The time of candle lighting is an especially auspicious time for private prayer. From behind covered eyes, women throughout history have whispered prayers for health and happiness, and for children who will illuminate the world with Torah.
Take a few moments to whisper
your own prayers, allowing the
unique holiness of the time to
permeate your prayers and convey
them on high.
Finally, uncover your eyes and gaze at the Shabbat lights. Turn to your loved ones and wish them "Shabbat Shalom" or "Good Shabbos." Embrace the light, peace and joy you have generated, and welcome the Shabbat into your home
First light the candles.
Then spread your hands out around the candles drawing your hands inward in a circular motion three times to indicate the acceptance of the sanctity of Shabbat.
You then cover your eyes and recite the following blessing:
Transliteration:
Boruch A-toh Ado-noi E-lo-hei-nu Me-lech Ho-olom A-sher Ki-de-sha-nu Be-mitz-vo-sov Ve-tzi-vo-nu Le-had-lik Ner Shel Sha-bos Ko-desh
Translation:
Blessed are You, Lord our G-d, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us to kindle the light of the holy Shabbat.
Uncover your eyes and behold the Shabbat lights.
The time of lighting is considered especially propitious for praying to G-d for health and happiness. The prayer is readily acceptable because it is offered during the performance of this great mitzvah of lighting Shabbat candles.
Make sure to light the candles before sunset
Blessings & Instructions for Shabbat Candles
The Shabbat candles have ushered the holiness of Shabbat into the Jewish home for thousands of years -- ever since the matriarch Sarah illuminated her tent with her Friday night lights.
The primary function of the Shabbat candles is to bring peace and tranquility into the home and to enhance our enjoyment of the Shabbat meal. The candles also serve to remind us of the spiritual dimensions of Shabbat: just as a physical candle reveals the otherwise unseen contents of a room, so, too, in a spiritual sense, the Shabbat candles reveal the unseen and intangible G-dly energy which permeates our existence.
The Shabbat candles are lit Friday evening, eighteen minutes before sunset. Certain communities have the custom to light them somewhat earlier. The latest one may light the Shabbat candles is sunset.
On Friday evening, we sanctified the Shabbat with the kiddush ritual; now, as we take leave of it after a night and day of divine rest,
we once again pronounce the holiness of the
day over a cup of wine.
The Havdalah ("Separation") ceremony is a
multi-sensory ritual employing our faculties of
speech and hearing, sight, smell and taste to
define the boundaries that G-d set in creation
"between the sacred and the everyday."
Paradoxically, this act of separation is what
connects Shabbat with the rest of the week.
When the boundaries between the holy and
the ordinary are blurred, the holy is no longer
holy and the ordinary is left with nothing to uplift it.
By defining the separation of Shabbat from the workday week, the relationship between the two is also established -- a relationship in which Shabbat imparts its transcendent vision to the rest of the week, and the six days of daily life feed into, and are sublimated within
