[Avodah] seudat Purim

[Zev Sero]

Eli Turkel wrote:

> 2. In the shul I attended in Madrid they will have a public seudat
> purim in the shul on friday afternoon going into shabbat and candle
> lighting and kabbalat shabbat concluding with maariv.

My shul will be doing the same.  One problem I see: each householder
has a chiyuv to light candles at home, and the earliest time for
lighting is plag hamincha.  In Brooklyn, that will be at 5:55pm.  At
my shul the seudah is called for 5:00, and will be preceded by a 4:30
megillah reading, which I assume I will be expected to do.  Now I live
close enough to the shul that I can slip out after 6pm, light candles,
and come straight back; but it would be much more difficult for many
others.

Now I know that women have a minhag of lighting at other people's homes
with a bracha.  AIUI, from a halachic POV what they're really doing is
helping their hostess with her mitzvah, in the same way that one can
help another with his mitzvah of bedikat chametz, and for their own
obligation to light their homes they are relying entirely on the
electric lights.

Now AFAIK when one helps another with his bedikat chametz it's
preferable not to make a bracha, but to hear it from him and answer
amen.  So ISTM that the women's minhag of each making their own
bracha when lighting in someone else's home is more a matter of
tolerating something for the sake of making a nachat ruach than of
strict halacha.

Now some practical questions:
1. Does anyone have a chiyuv of hadlakat nerot at a shul where
people will eat seudat shabbat, but which is nobody's home?
2. If so, can all the women join in that mitzvah and make a bracha,
with at least as much heter as they do at someone else's home?
3. Is there no requirement that someone should be lighting a
candle at their home?
4. What about men, who (AFAIK) have no such minhag in general?

See SA OC 263, where there's a lot of discussion about women who go
to mikveh or to a chupah on Erev Shabbos, but it all seems rather
bediavad.

-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev at sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas