game at the ballpark with a kosher food stand, you’re set.
24. Have a Game Night Just the Two of You
No kids. No other couples. Just you two and a game neither of you has played recently. Competitive is fine. The point is being focused on the same thing for two hours without a screen in the middle. (Here are some of my fave strategy board games that I often play on Shabbat).
25. Cook Each Other’s Favorite Childhood Meal
This one requires actually knowing the answer, which is its own conversation. What did you eat growing up that made you feel at home? What do you wish you could have again?
26. Start a Gratitude Ritual, Weekly or Monthly
Five minutes at the end of Shabbat, or on Sunday morning, saying out loud what you’re grateful for. Including each other. The ritual matters less than the consistency. Couples who regularly say what’s good out loud tend to notice more of it.
27. Take a Class or Workshop Focused on Growth
A shiur you both attend. A marriage enrichment program. A financial planning course. A parenting workshop. Learning something together that applies to your actual life is a different kind of shared experience than a hobby class, and often more valuable.
28. End the Year With a Reflection Date
Pick a date in December, or before Rosh Hashanah, and spend it reviewing the year together. What did you do that was worth doing? What do you want to do differently? What’s going on the list for next year? Open those letters from #11 above if you wrote them. Then write new ones.
29. Find a Chabad in a City, Island, or Country You’ve Never Visited
This one reframes a whole trip. Instead of picking a destination and figuring out the kosher logistics after the fact, start with the Chabad. Find a city, island, or country you’ve never been to, confirm there’s an active Chabad, and build a weekend around it. Show up. Go to davening. Stay for the Shabbat meal. Explore the local food scene, the culture, the neighborhood. There are Chabad houses in places that would genuinely surprise you: Caribbean islands, Southeast Asian cities, mountain towns in South America. The instant infrastructure of walking into a Chabad as a stranger and being welcomed as family, in an unfamiliar place, is a uniquely Jewish experience. In my opinion, a trip is one of the best dates you can go on.
30. Get Out Into Nature Near a National Park (With a Local Chabad)
There is something about being in actual wilderness together, away from everything, that cuts through the noise in a way that a restaurant or a movie can’t. And for kosher travelers, the logistics have gotten a lot easier. YeahThatsKosher has covered 13 U.S. national parks with active Chabad support, including Yellowstone, Yosemite, Zion, the Grand Tetons, and the Great Smoky Mountains. Several of those Chabad houses offer Shabbat hospitality, kosher takeout, and meal delivery. Plan a long weekend around a park you’ve never hiked. Pack food. Spend a day on a trail with no cell service. Let Shabbat happen in nature. It’s a different gear entirely.
The Point
Most of these require nothing more than the decision to do them. No special budget, no elaborate logistics, no occasion. The kosher world already gives us Shabbat as a weekly forced pause. The other six days are on us.
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