Neirot Shabbat kodesh

Our lighting of shabbat lights is founded in our tradition that Abraham and Sarah kept the entire Torah even though it was not yet given in written form. They knew the Torah from their understanding of the inner workings of the Olam (universe). We know Sarah lit the Shabbat lamp, as did Rebecca, Rachel and Leah and it is also reasonable to believe that at no time in our history did a Friday night pass without that light.

Now for a sabbath keeping jew this is easy to accept and a normal part of our faith. Yet from time to time I get the following question in one form or another and so hopefully this will help.

“ Shabbath is a beautiful tradition. However, is it actually written in Torah to light a candle, doesn’t it say only to observe the Sabbath and keep it holy?”

This is a great question and well let me start by asking; have you ever noticed that when the Torah mentions Shabbat, it is always assuming that you know what it’s talking about. Consider how the Torah admonishes us to “keep the Shabbat” and “remember the Shabbat”. We are to rest on the seventh day from the work of the other six days, this also includes our servants and our domesticated animals. No making a fire or extinguishing one. In fact we learn a lot about what we can and can’t do on shabbat simply by the fact that they did not build the tabernacle on Shabbat.

However regarding what we are supposed to do, not a word. Could it be that our ancestors that followed Moshe (Moses) just knew by intuition, or is it more likely by tradition.

Let us look at what the prophet Isaiah has to say about what Shabbat entails. For the record his audience is far more distant from Sinai and clearly needed things made a bit more clear to fully understand properly. In Yeshayahu (Isaiah) - Chapter 58:13 we read, “If you restrain your foot because of the Sabbath, from performing your affairs on My holy day, and you will call the Sabbath ‘a delight’ and G-d’s holy day ‘honored’.

Okay so, Shabbat is a day we are to honor and delight in. How do we honor and delight in it then? Well apparently, Isaiah’s audience needed no further explanation. However in Talmudic times, things got to were it was necessary for the rabbis to spell out every word: you honor the Shabbat with…. clean clothes, and delight in it…. with fine food and drink, Making sense right?

But were does the Shabbat candles come in? imagine if you will you sit down to a delicious evening meal except it’s in the dark, are you delighting in you shabbat meal? Well maybe you never have had to sit in the dark to eat a meal, I have and it is not a delight in fact it just sucks. Truth be told even the finest cuisine would become drab when you can not see the colors, textures and presentation. And why is that? We are visual creatures, and even our deriving pleasure from our food is directly tied to our visual experience. Now with that in mind we understand why In Yoma 74b it reads “A blind person, is never satisfied from his food.”

And so, “calling the Shabbat a day of delight,” they must have had a lamp lit for the nighttime meal. Now remember it is to be lit beforehand, since as we are told explicitly we cannot create a fire on Shabbat. Traditionally it is the woman who generally takes the responsibilities of the home, and likewise she took the responsibility for lighting the lamp.

Not to long after it seems that there were Jews who felt okay forgoing on the visual experience. For whatever the reason. However sitting in a dark home all Shabbat creates a lot of problems. Try walking in a dark house before long you're tripping over every unseen obstacle and everyone is falling over each other. This is not conducive to peace and harmony on shabbat.

So, for the sake of shalom bayit (family harmony), the spiritual leaders made a distinct requirement that every home must have a lamp (Candles) lit before Shabbat, and including in every room where people may walk and could bump into things. It was also declared that anyone who would be mindful and safeguard it would be blessed with children who would be Torah scholars, why? As the verse states, “For a mitzvah is a lamp, and the Torah is light.” They interpreted this to mean that through the mitzvah of the lamp comes the light of Torah.