The Essence of Chanukah - Rabbi Shaul Silam shlita

00:02 Speaker 1 You’re listening to the “Lema’an Yishme’u” podcast from Machon Halacha Chabad.

00:09 Speaker 2 We’ll divide the class into eight small topics. We’ll try to keep each one short. First, some historical background—just to put things in context before we start talking about the halachos. What I’m about to say involves a lot of details, but they’re all very, very easy to remember, and worth knowing, even just so we know what to tell our children. If I were to ask, “In what year did the miracle of Chanukah take place?” I don’t know whether people would know. But it’s very easy to work out, and there’s some important background given in Tractate Avodah Zarah that we generally don’t know. Let’s start at the beginning. The year of Avraham Avinu’s birth is well known. There’s a text called the Baraisa of Seder Olam that gives various dates: 1948. That probably brings another date to mind, lehavdil, but this is 1948 from Creation, the year Avraham Avinu was born. Exactly five hundred years later came the Exodus from Egypt. So that’s easy to remember: 1948—I’m sure everyone remembers that—and adding five hundred isn’t hard. The Exodus was in 2448. When King Shlomo builds the Beis Hamikdash in the Book of Kings, I Kings, it says when it was built. You should know that there aren’t many dates written in Tanach. Various calculations are made later in the books, based on someone being a certain age when he fathered someone, and so on. But there aren’t many explicit dates or time spans. There’s one very important one in the Book of Kings: the Jewish people built the Beis Hamikdash 480 years after the Exodus. So that’s very easy, right? We were at 2448; add five

02:03 Speaker 2 hundred minus twenty. Right, 2928. All right, it’s not so important to remember the number we arrive at, but 1948, plus five hundred for the Exodus, then another 480 for the First Beis Hamikdash. From there, getting to Chanukah is very easy, because the Gemara gives us a very important piece of information in two places—Yoma 9a and Avodah Zarah 9a, both on page 9a: the First Beis Hamikdash stood for 410 years, and the Second for 420. Sorry—yes, exactly. And that’s also very easy to remember. There’s a trick: in Parshas Terumah, when Hakadosh Boruch Hu says about the Mishkan, “They shall make Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them,” the word “veshachanti,” “and I will dwell,” can be read as “veshachen” and 410: “He will dwell” for 410 years, the duration of the First Beis Hamikdash. And “veshachanti” also contains “vesheni” and 420: the Second Beis Hamikdash stood for 420 years. So that makes it very easy to remember. After those 480 years came the 410 years of the First Beis Hamikdash. As is stated very explicitly in Yirmiyahu, there were seventy years between the First and Second Beis Hamikdash, followed by the Second Beis Hamikdash’s 420 years. Now, when during the Second Beis Hamikdash did the miracle of Chanukah take place? That, too, is very easy to remember, because the Gemara in Avodah Zarah divides that period into four parts. The first thirty-four years were the end of Persian and Median rule. After that came 180 years of Greek rule. Alexander of Macedon was the son-in-law of Darius, the last Persian king. He killed him. First he defeated him, and six years later he killed him as well. Then Greek rule began—Greek rule over the whole

04:00 Speaker 2 world. When we say Greek or Roman rule began, those powers had always existed, but the empires of that time ruled the whole world, as people say. Achashverosh and the others had ruled from India to Cush, and that ended thirty-four years after the beginning of the Second Beis Hamikdash. Then, for 180 years, Alexander of Macedon and the Greeks were the ones in power. At the end of those 180 years came the miracle of Chanukah, and then 206 years remained until the end of the Second Beis Hamikdash—the Roman period, essentially. Here I want to address a very important point that isn’t widely known. What we know is that there were Greeks, there were decrees, and the Chashmonaim rebelled against the Greeks, and that’s Chanukah. Okay, for us that’s what matters. But from the world’s perspective, something very, very important happened on Chanukah. We all know from history books that the Romans replaced the Greeks. Do you know when that happened? When did the Romans replace the Greeks, and what brought it about? History books say all sorts of nonsense, but according to our Sages in Tractate Avodah Zarah, it happened on Chanukah. Why then? Because, the Gemara in Avodah Zarah tells us, for years the Romans had tried to fight the Greeks and failed, until they made an alliance with the Chashmonaim. They told them, “You fight the Greeks from within.” The Chashmonaim were so strong that this helped the Romans enormously: most of the Greek forces were concentrated in Eretz Yisroel, and that enabled the Romans to prevail. The Roman Empire that we know lasted for hundreds of years—they succeeded thanks to the Chashmonaim. That’s what it says. In other words, Roman rule began at the time of the miracle of Chanukah. The Romans won from the outside

06:05 Speaker 2 because we drew all the Greeks’ attention inward, to fight the Chashmonaim here. That greatly weakened the Greeks outside Eretz Yisroel, and the Romans overcame them. But the Chashmonaim ruled independently for only twenty-six years. The early Chashmonaim—Mattisyahu and Yehudah Maccabee—were righteous, but very quickly things deteriorated. At first, the Romans had made an alliance with them. We had helped the Romans, so they ruled the whole world except Eretz Yisroel, which was under the Chashmonaim. But after twenty-six years, the Romans fought the Chashmonaim too. Although the Chashmonaim’s reign lasted 103 years, in practice, for the first twenty-six years they were completely subject to the Romans. After that came Herod’s dynasty, which was also subject to the Romans. That’s the background. All right, I’ll add one more point. All the years I mentioned—1948, 2448, and so on—aren’t exactly how we count them today, because those are counted from Creation. Today we count from the year preceding Creation. So, for example, the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash was in the year 68 by the secular calendar, but the date 3828 from Creation needs one year added to express it according to the way we count today. All right, that’s enough on that. What you’ve read is good, and it’s very useful to know how to run through these dates quickly. It’s very, very easy: five hundred, 480, things like that. Who lights the Chanukah menorah? Everyone knows the famous baraisa about the Chanukah light: “One light for a man and his household; those who beautify the mitzvah light one for each person.” That is, those who beautify the mitzvah—if there are five

08:08 Speaker 2 If there are five people in the home, on the first day they light five candles, on the second day five candles, and on the third day five candles—according to the number of people in the home. Then, for those who are mehadrin min hamehadrin, there is a disagreement between Beis Shammai and Beis Hillel. We follow Beis Hillel, going from one to eight. But the halachic authorities disagree about exactly how mehadrin min hamehadrin works. This is very important to understand, because it is the source of the difference between Sephardi and Ashkenazi customs. We said that the mehadrin take every member of the household into account: if there are five people at home, there will be five candles every day. When we come to mehadrin min hamehadrin, the authorities disagree about how to understand it. Tosafos understand it this way: if every member of the household lights one candle on the first day, two on the second, three on the third, and they put their menorahs next to each other, you might see twelve candles. You won’t know whether there are four people and it’s the third day, three people and it’s the fourth day, two people and it’s the sixth day, or six people and it’s the second day. There’s no way to tell. So Tosafos say that once we make the number of the day more important than the number of people, it takes the place of counting the people. Mehadrin means taking the number of people into account. There is something even better: taking the number of days into account, with one lighting for the whole household. That is the Sephardi custom today. In other words, only the head of the household lights for everyone. Ashkenazi custom, and Chabad custom, is different. Mehadrin min hamehadrin applies to each person individually: each one lights from one to eight. Who is “each one”? All the boys. And although it says this begins at the age of chinuch, in recent years even very young boys, two or three years old, have their own menorahs and light them too. That’s the point. Another important point, particularly in classes for women: some women think

09:59 Speaker 2 that women are exempt, but women are not exempt. Sometimes these things get confused. When I gave a class on Rosh Hashanah, if you remember, many were sure that women are obligated to hear the shofar, or at least to make a bracha over it. Neither is true. A woman has no obligation to hear the shofar at all. If she wants to, as with any time-bound positive mitzvah, she can hear the shofar and can even make the bracha herself, but there is no obligation. So much so that a man blowing the shofar only for women may not make the bracha. If a woman wants to make it herself, that’s no problem. With Pesach, Chanukah, and Purim, women have a full obligation. That’s completely different. And what really makes Rosh Hashanah different? There is a principle that “they, too, were part of that miracle,” but Rosh Hashanah is not about a miracle; it’s something else. Since it isn’t about a miracle, they are exempt. Women are exempt from time-bound positive mitzvos. But when the whole matter is because of a miracle, then with Chanukah, women certainly were part of that miracle. The decree against Torah observance affected everyone, so the obligation applies to women. Some of the Tosafos even say that women have a greater connection to it, because of the story of Yehudis and the bravery of several righteous women—well-known events from the Second Beis Hamikdash period. So in a sense, their connection is even greater than men’s. Nevertheless, the man is the one who lights. But why is it important to emphasize this? Because a woman who is alone certainly lights with a bracha, and all the same halachos apply to her as to a man. What about a woman who isn’t with her husband? Someone asked me about this a week ago: she’s traveling to the Rebbe—how does she fulfill her obligation? It’s interesting, because if a woman is away from home but still in Israel, where it’s more or less the same time, without a significant time difference, her husband’s lighting at home fulfills her obligation. But someone traveling to the Rebbe—where there really is a very large difference of six or seven hours—that’s a different question.

11:44 Speaker 2 There is a major disagreement between the Minchas Shlomo and the Minchas Yitzchak about whether her husband’s lighting fulfills her obligation. So it is advisable for her to light, or to participate in a lighting there, without a bracha. She certainly should not make a bracha. That covers the woman, and who lights—that was the second topic. Now for the third topic. Yes, eight candles, eight topics. Topic three: When do we light? There is something very interesting here too. A baraisa in tractate Shabbos says: “Its mitzvah is from when the sun sets until the foot traffic has ceased in the marketplace.” First of all, what does “its mitzvah” mean? The Gemara leaves this as a question: is it referring to the time when we light, or to how long the candles must remain lit—from sunset until the foot traffic has ceased in the marketplace, which is half an hour according to the Beis Yosef? Since we don’t know exactly what the baraisa means, the Gemara takes both possibilities into account as a stringency. So, as a stringency, we also light from when the sun sets. Okay. What does “when the sun sets” mean? This, too, will explain the difference between Sephardi and Ashkenazi custom, just as we explained where the difference comes from over whether mehadrin means each person lights or only the head of the household does. Here, too, we’ll understand that difference in custom. When it says, “Its mitzvah is from when the sun sets,” we need to clarify something: what does that mean? What is sunset? There’s something very interesting here. What astronomers call sunset is when the sun descends to the horizon and its center lines up with the horizon—half below it and half above it. That’s the astronomers’ definition. So if you look up sunset on NASA’s website, you’ll get a very precise time, but that isn’t what we call sunset at all.

13:48 Speaker 2 So “sunset” in the language of today’s astronomers is not what we call sunset. What do we call sunset? We call it sunset when the sun disappears below the horizon—not halfway, but completely. Yet Chazal also use the word “sunset” for something else. The process from that moment until the stars emerge is also called sunset. There are two things in Chazal and in halacha that are called sunset. When the sun disappears, that is the time of sunset; it’s a particular moment, not a process. When I look here in the Dvar Malchus calendar at the Shabbos times, it says, “Sunset: 4:38.” That’s a very precise time. So what the calendars call sunset is when the sun disappears below the horizon. But Chazal also call the entire process from then until the stars emerge “sunset.” There are different opinions about exactly when the stars emerge—whether it is twenty-four minutes later or eighteen minutes later. Yes.

14:49 Speaker 3 Is that from sunrise? Or is that part of the sunset process?

14:54 Speaker 2 No, no, not from sunrise. From sunset—

14:56 Speaker 3 Until the stars emerge.

14:58 Speaker 2 Until the stars emerge is also called sunset. Yes. That process, from what we call sunset—when the sun has disappeared—until it is a certain number of degrees below the horizon and you begin to see three stars, is also called the process of sunset. With that understanding, there is a disagreement among the Rishonim. The Rambam and the Shulchan Aruch understand it differently from us. They understand “from when the sun sets” to mean from the end of the sunset process—that is, when the stars emerge. That’s why Sephardim light when the stars emerge. What they do is move Maariv a little earlier, which is quite common among Sephardim. They get home when the stars emerge and light. Yes. Although it says “from when the sun sets,” they understand that to mean from the end of the sunset process, when the stars emerge. The Ashkenazi halachic authorities, and Chabad in this case—there are actually many things about Chanukah where Chabad follows Sephardi practice, but on this particular point Chabad follows Ashkenazi practice—understand “from when the sun sets” to mean from sunset itself. So it says in the Shulchan Aruch: between Mincha and Maariv, as close to sunset as possible. That really is the time to light. That’s the first thing. The second thing we need to understand—

16:13 Speaker 3 So is that after sunset or before?

16:16 Speaker 2 For us it’s before. In Chabad it’s before.

16:18 Speaker 3 Before sunset, you mean? How long before?—

16:20 Speaker 2 No, not before sunset—after sunset. You check when sunset is, right? A minute after sunset, you light.

16:25 Speaker 3 After sunset.

