In America, many Jews will make it to synagogue for Rosh Hashanah. But when Friday afternoon comes, too many Jewish homes are still missing the light of Shabbat candles.
The Three Foundations
This week, I was speaking with a young couple preparing for marriage, and among other things, we came to the topic of the ketubah.
I explained to them that the ketubah is a document devoted entirely to the rights of the wife and the commitments the husband accepts upon himself. At its core, the ketubah reflects the Torah’s obligation that a husband provide his wife with three things:
She’erah — her food.
Kesutah — her clothing.
Onatah — family life and intimacy.
All of this, the groom commits to the bride in the ketubah.
When the groom heard this, he quickly asked me, “And what about her? What does the bride commit to give me in return?”
I told him, “The bride does not owe you anything. You should thank her for agreeing to marry you.”
He did not love that answer.
But in truth, the Torah did entrust the Jewish woman with responsibility for three mitzvot that form the foundations of the Jewish home.
The easiest and most famous of these is the mitzvah of lighting Shabbat candles, which women begin observing from a very young age. Every Jewish woman lights two candles before Shabbat begins. The Rebbe encouraged that every girl, from the age of three, should light one candle on Friday afternoon, and with G-d’s help, when she gets married, she will add the second candle.
As that little girl grows older, she begins to become involved in the second mitzvah entrusted to the Jewish woman: kashrut.
The kitchen is generally the woman’s territory. Even in those rare cases where the husband knows how to cook, and sometimes spends more time in the kitchen than his wife, the decisions in the kitchen still usually depend on the woman. As a young girl grows up and begins helping with kitchen work, she begins taking part in the second mitzvah whose responsibility was given to the women of Israel: maintaining a kosher and beautiful Jewish kitchen.
Then, when she matures further and merits to marry and build a Jewish home, she accepts responsibility for the third and most important mitzvah: taharat hamishpachah, family purity (See Likkutei Sichos vol. 29, p. 487).
So we see that just as the groom makes three major commitments to his bride, the bride too accepts responsibility for three mitzvot — three foundations of the Jewish home.
A Mikvah in the Desert
In this week’s Torah portion, Chukat, we read about the passing of Miriam. Immediately afterward, the Torah says, “There was no water for the congregation,” and right away the complaints began.
The obvious question is: Why was there suddenly no water?
For forty years, we do not hear the Jewish people complaining about water. And now, suddenly, there is an outcry.
Rashi explains: “From here we learn that for all forty years, they had the well in the merit of Miriam” (Numbers 20:2). The water the Jewish people had throughout their forty years in the desert came in Miriam’s merit.
Miriam’s connection to water began much earlier.
We all know the story of baby Moses, whose mother placed him in the Nile. It was his sister Miriam who stood at a distance, watched over him, and saved him from the water.
And beyond that, if you remove the letter reish from the name Miriam, you are left with the word mayim — water. Miriam’s entire being was about giving water to the Jewish people (Toras Menachem 5751, vol. 4, p. 75, note 51).
The Rebbe adds a beautiful point:
In addition to the fact that all the Jewish people drank from Miriam’s well, our sages teach that this well was also the mikvah that enabled the women of Israel to observe the mitzvah of taharat hamishpachah, family purity, throughout all the years that the Jewish people traveled in the desert.
This represents one of the special mitzvos—and we find a similar representation of the other mitzvos with her siblings, Moses and Aaron:
In the merit of Moses, the manna fell for the Jewish people. On the day Moses passed away, the manna stopped falling (see Exodus 16:35 and Rashi there).
In other words, the food the Jewish people ate for forty years came in the merit of Moses. Moses was, so to speak, “in charge of the kitchen” for the generation of the desert. This represents the second mitzvah entrusted to the women of Israel: the kashrut of the kitchen.
Immediately afterward, in the Torah portion, we read about the passing of Aaron the High Priest.
Aaron did many important and positive things. He brought peace between people and between husbands and wives. He also performed many services in the Mishkan. He offered the incense, brought sacrifices, and entered the Holy of Holies once a year.
But there is one service Aaron performed that, in a certain sense, continues until our own day: the lighting of the candles.
Aaron the High Priest lit the lamps of the Menorah in the Holy Temple every day. And this is, in effect, the one mitzvah we continue to observe in a way that resembles what was done in the Temple: lighting the Shabbat candles.
According to the Midrash, there is a direct connection between our Shabbat candles and the lights of the Holy Temple. As the Yalkut Shimoni says in Parshat Beha’alotcha: “If you keep the Shabbat candles, I will show you the lights of Zion.”
So here we have the three shepherds of the Jewish people — Moses, Aaron, and Miriam — each symbolizing one of the three mitzvot entrusted to the Jewish woman.
Strengthening the Mitzvah of Shabbat Candles
The interesting thing is that in every country, certain mitzvot seem to become especially beloved and carefully observed by the Jews of that place — what the Talmud calls zahir tefei, the mitzvah in which a person is especially careful.
For example, here in America, almost every Jew who has some connection to Judaism goes to synagogue on Rosh Hashanah — at least on the first day — even if only to hear the sound of the shofar.
In Israel, by contrast, Rosh Hashanah has also become a popular time to go to the beach. After all, in Israel people usually do not get two days off from work in a row, and when they finally do get two days off, some people are not eager to “waste” them in synagogue.
On the other hand, lighting Shabbat candles is an extremely popular mitzvah in Israel. Recent surveys published in Israel show that 66 percent of Jews in Israel light Shabbat candles — which is an enormous number.
Here in America, however, this mitzvah has not had the same good fortune. Only a minority of Jews light Shabbat candles.
I sometimes ask the children in Hebrew School whether their mothers light Shabbat candles, and I find that out of twenty students, only two or three say yes.
This week, we will mark the Rebbe’s yahrtzeit. This is the right time for each of us to take upon ourselves to influence one more Jewish woman to try to light Shabbat candles.
When a Jew encourages someone else to bring more light into the world, G-d responds middah k’neged middah — measure for measure — and brings light into that person’s own life as well, with blessing, good fortune, and revealed good.
(17 Sivan 5740, Sichos Kodesh 5740, vol. 3, p. 348 and onward).
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