How Shabbos Away works, halachically
Shabbos Away is a travel guide, not a posek. These are the rules the site follows, so you know what it does and does not check. For your own trip, ask your rav.
Zmanim
Sunrise and sunset are computed for the exact place. Candle lighting is shown 18 minutes before sunset (40 minutes in Yerushalayim). Shabbos ends when the sun is 8.5 degrees below the horizon; many communities wait longer, and the app shows other opinions. Sof zman krias Shema and tefillah follow the GRA, with the Magen Avraham in the app.
Flights and Shabbos
A fare is called Shabbos-safe only when no flight on it departs, is in the air or lands from candle lighting until Shabbos ends, or on Yom Tov, at the places it flies between (one day of Yom Tov in Eretz Yisroel, two outside it), and every landing is at least three hours before candle lighting. A trip that would spend Shabbos at a connection, or crosses the date line or the far north, is never called Shabbos-safe by the site: ask your rav. Schedules change; check the times again when you book.
Kashrus
Kosher status comes only from the certifying agencies’ own published lists, with the agency named and a link, and the date we last checked. Shabbos Away does not certify anything and is not a kashrus authority. Look for a valid certificate and ask the agency. Descriptions may be written with the help of AI from owners’ and visitors’ notes; AI never decides whether a place is kosher. When an agency removes a place, the page comes down.
What we list
Shabbos Away lists Orthodox shuls, Chabad Houses and Orthodox institutions. It does not list Reform, Conservative or other non-Orthodox congregations as places to daven or visit.
Never on Shabbos or Yom Tov
Nothing goes out from Shabbos Away (email, WhatsApp, notifications, posts) from candle lighting until Shabbos or Yom Tov ends in Passaic, NJ, where Shabbos Away is run. What is found then waits until after.
Community content
No lashon hara: problems with a place go to us privately, not onto its page. Tips are about facts (hours, ordering, where to daven), not about people.