[Avodah] Making a Berakhah when Lighting for Shabbos Early

[Jay F. Shachter via Avodah]

> 
> 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?
> 

You light one candle, after plag hamminxa of course, and you say the
appropriate brakha, lhadliq ner shel shabbath.  You don't need an
`eruv tavshilin to light one candle, because the Rabbinic prohibition
of performing mlakha on Yom Tov for Shabbath was not intended to
override the Rabbinic commandment of lighting one candle for use on
Shabbath.  Since (unlike in ancient times, and unlike a hundred years
ago also) you don't need to have candles burning on Shabbath for their
light, because you already have electric lights in your house that
will stay on, or that will come on, during Shabbath, you therefore
have no reason to light more than one candle (except for minhag, which
you can dispense with when needed), so you don't.  One candle is the
Rabbinic commandment.  Lighting two candles is a recent frumkeit, or
yhiruth, that started among German Jews and is less than 900 years old.


                Jay F. ("Yaakov") Shachter
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