Pre-Bris: Mommy’s Special Candle

When a new baby comes into the world, there is more love in the home, more hope for the future, and one more Shabbat candle. There is a beautiful custom to add an extra candle after the birth of each child.^[1] Going forward, every Friday night, that new flame becomes part of your family’s Shabbat.

This little person has brought a new light into your home, and now that light is reflected every Shabbat. Jewish tradition connects Shabbat candles with blessing for children, with the hope that they will grow in Torah, goodness, kindness, and holiness.^[2] There is also a tradition that the extra candle brings light and blessing to the child’s mazal, to the path and potential that Hashem has given them.^[3]

You do not have to think of the candle in a complicated way. It can simply be your baby’s candle, the candle you added because this child came into your life. Years from now, when your baby is grown up, that light will still be there. This is the first life cycle adjustment, even before the bris, even before first steps, school years, birthdays, bar or bat mitzvah, and adulthood. This candle began when this child was born.

The Special 18 Minutes Before Shabbat

Light the candles before Shabbat begins. In most communities, candles are lit around 18 minutes before sunset.^[4] Those few minutes are a way of welcoming Shabbat before we absolutely have to. All week long, life pulls us in every direction. There is always one more thing to do, one more message to answer, one more job to finish. But before Shabbat, we stop, we light the candles, and we welcome peace into the home.

For a new mother, this can be especially meaningful, since life with a newborn can feel nonstop, with the feeding, changing, soothing, recovering, and caring for everyone else too. When Friday afternoon comes, you light your candles, including this new one, and for a moment everything can become quieter.

Those 18 minutes can be a gift. A little extra time given to Shabbat, a little extra time given to your family, and a little extra time to pray for your baby. You can use those moments to ask for health, protection, wisdom, kindness, happiness, good friends, a good marriage one day, love of Torah, love of Hashem, and a life filled with meaning and blessing.

Note that just as there is a mitzvah to light the candles before the sun sets, there is a mitzvah not to light any candles after the sun has already set.^[5] That is part of what makes candle lighting time so special. It creates a clear moment when the week ends and Shabbat begins. Even mothers who do not keep Shabbat are urged to begin Shabbat with this observance, lighting before sunset and equally not lighting after sunset, as a sign of “remembering and guarding” the holy day. That is a meaningful commission and omission of religious observance.

Bringing Peace Into the Home

Shabbat candles are deeply connected with shalom bayit, peace in the home.^[6] Their light is meant to make the home feel peaceful, warm, comfortable, and joyful. That feels especially important after a baby is born. A baby brings enormous blessing, but also tiredness, adjustment, and sometimes a little chaos.

And into that comes another light. The extra candle can become a quiet prayer that this child should bring more love into the family, more patience, more closeness, more laughter, and more peace. Before your baby was born, there was one less candle on your Shabbat table. Now there is another light. Your family has grown, your blessings have grown, and the light in your home has grown too.

Footnotes

1. The custom of adding a candle after the birth of each child became widespread among Ashkenazi families, although it is not found in the earliest halachic sources. A detailed historical discussion traces the custom through later rabbinic sources and family practices. ↩
2. The custom is connected to the Talmudic teaching that special care with Shabbat lights is associated with the merit of children who are Torah scholars. Later authorities connected this idea to adding a candle for each child. ↩
3. Later halachic and Chassidic writings describe the additional candle as bringing light to the child’s mazal and spiritual potential. ↩
4. The custom to light eighteen minutes before sunset is widespread in many communities. ↩
5. The printed 18 minute time is not itself the universal halachic cutoff everywhere, but once Shabbat has actually begun, kindling a flame is prohibited. ↩
6. Classical halachic sources connect Shabbat candles with shalom bayit, because their light helps create peace, comfort, and enjoyment in the home. ↩