#48: Machshavah

Rav Shlomo Levenstein in his work “Umatok Ha’ohr” (Shabbat Kodesh, Leil Shabbat) relates what the first lighting of Shabbat candles was like in Bnei Brak by the very first four families who moved there in the 1920s.

“…Rabbi Yitzchak Gerstenkorn [who later became mayor of the city] described the initial days of settling Bnei Brak, and the first Shabbat experienced by the first four residents.

“It is difficult to imagine the image of the sand and the shacks in comparison to the Bnei Brak of today, bubbling and full of life… the first woman to light Shabbat candles in Bnei Brak after an almost two thousand year interruption of the dark desolation of exile, was Mrs. Sarah Weitz, wife of Rabbi Moshe Weitz.

The shack of the Weitz family was only partially finished. The doors and windows had not yet been installed that day, and when she lit the Shabbat candles, the winds blew from every breach and threatened to extinguish them. She immediately called the men to help, and placed each of them next to an open window, and instructed them to protect the candles so that they should not go out.

The men raised the edges of their long Shabbat coats up towards the stormy winds. They held them spread out… opposite the lintel and the doorposts, and in this way, they blocked the openings until the twilight winds died down, and until the candles became accustomed to the [lighter] evening winds… in this manner, the Shabbat candles were victorious over the winds of desolation…”

May the Jewish people always be victorious over the forces that try to extinguish our light, just like those first Shabbat candles in Bnei Brak!

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Dedicated by Fran Broder as a zechus for the hostages to be released safely to their families and may everlasting peace come to Eretz Yisrael in the merit of learning Hilchos Shabbos.