Shabbos seating – a royal conundrum

This week marks three years since the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. And while I’m hardly a monarchist, I’ve always been fascinated by the peculiar traditions of the British royal family, particularly its obsession with seating arrangements.

At Buckingham Palace, seating is diplomacy. You don’t plonk down anywhere near the soup tureen because it’s closer to the kitchen. No, no. Every chair is placed with military precision, based on rank, lineage, and which conversation the monarch wants to have first. The king begins his meal by speaking to the person on his right, then turns to the one on his left for the next course. When he puts down his fork, you do too, even if your roast beef is still intact. Garlic is banned because, apparently, nothing spoils royal repartee like bad breath. And then, of course, there’s the late Queen’s famous handbag code: if she placed her bag on the table, it meant she was ready to leave; if she shifted it from one arm to the other, it meant she wanted to escape the conversation immediately.

And then there’s my Shabbat table.

In our home, there exists a charming little fiction that I am in charge of the seating. My wife will ask me before Shabbos, “Where should everyone sit?” Dutifully, I’ll consider the personalities, the feuds, the dietary restrictions, and of course the need to keep anyone with strong political opinions away from anyone else with strong political opinions. I’ll declare my seating plan. She’ll nod thoughtfully, and accept my offering. And then, just before everyone sits down, she’ll rearrange the place cards. My suggestion that she takes charge of this delicate matter has long been rejected, because, as she says every week, “What, are you crazy? Me? I’m terrible at it. I trust you on this. You know what you’re doing.”

And so it continues.

And then there’s the religious tightrope. Do we sit men next to women, like a dinner party in Sandton, or do we separate them like a shul dinner in Bnei Brak? In theory, egalitarian mixing is fine. In practice, one poor single woman wedged between the men’s Padel squad spends the evening learning about backhands and wrist injuries. Not ideal. So someone, usually my wife, suggests dividing the table: men on one side, women on the other. The men always feign disappointment, “But darling, I wanted to sit next to you tonight,” even if they have argued the whole way over because he has left her all morning with the kids, again, while secretly delighting at the freedom to loosen belts, slurp the soup, and argue shul politics without spousal kicks under the table.

And that’s before we even get to the minefield of whose offspring are to be exiled to the children’s table – which, let’s be honest, is actually the most fun.

The royals may have centuries of protocol to guide them. We have years of bad experiences, some folded index cards, and the fragile hope that no-one will notice they’ve been “strategically” placed.

But perhaps, as we remember Queen Elizabeth this week, we can take a page from her book. Seating isn’t just about chairs, it’s about creating harmony, about making sure that for a few hours on a Friday night, we feel like part of something bigger than ourselves.

And if that means I let my wife completely rewrite my carefully considered plan five minutes before kiddush? Well, as any king will tell you, sometimes the real power is in pretending you had the final say all along.