I seem to have fallen a little behind. Perhaps that is because I am preparing for Shabbat. Shabbat comes every week and we welcome her like a bride, like a queen, like an angel. We welcome Shabbat with candles, with wine and with bread. This week we read about the candles, oil lights really in the Tabernacle and about the challah. Yes, challah is a Biblical word.
At some point, the tending of these two important mitzvot became women’s work, not the work of the priests. This switch fascinates me. Is it because a home is considered a mikdash me’at, a small sanctuary? Because a women is expected to keep, to create shalom bayit, peace of the home? Is it tied to the verse I love from the Friday night Psalms, “Light is sown, planted for the righteous and joy for the upright in heart?”

My mother would light Shabbat candles most Friday nights once we moved to Grand Rapids. She was never so good on the Hebrew and frequently got stuck on the word v’tzivanu. If we were at services she would lean over, midway through and ask the cantor, “What’s my word?” and he would prompt her. Then she would read the responsive reading out of the old Union Prayer Book I. If we were at home she would add an impromptu “Shabbes shpiel”. A sense of warmth and peace would descend on the house. She never liked the reading from Proverbs, a Woman of Valor. It offended her feminist sensitivities.

What she didn’t know is she was following in the footsteps of generations of women. Jewish women would compose their own prayers for the lighting of the Shabbes candles. Called tekhinot, these were prayers written by women for women about women’s things–candlelighting, challah, niddah, mikveh, childbirth, nursing, weaning.  Some have been recorded, others, like my mother’s floated away or floated up to heaven.

The blessing that we say for lighting the candles, l;hadlik ner shel Shabbat, who commands us to kindle the Shabbat lights, I find fascinating. While you might think that since it is a commanded activity this blessing is in the Talmud, you would be wrong. It is based on the Chanukah candle blessing which is. Maggie Anton, who wrote Rashi’s Daughters, a series I have loved, argued that it was one of Rashi’s daughters, or her husband, Rabbenu Tam that composed it. I was so excited! Let’s hear it for feminism. But apparently there are records of it back to Rav Gaon who compiled the Machzor Vitry. Rashi quotes this himself:

Rav Gaon’s responsum is and it reads:
One who lights the lamp of Shabbat must recite a blessing. Why? For it is obligatory, as we say (Shabbat 25b), “Lighting lamps for Shabbat is obligatory, for Rav Yehudah said citing Shemuel, Lighting lamps etc.” And we have seen that where it is not possible, other mitzvot are overridden before it, as Rabbah said (Shabbat 23b), “It is obvious that in balancing the lamp of the home and the Chanukah lamp, the lamp of the home is greater.” One must bless, “To kindle the lamp of Shabbat.”
And if you will ask, “Where did He instruct us,” it is from Rav Avya and Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak (Shabbat 23a)..

Now embedded in the full discussion, there is a fascinating argument about whether this is a commandment and therefore requires a blessing. However, the rabbis conclude that it does using the verses below:

What Rashi himself, did say about Chanukah lights and Shabbat lights, is : Talmud Shabbat 23b and Rashi: Said Rava, “It is obvious to me that where a person has to choose between kindling household lights [for Shabbat] and Chanukah lights, the household lights should be given preference, for reasons of domestic tranquility…RASHI: Domestic tranquility–that which is stated further on (p. 25b): “My soul was bereft of peace” (Lamentations 3:17), refers to the lighting of Sabbath candles, that (in their absence) the household members are distressed to sit in the darkness.