Fourth Commandment Remember the Sabbath Day

Sabbath Lights The Sabbath day. From all sides light, in every corner a spark. The symbol of revelation. --Franz Rosenzweig The last sentient act my mother performed on earth was to light the Sabbath candles. Ill with cancer, she had undergone a minor hospital procedure to ease some of her symptoms. It was Friday, the Sabbath eve, and she was eager to return home to light the candles that begin the Sabbath and to share the evening meal with my father. They were both deep into old age, she at ninety-four, he just turned one hundred. Their bodies were giving out, but their minds had remained intact and alert. In their seventy-two years of marriage, she had never been late in kindling the Sabbath lights, but this was January, the days were short, and she worried that she might not reach home before sundown. So she anxiously hurried her discharge along and blew me a quick kiss good-bye as an aide wheeled her into the ambulette that would carry her home. She made it on time. She lit three household candles in the set of brass candlesticks that had belonged to her mother, and said the blessing as she had so many times before. Shortly afterward she suffered such severe pain that she had to be given a massive dose of drugs. She died two days later, never fully emerging from her drugged state. When I think of my mother's death, I like to believe that she may have been comforted a bit in her illness by that last ritual act. Although Jewishly observant, my mother rarely discussed her religious feelings, and was not much given to sentiment. Yet she loved candlelighting, and could not imagine a Friday evening without it. In this she was not alone. Shabbat lights, more than any other symbol, have represented to Jews in all times and places the seventh day of the week, the Sabbath of complete rest. Many who observe little else about the day kindle lights to mark its beginning, and on occasion non-Jews have also taken up the practice. The first-century Jewish historian Josephus relates that across the Roman Empire--in every city of the "Grecians," the "barbarians," and "any nation whatsoever"--people lit oil lamps at the start of the Sabbath in imitation of the Jewish custom. For Jews, light surrounds the Sabbath like parentheses, enclosing this time and setting it apart from the rest of the week. Simple white candles usher in the day and a colorful twisted candle escorts it out, the one announcing the stoppage of all creative activity, the other its beginning again. Before we can speak about rites or rules, prayers or practices, we need to speak about the light that sheds its glow over the Sabbath day, illuminating its essence. Traditionally, the woman of the house lights the candles that open Shabbat, circling her hands over the flames as if to draw their luster toward her before she covers her eyes and recites the blessing. Through the ages, poets and artists have tried to capture the emotional impact of that moment of lighting and blessing. To thirteen-year-old Ozzie, the protagonist in Philip Roth's story "The Conversion of the Jews," at that instant "there should be no noise; even breathing, if you could manage it, should be softened." At that instant, his mother, ordinarily tired and bent, looks "like a woman who knew momentarily that God could do anything." The Israeli poet Zelda saw in the candles "the mystery of the fire of sunset." According to early mystics, the lighted candles represent the masculine and feminine aspects of God, which, joined together, create shalom bayit, peace and harmony in the home. Therefore they called the candles themselves shalom bayit. Others hold that the Shekhinah, the feminine aspect of God, disperses the candlelight as she spreads her wings over the world, sheltering it in divine peace. Indeed, people often speak of an almost palpable sense of peace that lighting the SabbatKlagsbrun, Francine is the author of 'Fourth Commandment Remember the Sabbath Day', published 2002 under ISBN 9780609607459 and ISBN 0609607456.