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Shabbat Candles

It actually happened. A rabbi stood up at the end of the Shabbat morning service and, during the course of his announcements stated, that next Friday evening candles should be lit between the times of 7.40pm and 7.55pm, a very narrow time slot. It was in the month of August. An early opportunity was taken to discuss the matter with the rabbi because, although raised and living within an orthodox community, this ruling was unheard of by me or my friends and none comply with it. When it was mentioned that many have been taught that one can light candles even two hours before the official commencement of Shabbat his response was ‘rubbish’ even though I, too, was taught this fact by a respected and well known rabbi.  

The U.S. diary states quite clearly ‘Should the congregation of any town fix a time, for the commencement of the Sabbaths and festivals, earlier than the times printed in this diary, the local custom must be followed’. The rabbi’s community does not represent a town and his first and one off ruling can hardly be called ‘a local custom’.  

During the summer months Shabbat commences well after 9.00pm and the United Synagogue custom is for it to commence at 8.00pm. A calendar distributed each year from Israel gives London times which shows that during the summer months Shabbat begins well after 8.00pm.  So where did the rabbi find and why would he wish to apply this strange ruling? He said that it is to be found in the Talmud. 

There is a practical difficulty with the rabbi’s ruling. During the period of the Talmud there were no clocks and the rabbis had great difficulty not only in establishing the time for saying the Shema in the morning but also for fixing the time for the beginning and ending of the Shabbat. There could be up to an hour’s difference between the different suggestions they considered. In these circumstances how could they have established a precise 15 minute slot as the time for Shabbat to begin?    

In Natanya there are two synagogues catering for the orthodox Anglo Jewish community. During the period between Pesach and Rosh Hashanah each organises two Friday night services, an early one at 6.30pm and a later one at 7.30pm. It is certain that the rabbis who lead these respective communities are as well steeped in the Talmud as is the rabbi referred to above but they take no account of the narrow time slot to which he referred. Indeed, during the course of a lecture one of these rabbis said that Shabbat commences when the head of the household says psalm 92 ‘Mizmor shir l’yom ha’shabbat.’; ‘A song for the Sabbath day’, during the course of the evening service. In effect this means that part of the community commences Shabbat one hour earlier than another part.  

This called for further research which produced some startling results. The first result was that nowhere, but nowhere, does any reference book, or any book to which I referred where such matters are discussed, make reference to the narrow time slot. Even more interestingly, it turns out that blessings over the lighting of the candles is not mentioned in the Talmud at all but is a custom which originated not more than 1000 years ago.  Certainly the actual lighting of the candles is mentioned in the Talmud but this was for the purpose of ‘Shalom Bayit’, peace in the household.  The rabbis knew that if, on Friday night, the house was dark (before gas or electricity) people would fall over each other and this could cause friction so they ruled that lights should be lit. It was a social, not religious, act. The reason for the blessing being introduced was that during the Gaonic period the Karaites, a very powerful sect within Judaism during the 8th /11th century, taught explicitly that no light or fire was allowed during Shabbat. In order to demonstrate that fire and light were permitted, if lit before Shabbat, the rabbis established the ceremony as a sacred one and introduced the blessings.  

There is yet another aspect of Shabbat candle lighting worth discussing. It is a passage from the Talmud, ‘b’may madlikim’, said in the synagogue every Friday night at the end of the service and deals with the materials which may be used in the manufacture of the Friday night candles. If the candles were a social, not religious, act what does it matter of what materials they were made? The answer given was the rabbis wished to ensure that there was a pleasant aroma in the house on Shabbat eve and so they chose material which would create such an aroma and exclude those which had the opposite effect.

August 2003