[Avodah] women lighting candles

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 10:04:45AM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
: 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.

No joke, not even half. Isn't this why Chazal take "shema beni musar
avikha ve'al titosh toras imekha" and say "al tiqri 'imekha' ela
'umaskha'"? The Torah of the am, the cultural observations, what the
Gra"ch (R' Dr Haym Soloveitchik) got MO Jews calling "mimeticism" is
largely transmitted by our mothers.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha