RIVKA’S STORY SHOWS THE IMPORTANCE AND POWER OF JEWISH WOMEN IN BRINGING LIGHT AND BLESSING INTO THE WORLD.
They said, “Let’s call the girl and ask her opinion.” Rashi tells us, that from here we learn, that a woman cannot be engaged to someone without her consent. Since Rashi uses the word “woman” here, teaches us, that although Rivka was only three years old, she was mature like a woman, when it came to her well-being. Obviously, her family thought so as well, as they respected her opinion.
Rivka chose to go with Eliezer and the match was settled. They blessed her with the blessing that we now commonly bless brides with at their wedding, “May you grow to thousands of myriads!
On their return, Rivka saw Yitzchak in the field, she was so taken by his holiness, that she nearly fell off the camel she was on. We see from here that she had an innate ability to sense holiness.
Eliezer recounted to Yitzchak, the miraculous events of his trip. Then Yitzchak brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent. Rashi explains that she was just like his mother Sarah. Meaning, that when Sarah was alive, there were three miracles that would regularly occur and when she died they stopped. When Rivka came, they resumed.
First, the candles that she lit on Erev Shabbos, burned until the next Erev Shabbos. Second, there was a blessing in her dough, meaning that even a small amount of her bread satisfied hunger. Third, a cloud hovered above her tent.
Seems that the order should be reversed. First, when she came into the tent, Yitzchak would have seen the cloud hovering above the tent. Then he would have experienced her bread and finally, it would take an entire week for him to know that her Shabbos candles would burn all week. Why does Rashi reverse the order?
In the next Parsha, we learn that our forefathers kept all the mitzvahs, even the rabbinically ordained precepts. The law is, that if there isn’t a woman to light the Shabbos candles, then a man should light them. This being the case, it would make sense, that from when Sarah passed away, three years earlier, Avraham would have been lighting candles. And when Avraham was away, Yitzchak would have lit them. So why did Rivka, who was not married, and not even obligated to light them, as she wasn’t yet Bas Mitzvah, make a point to light Shabbos candles? And why don’t we hear of Avraham’s and Yitzchak’s candles burning all week?
From here we learn the value of Shabbos candles lit by women, even unmarried women, and even before Bas Mitzvah. That they bring light and blessing into the home all week. Even if you can’t see the physical candles burning, there is a spiritual light that burns all week an account of mothers and girls lighting candles.
When young children say words of Torah, there is a purity to them, that makes them very powerful. The same is true when a young girl lights a Shabbos candle. It is so pure and holy, and it fills the home and the world with spiritual light.
It is more powerful than that of any man, because just as a man can build or buy a house, but it takes a woman to turn it into a home. This is because Hashem imbued women with the ability to affect the home beyond what any man can do. The same is true when it comes to affecting the home spiritually, through lighting Shabbos candles.
Now we can understand why Rashi reversed the order. Because the first one of the three done by a girl, is lighting Shabbos candles, which like Rivka, starts at the age of three. This then brings her to the next blessing. That as she gets older and she starts doing things around the home, symbolized by making dough and bread, the work of her hands is blessed. And these bring to the third blessing, which comes with marriage, when she makes her own home, bringing to it a cloud of the Shechina, the Divine Presence itself, through keeping the laws of family purity.
It all begins with lighting Shabbos candles, bringing G-dly light into the home all week long. Every daughter of Sarah and Rivka has it in her to do the same. This great power of Jewish women is a gift and an inheritance from their mothers all the way back to Sarah and Rivka.
It is also this light that brings the light of Moshiach. Therefore, it is so important for every Jewish woman and girl, from the age of three, to light Shabbos candles.
May the light of the Shabbos candles, fill your home and the world with Hashem’s Presence, and usher in the coming of Moshiach. May he come soon.
