[Avodah] wife lighting menora

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 03:31:11AM -0500, T613K at aol.com wrote:
: In my home and in most yeshivish homes, only the husband lights.  In  many 
: chassidishe homes, all the males light -- but not the girls.  On the  
: frum-o-meter, as you go from left to right, the percentage of homes in which  
: females light their own menorah decreases.

Continuing on RET... So why doesn't the yeshivish husband light for his
wife?

But I didn't ask what people did. I asked what the Maharshal meant when
saying that my wife neither had to light, nor did I have to light a
second menorah to represent her. Was he saying that af hein hayu be'oso
haneis isn't enough to mandate mehadrin? Or that it isn't enough to
override neir ish ubeiso -- beiso zu ishto? A nafqa mina would be whether
he is a source for lighting a neir for the single women and girls in
the house.

The menorah, it seems, is our way of implementing the Rama's solution
of doing both neir lekhol echad ve'echad and mosif veholeikh, how to
combine mehadrin and mehadrin min hamehadrin. The Rama was concerned
how we would distinguish, for example, between a home with two people
lighting on the first night, and a home with one person lighting on the
second. So the he says each person's mosif veholeikh needs to be lit
in its own grouping.

Was there a /more/ fundamental reason for a menorah?

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Fortunate indeed, is the man who takes
micha at aishdas.org        exactly the right measure of himself,  and
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