Marketing on Shabbat and Jewish Holidays: What the Data Shows

How much of the year is Shabbat or a holiday?

Most advice on this topic stays at "avoid Shabbat", which hides how much calendar that actually is. We pulled the 2026 and 2027 calendars from Hebcal for Tel Aviv (candle lighting on the eve, havdalah at the end), paired each start with its end, and added up the hours. Shabbat and holidays that touch each other, like a holiday that runs into Shabbat, merge into one longer window.

The result for 2026: 55 windows adding up to about 1,422 hours, or 16.2% of all hours in the year. The average window is about 26 hours. Two windows run about 49 hours, because a holiday sits next to Shabbat (Shavuot on a Friday in May, and Rosh Hashana from Friday evening to Sunday night in September). Hebcal's Tel Aviv times produce nearly the same total for 2027, so this is a stable feature of the calendar, not a quirk of one year.

Do holidays cost you working days, or just weekends?

Mostly weekends. Of the full holiday days Hebcal lists for Israel in 2026, four land on a Sunday-to-Thursday business day: Pesach I (Thursday, 2 April), Pesach VII (Wednesday, 8 April), the second day of Rosh Hashana (Sunday, 13 September) and Yom Kippur (Monday, 21 September). Shavuot falls on a Friday (22 May), and the first day of Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret fall on a Saturday. The same four weekday holidays recur in 2027 (Thursday 22 April, Wednesday 28 April, Sunday 3 October and Monday 11 October).

That matters for planning because the cost of ignoring the calendar is concentrated. Four weekday holidays a year are easy to remember and put in a campaign calendar. The Fridays and Saturdays are what a scheduled send or a time-delay step in an automation will hit without anyone noticing, especially a delay such as "wait 24 hours" that lands on a Saturday only because the trigger happened on a Friday.

Who is actually on your list when you send on Shabbat?

One of the most detailed maps of Israeli Jewish society is Pew Research Center's 2016 report, based on face-to-face interviews with 5,601 Israeli adults, 3,789 of them Jewish, conducted between October 2014 and May 2015. It sorts Israeli Jews into four self-described groups: Haredi (ultra-Orthodox), 9%; Dati (religious), 13%; Masorti (traditional), 29%; and Hiloni (secular), 49%. It is a decade old, and groups shift, so use it as a map of the range, not a current census. The Israel Democracy Institute counted about 1.28 million Haredim in 2022, 13.3% of all residents of Israel; the group grows faster than the rest of the population, so it is, if anything, larger now.

What makes it useful is that Pew asked about specific Shabbat behaviour, not just labels. Across all Israeli Jews, 62% said they travel by car, bus or train on the Sabbath, 55% said they handle money, and 56% said they or someone in their household always or usually lights Sabbath candles. Those three numbers are almost the same size, which is the point: no single behaviour defines "the Israeli audience on Shabbat". Handling money is a reasonable proxy for how strictly someone keeps the day, because it overlaps with so much else, and it separates the groups sharply at both ends, though the Masorti middle is split.

Is a Shabbat send harmful, ignored, or fine?

Here is the gap. We searched for any published study that sent comparable marketing messages inside and outside Shabbat to Israeli recipients and measured opens, replies, complaints or opt-outs, and found none. The closest thing is general send-day data, such as Omnisend's analysis covered in our best-time article, which finds Saturday the weakest day for clicks and conversions and second-weakest for opens, by small margins, in a large global dataset. That dataset is not Israeli and does not isolate observance, so it cannot tell you what a Saturday send costs you here.

So the case for holding sends is an argument, not a measurement, and it has three parts. First, for recipients who do not use phones on Shabbat, a message sent then simply arrives when they switch back on, bunched with everything else from the weekend, which dilutes its position and its timing. Second, for recipients who keep Shabbat as a matter of principle, a promotional message that arrives during it is the kind of thing that is noticed afterwards, and the cost is brand goodwill rather than a metric you can chart. Third, for the large non-observant share, the hold costs little, because the message goes out a few hours later, on Saturday night or Sunday morning, when Israelis are back at work and attention is not in short supply.

Does the law require you to stop sending on Shabbat?

