My description of an ancient ritual and our family tradition comes as a prelude to an announcement of little consequence to anyone but me, but you deserve to know.
 
The picture that accompanies this column represents our take on the mitzvah (commandment) to initiate Shabbat by lighting candles, with the appropriate blessing, at least 18 minutes before sunset on Friday. In Jewish homes, the moment is most often conducted by a woman, with others gathered around. The strictures of Shabbat forbid the kindling of a flame, but the ritual of reciting a blessing requires it to precede the action it sanctifies. Once the blessing to light candles is recited, it is Shabbat. And once it is Shabbat, you can’t light the candles. So, the woman lights the flame, waves her hands toward her face as if to gather the light, and then covers her eyes to recite the blessing. When she removes her hands, she beholds the flames as if for the first time, thus “kindling the lights of Shabbat,” as the blessing proclaims.
 
But between the recitation of the statutory blessing and the beholding of the lights, time is frozen. In that pause, the woman has an intensely personal audience with God. Honestly, it does not matter whether she has a traditional belief in God (whatever that is) or is a committed skeptic, those intervening seconds contain a spiritual power that is second to none. Author Ira Steingroot correctly observes that “men davven (pray) together for hours in the synagogue hoping to achieve the drama and transforming magic of the wave of a woman’s hands.” During those seconds, the Holy of Holies opens to receive whatever she brings to offer: her hopes, her heartbreak, her anxiety, her anger, her longing, her love.
 
My wife has occasionally volunteered what she offers in those moments, but I intuited from the beginning of our life together that it was not mine to ask. We are enough alike in our values that I have known since we first became parents that the well-being of our children in general and in specific was always part of the moment.
 
I witnessed my mother light candles weekly for close to twenty years, and then whenever I was in her home for Shabbat for forty-some years more. She, too, took that time for something powerful enough to mist her eyes each week. It made an impression on everyone who experienced it. Near the end of her life, when she was bed-bound and unable to come down the half-flight of stairs to the candlesticks, her Filipina caregiver would light the candles, call her on Facetime in her bed, and hold the phone toward the candles so she could have that precious moment.
 
It is traditional to light two candles to provide an extra measure of light for the joy of Shabbat, and they should burn for long enough to illuminate the evening meal and perhaps some singing and studying afterward – generally around three hours.  We have inherited the tall silver candlesticks that traveled with my wife’s ancestors from Europe, and she began the custom of adding a candle for each of the members of our immediate family as it grew – five eventually. When our eldest found her soulmate, we added a sixth, and the addition of a candle on Friday night became the hallmark of welcoming new members to the family, including our two perfect grandchildren.
 
You will notice in the picture ten candles – two in the silver holders and eight in the colorful set we acquired in Israel. (Yes, they are part of a Chanukkah set, but we have other holders for that!) And in front of those eight are three holders without candles. They were gifts for Mother’s Day this year, one from each of our kids. Over the course of June and July, God willing and medical science attending, each one of our three children’s families will give us cause to add a candle. Three first cousins, less than six weeks apart. Our hearts are so full we could burst. Those moments on Friday night between blessing and beholding are more intense than you might imagine.
 
The announcement is an anti-climax. You now know why I am going to take a long break from these columns. All of my energy will be available to these little lights of mine. Maybe I will pop up occasionally in your inbox or news feed, but mostly I will be living in that moment between blessing and beholding.