16:26 Speaker 2 After sunset. That is Chabad custom, right? It says: “From when the sun sets until the foot traffic has ceased in the marketplace,” right?

16:30 Speaker 3 Ah. So that’s the best time, yes.

16:34 Speaker 2 For Chabad and Ashkenazim, that’s the time.

16:37 Speaker 3 It’s not four-forty and... But that’s not at sunset, at—

16:41 Speaker 2 Look—

16:41 Speaker 3 When the stars come out, which is with sunset.

16:43 Speaker 2 I didn’t understand.

16:44 Speaker 3 It can’t be after sunset; that’s when the stars come out.

16:46 Speaker 4 Sunset is before the stars come out.

16:48 Speaker 3 That period is still called sunset?

16:50 Speaker 4 Yes. I didn’t understand.

16:51 Speaker 2 Ah...

16:53 Speaker 3 Four-forty-something is sunset. What time—

16:57 Speaker 2 I’ll answer in a moment, because the Shulchan Aruch addresses the question. I’ll answer in a moment. But if I look at it, sunset these days is at 4:40, right? 4:40, 4:41 is the best time to light. Now, I want to explain something: how the Shulchan Aruch explains the matter, what it understands by “Its mitzvah is from sunset until people have left the marketplace.” Let’s set aside for now that it holds that “sunset” means nightfall. It says something very, very basic that we need to understand. It says there’s the ideal time, when the time begins.

17:32 Speaker 3 It says that according to Chabad—sorry—sunset is at 4:36.

17:38 Speaker 2 Well, you know there’s visible sunset and actual sunset, right? The Alter Rebbe adds four minutes to visible sunset, because actual sunset isn’t sunset as we see it on the horizon; it’s sunset as seen from the tops of the high mountains in Eretz Yisroel. That’s what he says in Igeres HaShabbos in the Alter Rebbe’s Siddur, and that’s why he adds four minutes to all the times. So that’s important to know.

18:07 Speaker 3 Is that the one that subtracts four minutes?

18:10 Speaker 2 Everything is pushed back by four minutes. Yes.

18:12 Speaker 3 It adds another four minutes.

18:14 Speaker 2 It adds four. In any case, if someone lit before then, it’s not terrible, because in a pressing situation you can light even an hour and a quarter before sunset—slightly less, because these are seasonal hours. From plag haminchah, it’s permissible to light. It’s not terrible. But if you want the best time, 4:40 or a little after—that’s exactly the time. Now, the way the Shulchan Aruch explains it—again, it holds that this means nightfall, but there’s a very important principle to understand. There’s the time when it begins; that’s the time to light. It says that if you didn’t light then, you have half an hour from the start. What happens after that half hour? Here we get to something very, very important, and this is the main point of the class—what I’m about to say. Because people ask this question every day, and we ask it ourselves too. We said there’s the beginning of the time. Lighting at the beginning is best. Fine, excellent. If not, I have half an hour. Fine, that’s also good. But what happens after the half hour? There’s something very interesting here. The Rambam—we don’t rule like the Rambam, but still, when deciding a halachah we don’t like to lose the Rambam’s view. The Rambam holds that after the half hour, “Once its time has passed, its offering is lost.” The person no longer needs to light. He’s missed it; lighting won’t help. That’s the Rambam’s view, his understanding. He understands “Its mitzvah is from sunset until people have left the marketplace” to mean that after that half hour—for that whole period is half an hour—we’ve missed it. It’s over; we’ve missed the mitzvah. That’s the Rambam’s view. It’s true that this isn’t how the Shulchan Aruch explains it. The Shulchan Aruch says that after the half hour, we have until dawn, right? Until

20:00 Speaker 2 dawn, which is very late. Say, about two hours before sunrise, though we won’t get into the disagreement about exactly when it is. But it’s very late; you can still light at 3:00 in the morning. But then we’ve missed out on the Rambam’s view, which is a shame. Right. Now, what do we do when the husband, the wife, the daughter or the son is on a bus, coming back from—coming back from a shidduch meeting, coming back from the seminary, and the half hour will already have passed? It really is a question, because I’m missing out on the Rambam’s view. It’s not terrible, because the Shulchan Aruch doesn’t rule like the Rambam, but still, I’d prefer not to.

20:40 Speaker 5 Why half an hour? Because ordinary nightfall is twenty minutes after sunset, and the stricter time is about another five minutes. So what’s the significance of the half hour?