Not that we found. The relevant law for most small businesses is the weekly-rest rule in the Hours of Work and Rest Law, 1951, which entitles employees to at least 36 consecutive hours of weekly rest (shorter for certain kinds of work under regulations, but never below 25 hours) and, for Jewish employees, ties that rest to Shabbat. It governs when you can make people work. It does not regulate when a message may arrive on someone else's phone, and we found no time-of-day restriction on marketing messages in the Israeli spam law (Section 30A of the Communications Law), the rules we cover in our SMS and email compliance articles. We are not lawyers, and this is a point to confirm with yours if you operate a regulated business.

The practical consequence is that a Shabbat hold is a business decision rather than a legal obligation, which makes it worth deciding on purpose. It also matters for staff: if a reply to your Saturday message creates a task or a conversation, you have just created weekend work for a person who may be entitled to rest.

Is the Israeli calendar the same as the Diaspora one?

No, and the difference is bigger than most senders assume. In Israel each of these holidays has a single holy day at its start (and Pesach one at its end, with ordinary days in between); outside Israel most of them get a second, extra day. For 2026 Hebcal lists 8 full holiday days on the Israel schedule and 13 on the Diaspora schedule, for example Shavuot on both Friday 22 May and Saturday 23 May abroad against just the 22nd in Israel, and a second day of Sukkot and of Pesach.

That matters if you have customers on both sides, which is common for Israeli e-commerce, courses and agencies serving the Jewish world. A single blackout calendar will either hold messages to Israelis on days that are ordinary working days in Israel, or send to Diaspora recipients during their second holy day. The right unit is a calendar per audience.

Hold, skip, or queue: what should happen to each kind of message?

A blanket "nothing on Shabbat" rule is rarely what you want, because messages differ in how time-sensitive they are and whether the recipient asked for them. This is our recommendation, based on the logic above rather than on a study.

How do you set up a Shabbat and holiday rule that doesn't backfire?

1. 1Pick the calendar for each audience: Israel for Israeli recipients, Diaspora for the rest. A global list should not use a single blackout.
2. 2Define the window as candle lighting to havdalah for the city that matters, with a small margin on each side, and treat holidays that touch Shabbat as one longer window.
3. 3Hold, don't drop. A skipped message is lost; a held one should resume when the window ends, ideally spread over an hour or two rather than released all at once, so that a large audience doesn't hit your inbox and your replies queue in one burst.
4. 4Cover every channel with the same rule. If email waits but a WhatsApp automation fires, the customer still gets your message on Shabbat.
5. 5Schedule the sends you control for the working days around the window, and give time-sensitive reminders enough lead time to go out before it starts.
6. 6Test the hold, if you doubt it: send a matched slice during and after the window, and compare replies, opt-outs and conversions. That is the experiment no one has published, and your own list is the only place to run it.

Frequently asked questions

Is it illegal to send marketing messages on Shabbat in Israel?

We found no provision in the Israeli spam law that sets a time-of-day or Shabbat restriction on marketing messages. The Hours of Work and Rest Law, 1951 concerns employees' weekly rest, not when a message may reach a customer. Because we are not lawyers and rules differ for regulated industries, confirm with counsel if this matters to you.

What share of Israelis observe Shabbat?

It depends on what you count. Pew's 2014-15 survey found 62% of Israeli Jews travel by car, bus or train on the Sabbath and 55% handle money on it, while 56% always or usually light Sabbath candles. Haredi and Dati respondents (about 22% of Israeli Jews) essentially never do the first two; Masorti respondents are split, with 40% handling money.

How many hours of the year are Shabbat and holidays?

Using Hebcal's Tel Aviv candle-lighting and havdalah times, about 1,422 hours in 2026, roughly 16.2% of the year, across 55 windows averaging around 26 hours. Where a holiday touches Shabbat the window runs to about 49 hours.

Does sending on Saturday hurt open rates?

Global data such as Omnisend's shows Saturday is the weakest day for clicks and conversions and second-weakest for opens, by small margins, but it is not Israeli data and does not isolate religious observance. We found no study of Shabbat versus non-Shabbat sends to Israeli recipients, so the only way to know for your list is a holdout test.

Are Israeli and Diaspora holidays the same dates?

The dates match, but Diaspora communities keep an extra holy day for several holidays. For 2026, Hebcal lists 8 full holiday days on the Israel schedule and 13 on the Diaspora schedule. Use the Israeli calendar for recipients in Israel and the Diaspora one for the rest.

Should I pause WhatsApp, SMS and email together?

Yes, if you pause at all. A rule that holds email but lets a WhatsApp automation or SMS step fire defeats the purpose, because the customer still gets a message on Shabbat. Apply one rule across channels and have held messages resume when the window ends.