[Avodah] women lighting candles

[T613K at aol.com]

In a message dated 12/22/2008, eliturkel at gmail.com writes:

RET:  I would even suggest that much of the stress on their
not  lighting is anti-feminism more than strict halacha. 
 
TK:  "Anti-feminist" for hundreds of years before there was any such  thing 
as a feminist movement?!
 
 

RET:  >> RYBS and RAL are not radical leftists and after  deeply considering 
the issue suggest that women should light their own  candles. As with many 
issues there are other viewpoints <<


--  
Eli Turkel

>>>>>
It's just a funny coincidence that this serious new  consideration should 
have just happened to come along in America in the 20th  century.  It reminds me 
of another funny coincidence, a shidduch that was  once suggested to me, at a 
time when many young men were growing their hair  very long, and by 
coincidence, this particular young man had decided to become a  nazir and grow a 
ponytail.  It was just a chance thing that  he happened to want to be a nazir, and 
that he studied these strangely  neglected halachos just then when the play 
"Hair" was so popular on  Broadway, but to suggest that his wanting to be a nazir 
had anything to do with  the zeitgeist would surely do him an injustice.  
Right.
 
 
 
As for women and Chanuka, I note in a Chabad pamphlet that somebody gave my  
husband -- and there is something similar in Sefer Hatoda'ah -- that women  
benefited even more from the nes Chanuka than the men did, and it's a special  
holiday for women -- but nobody suggests that therefore women should light 
their  own menorahs -- neither the Rebbe nor Sefer Hatoda'ah suggest that.   
Instead they say that women should refrain from doing melacha while the candles  
are burning.   (I assume that cooking is exempted from this minhag, as  on yom 
tov.)
 
BTW it happens that there is a [slight] link between the recent "Dinah"  
thread here and Chanuka being a special holiday for women -- although the Chabad  
pamphlet doesn't mention it.  (The pamphlet just says -- it's in Hebrew, so  
this is a rough translation -- "the meaning and content of the Chanuka candles  
penetrate davka the hearts of women, to the point where they refrain from 
work  and progress in the spiritual light of Chanuka.")  The slight "Dinah"  
connection is that when the Greeks ruled E'Y they exercised the droit du  seigneur 
and the rulers claimed the "right of the first night"  -- helping  themselves 
to every bride on her wedding night -- so that the women suffered  even more 
than the men and their rescue and salvation in the nes Chanuka came as  an 
even greater relief and joy to the women than to the men for that  reason.
 
But nobody actually tells girls in school any of that, TTBOMK.   Sometimes 
they say it's a special holiday for women because Yehudis killed the  Greek 
general (Holifernes?  -- my memory is getting fuzzy).  There was  a a Dinah 
connection there too but they don't talk about that in the girls'  schools either.

 


--Toby Katz
=============
"If you don't  read the newspaper you are uninformed; 
if you do read the newspaper you are  misinformed."
--Mark Twain

Read *Jewish World Review* at _http://jewishworldreview.com/_ 
(http://jewishworldreview.com/) 




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