[Avodah] women lighting candles

[Zev Sero]

Arie Folger wrote:

> Eh... is the practice necessarily correct?

Perhaps not.  But it exists, and it must have some explanation.  And that
explanation cannot be a reaction to feminism, because it predates feminism.

I've often half-jokingly claimed that there is a separate women's Shulchan
Aruch, written by and for women, completely independent of the men's SA.
This is the SA where it is written that dirt is chometzdik, that Shabbat
comes in when you say the bracha on the candles, that if you miss lighting
one week you have to add a candle for the rest of your life, not to touch
a sefer torah while niddah, and a lot of other things that men have never
heard of.  Women learned halacha from their mothers and grandmothers, not
from their fathers, so there was some divergent development.  A very
feminist view, actually.



> This reminds me of my more rebellious former self. Once, a woman approached me 
> at a kidush on Shabbos morning, in a flatbush shtiebl, and asked me, whether I 
> could make kiddush for her. I asked why doesn't she do it, as halakhicly, she 
> is perfectly capable. She looked at me as if I was from Mars.

Indeed.  I got a similar look when suggesting to a woman that in her
husband's absence, as baalat habayit, it was more appropriate for her
to say hamotzi for everyone than it was for a male guest to do so.
This may be what the men's SA says, but not the women's SA.

-- 
Zev Sero                                Have a brilliant Chanukah
zev at sero.name