[Avodah] Making a Berakhah when Lighting for Shabbos Early

[Kenneth Miller via Avodah]

R' Micha Berger asked:

> What should someone who forgot to make an eiruv tavshilin (or
> ate the food already, the food went bad, etc...) who for some
> reason can not rely on the rabbi's communal failsafe eruv
> (perhaps he isn't in a neighborhood with an observant community)
> do for lighting Shabbos candles?

Another problem this person will have is what to eat on Shabbos. There are several ideas offered by the poskim, and one of them is to cook extra food on Yom Tov, and the extra will be for Shabbos. This can be done even without an Eiruv Tavshilin, IIRC, because the melacha is not being done exclusively for Shabbos.

> So, the BY (OC 537:19) [that should be 527:19 - Akiva] permits,
> but he says "veyeish oserin". The AhS (se'if 28) names the oserim
> as the Rosh and the Ran, and that the SA names the Rambam (via a
> diyuq halashon)as his source lehatir. The AhS then questions the
> diyuq, but says it should be allowed anyway, since one gets
> hana'ah from the neiros while on YT too.

This sounds to me the same as above. The lighting is not being done exclusively for Shabbos, and therefore may be done on YT.

I would note that at no point in that se'if, does the AhS explicitly refers to the *mitzvah* of lighting Shabbos neros. Rather, his focus is on the practical need to light them in the late afternoon, both because it is *already* getting dark and hard to see without some artifical light, and because we won't be able to light anything later on.

Truth be told, if lighting Shabbos candles is allowed only with an Eruv Tavshilin, then this whole se'if is needed even for a person who DID remember to make an Eruv, because (l'chatchila) one must do his Shabbos preparations early in the day, in a manner in which the melacha is -- or at least *could* be -- for tzorchei Yom Tov, and not exclusively for Shabbos.

> So I'm wondering about this... If someone uses existing lights,
> ones you used while still Friday, what "lehadliq" is she making
> a berakhah on? Yes, there is light for enjoying the Shabbos meal,
> all the same shalom bayis. But there is no actual pe'ulah to make
> the berakhah on. Is there?

I don't know where you see anything like this in the AhS. The AhS is explicitly talking about lighting after mincha, when it is already dark and the light is already useful. I concede that perhaps one should omit the bracha, because it explicitly declares one's intentions to be of a hachana nature, but that is a separate question not raised by the AhS. The main point I want to make in this paragraph is that the AhS never suggested that one might be yotzay Mitzvas Ner Shabbos via the candle that he lit in the early afternoon; it must be lit after Plag, with the intention that it will be burning into Shabbos.

Akiva Miller
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