Shalom Y'all Runs on Tickets. Pick Yours Up Before Sunday in Monterey Square.

Admission to the 37th annual Shalom Y'all Jewish Food Festival is free. The food is paid for with tickets. Congregation Mickve Israel runs the festival on Sunday, Nov. 8, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Monterey Square. Plan the ticket side of the day and the rest takes care of itself.

A ticket bought ahead gets you past the booth and straight to the latkes. One left unspent at the end of the afternoon can go to a veterans' charity. Both start with a weekday stop at the congregation's office.

Thursday and Friday are the last weekday pickup days

The festival menu page sells advance tickets online in $10 increments. The congregation says the point is to keep people out of the ticket-booth line. The order form goes in blocks from 10 tickets up to 100.

Pickup at the CMI Office begins Monday, Nov. 2, and runs weekdays from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. For anyone reading this on Thursday, Nov. 5, that leaves Thursday and Friday.

1. Order online on the menu page. Enter the name you'll give at pickup, then choose a ticket block.
2. Pick up Thursday, Nov. 5, or Friday, Nov. 6, between 9:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. at the CMI Office.
3. Or pick up Sunday at the Will Call/Sponsor Appreciation Booth on festival grounds.

If you pick up on a weekday, you walk into the square Sunday with tickets in hand and go straight to the food. Will Call works too, but it means one more stop.

What the tickets buy this year

The 2026 menu is posted as an image on the congregation's menu page, and that's the place to check prices before you choose a block. Visit Savannah's 2026 listing highlights potato latkes, blintzes, chicken shawarma and deli sandwiches.

Some of those dishes have been on the menu for years. In 2016, Connect Savannah wrote about volunteers spending weeks in the synagogue kitchen before the festival. The foods it listed included blintzes, rugelach, noodle kugel, honeycakes, lamb in pita, potato latkes, chicken-liver pâté and pastrami sandwiches. In 2007, Connect Savannah's "Shofar so good" described a cooking operation run out of the synagogue's full restaurant kitchen, with about 300 volunteers helping put the event together. The congregation's own festival page credits its "countless volunteers" for making it happen "year after year."

That's why the ticket system exists. Food and drink tickets are how the festival brings in money, and according to Visit Savannah, the proceeds support Congregation Mickve Israel and its community programming.

Why the festival is in Monterey Square

Shalom Y'all hasn't always been held here. Savannah Morning News covered the 2014 festival in Forsyth Park, and Connect Savannah reported it there again in 2016. In 2017, Savannah Morning News reported that it was moving back to Monterey Square.

Savannah Morning News called the 2008 festival the 20th annual. Counting back puts the first one around 1989, which fits this year's 37th edition.

A square holds a smaller crowd than Forsyth Park, so lines tend to bunch at the ticket booth and the food tables. Arriving with your tickets already in hand gets you through the first of those.

The stage, the Kids' Zone and the city's part

Visit Savannah lists the Savannah Philharmonic and the Savannah Voice Festival among this year's performers, along with a Kids' Zone for families. The congregation's festival page said the entertainment schedule was "coming soon." It also thanks the City of Savannah's Weave-A-Dream Program for helping make the Entertainment Stage possible. Check the festival page for set times before you head out, so you can line up lunch with the act you want to hear.

Where your leftover tickets can go

This year's festival falls three days before Veterans Day on Wednesday, Nov. 11, and the congregation is treating it as Veterans Day weekend. Its Honoring Our Veterans page lists what's planned:

• A Color Guard ceremony by cadets from the Georgia National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Program, who will also volunteer throughout the day.
• Free swag bags for veterans while supplies last. The Jewish War Veterans of Savannah will hand them out at the Veterans Booth to anyone who shows a military or VA ID card.
• A collection jar for unused festival tickets or cash, with every donation going to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. The foundation supports the families of fallen and wounded special operations service members.

Because advance tickets come in blocks of 10, plenty of people will finish eating with a few left over, and those can go straight into the jar. The same page lists a congregation contact for anyone who wants to donate items for the veterans' swag bags.

If someone in your household served, bring their military or VA ID. The bags go out while supplies last, so the Veterans Booth is better visited early than late.

If you want to see more of Mickve Israel, come back on a weekday

The festival is a Sunday, and the congregation's museum isn't open to the public on weekends. Its museum tours page lists public tours Monday through Friday, and closed on Saturdays and Sundays. If the latkes on Sunday leave you curious about the congregation that made them, plan a weekday visit for the museum. Anyone picking up tickets Thursday or Friday will already be making a weekday trip to the CMI Office.

Our Historic District clients often ask which local traditions are worth planning a weekend around, and Shalom Y'all, now in its 37th year, is a good example. If you'd like to talk about what life on the squares looks like through the seasons, Liza DiMarco would be glad to hear from you. Let's Connect.