The Age of Chinuch for Shabbos Candles?

From what age should a girl begin lighting her own Shabbos candle?

The minhag is for Jewish girls to light their own candle with their own bracha, even at the table where their mother has already lit. In Elul 5734, the Rebbe called on girls everywhere to keep it from the age of chinuch (see issue 900).

In her mother’s home, a girl can be halachically covered by her mother’s lighting, and her obligation to light her own candle only begins once she has a home of her own. Some therefore argued that there’s no need to train her in this mitzvah as a child, since her obligation won’t set in at bas mitzvah but much later.

But the Rebbe explained that this approach misunderstands chinuch. If its purpose were only that a child learn how a mitzvah is done, a month before he reaches the age of mitzvos would be enough. Yet the obligation sets in more than six or seven years earlier, when the child reaches the age of chinuch. Chinuch is thus an obligation in its own right, and it applies to every mitzvah, however far off the child’s own chiyuv may be.¹ (Tzedaka shows this plainly, as one has no chiyuv of tzedaka until he supports himself, yet all agree that there is chinuch for it.²)

The Rebbe points out that Rivka lit when she entered Sarah’s tent at three years old, according to Rashi, even though Avraham had been lighting since Sarah’s passing. (Most views hold that she lit before the marriage, and regardless, the lighting would only be chinuch.)³ When some questioned how children could be compared to the Imahos, the Rebbe noted that when we finish Tehillim, we ask that it count as though Dovid HaMelech himself had said it, and in fact our mitzvos are said to be greater than theirs.⁴

The age of chinuch is not fixed. For positive mitzvos, it depends on the individual child’s sharpness and grasp of that mitzvah, so that a child who understands what Shabbos is must be trained to hear kiddush and havdala. For most mitzvos, it falls around five or six. For ner Shabbos, the Rebbe says, it begins several years earlier, from when a girl can tell a lit room from a dark one and understands that her candle added the light. Elsewhere, the Rebbe writes that it begins at a very young age, from when she can say the bracha.⁵

Chazal say that one who is careful with ner Shabbos merits children who are talmidei chachamim. The Rebbe notes that in earlier generations, when parents settled a daughter’s shidduch, it was mainly the mother’s zechus that would bring her daughter a talmid chacham for a husband. Now that the choice rests largely with the girl herself, it is her own lighting that generates the zechus, and every effort should be made for her to begin as soon as she reaches the age of chinuch for this mitzvah.⁶ A yom tov’s Shehecheyanu could also cover the start of the mitzvah, or the girl could be bought a new dress for Shehecheyanu on a regular Friday.⁷

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