NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I’ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today – from March 16, 2007.
One of the great gifts of an observant Jewish life is the lighting of Sabbath candles. At a prescribed time each Friday, 18 minutes before sundown, it is the obligation of the Jewish woman to light candles as a symbolic acceptance of the Sabbath upon herself. The prayer is said AFTER you light the candles because once they’re lit, the Sabbath rules – ignite no fire, do no work etc. preclude the lighting of a match.
Here’s how it works: you light the candles, move your hands above the candles three times to bring their warmth toward you, then cover your eyes and say a simple blessing. It’s in Hebrew, but it means “Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who sanctifies us with his commandments, and enjoins us to light the candles of Shabbat.” Yes,the words of the prayer are plain; women say them in every corner of the earth – educated or not, every week and have been doing so for thousands of years. Many of us add prayers of our own, for those we love, for peace, for the lifting of burdens, for a better world.
I always take a very deep breath — the kind they taught us when I was quitting smoking — and exhale very slowly, releasing a lot of the stress of the week before I begin. One of my friends told me that when she was in medical school and having babies at the same time, she’d weep, every week, as she felt the burdens fall from her in the glow of the flame.
Makes sense to me. Something about this ritual is transporting. I also love the idea that this is a woman’s privilege. Much has been written about what observant Jewish women are NOT permitted to do – and much of it is true. That’s another conversation. But the impact of this particular duty is profound, beautiful and serene and I am grateful for it. So, as we move toward the close of this day and toward what I have found to be the true peace of the sabbath – I send to you, whatever your faith – a peaceful wish — Shabbat Shalom.
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Cynthia Samuels
Cynthia Samuels is a long-time blogger, writer, producer and Managing Editor. She has an extensive background online, on television and in print, with particular experience developing content for women, parents and families.
For the past nine years, that experience has been largely with bloggers, twitter and other social media, most recently at Care2's Causes Channels, which serve 20 million members (13 million when she joined) and cover 16 subject areas. In her three years at Care2 monthly page views grew tenfold, from 450,000 to 4 million.
She has been part a member of BlogHer since 2006 years and has spoken at several BlogHer conferences. Among her many other speaking appearances is Politics Online, Fem 2.0 Conference and several other Internet gatherings.
She’s also run blogger outreach for clients ranging from EchoDitto to To the Contrary. Earlier, she spent nearly four years with iVillage, the leading Internet site for women; her assignments included the design and supervision of the hugely popular Education Central, a sub-site of Parent Soup that was a soup-to-nuts parent toolkit on K-12 education, designed to support parents as advocates and supporters of their school-age kids. She also served as the iVillage partner for America Links Up, a major corporate Internet safety initiative for parents, ran Click! – the computer channel - and had a long stint as iVillage's Washington editor. In addition, she has developed parent content for Jim Henson Interactive and served as Children’s Book Editor for both Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com.
Before moving online, she had a long and distinguished career as a broadcast journalist, as senior national editor of National Public Radio, political and planning producer of NBC's Today Show (whose audience is 75% women) where she worked for nine years (and was also the primary producer on issues relating to child care, education, learning disabilities and child development), and as the first executive producer of Channel One, a daily news broadcast seen in 12,000 U.S. high schools. She has published a children’s book: It’s A Free Country, a Young Person’s Guide to Politics and Elections (Atheneum, 1988) and numerous children’s book reviews in the New York Times Book Review and Washington Post Book World.
A creator of online content since 1994, Samuels is a partner at The Cobblestone Team, LLC, is married to a doctor and recent law school graduate and has two grown sons who make video games, two amazing daughters-in-law and three adorable grandsons.
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