20:48 Speaker 2 Yes, the half hour has nothing at all to do with nightfall. It comes from the Beis Yosef’s estimate. It’s not connected to nightfall. He estimates the length of the period from sunset “until people have left the marketplace.” What does “until people have left the marketplace” mean? The Gemara explains: until the Tarmodians have left. That means until those Tarmodians are no longer there. They were a people in Eretz Yisroel who gathered wood and sold it. Rashi says they would be around for a certain time after sunset. The Beis Yosef says that for that period after sunset, the Tarmodians were still out in the street selling wood to anyone who didn’t have any. A person would suddenly get home from work, see that he had no wood to heat his house, and call over the Tarmodians who were out in the street. How long were those Tarmodians still around? Half an hour. Right? So the half hour isn’t tied to anything astronomical; it’s tied to the time the Tarmodians were there. And here I want to say several things together, so please listen, because this is important. I want to share with you the complication here: I want to light on time, but my husband, wife, son or daughter isn’t home yet and will come later. So what are the considerations? On the one hand, there’s the Rambam’s view. The Rambam says that after half an hour, I’ve missed it. On the other hand, there’s the Shulchan Aruch—and the Rema is even more permissive than the Shulchan Aruch. He says that even from the outset, if we missed the first time, we can in fact light all night. Why is that? How did it come about that we don’t rule like the Rambam?

22:41 Speaker 2 There are two very important points. First, there’s the Ritva, who says that “until people have left the marketplace” was how it worked in the past. Already in the Ritva’s day—and he was one of the Rishonim—shops stayed open much later, so it was no longer just half an hour. Right? That’s interesting, because he really did live in the era of the Rishonim. Today, people are still outside at eleven or twelve, so that’s fine. But there’s another reason the Rema gives, one more relevant to Ashkenazim and Chabad: from early in the exile, when it had become dangerous to light outside, the custom was to light inside. Now, that isn’t everyone’s practice today. About 150 years ago, the students of the Vilna Gaon, the Perushim in Eretz Yisroel, renewed the Old Yishuv and revived the practice from the time of the Second Beis Hamikdash and the period before the exile of lighting outside. More and more people do that; Rabbi David Yosef and many others are also reviving it. So today many people light outside. But the custom of the Baal Shem Tov’s students—not just Chabad chassidim, but all the Polish chassidim—has been preserved. There are also ideas in the inner dimension of Torah connected with lighting toward the inside of the home. And once you light toward the inside of the home, “until people have left the marketplace” is no longer quite as relevant, because that was for pirsumei nisa, publicizing the miracle. Today I light inside the home and publicize the miracle with the children there. People are awake inside the home even late at night, so from that perspective, lighting after nine is less of an issue. True, there’s still the Rambam’s view, but there are nevertheless many reasons to light later. So what do we do? I’ll tell you what the halachic authorities, including those in Chabad, generally say, because after all, those

24:30 Speaker 2 concerned with mitzvos and all that should light at the beginning of the time, just as one should recite Shema right at the beginning of its time. The Magen Avraham says so too, even though one can daven later. There’s always that consideration. So what do we actually do? More or less, it goes like this: If we’re waiting for a daughter, we should wait for her, because she doesn’t light herself and is therefore more connected to this lighting in particular. If it’s one of the sons, who will light his own menorah anyway, there’s no need to wait. That’s more or less the idea. Certainly, there’s reason to wait for a husband or wife. So yes, if the husband or wife is coming back from work, from the mikveh, or wherever, at nine, then we’ll wait until nine and light then. It’s a little limiting, because you can’t eat an olive-sized amount of mezonos or bread before lighting. But all right, it’s not critical.

25:27 Speaker 6 Half an hour.

25:28 Speaker 2 What did you say, nine?

25:28 Speaker 6 Half an hour after lighting.

25:31 Speaker 2 No, here’s how it works. No, no, that’s not quite right. From half an hour before the time to light, you’re already not allowed to eat an egg-sized amount of mezonos or bread until you light. But if a person isn’t lighting at a quarter to five and is lighting at eight instead, he can’t eat an olive-sized amount until eight. Right, until you light—that’s the point. Okay, I think that covers the matter—

25:54 Speaker 6 Afterward, can you eat?

25:56 Speaker 2 Certainly. Afterward you can eat.

25:59 Speaker 6 With fricassee.

26:02 Speaker 2 Yes, fricassee. After that, like this. We... Look, I know I’ve gone over my time. As long as they don’t physically remove me, I’m staying. Look, just a few things, because you know what? I want to cover the laws of a guest. The other things are less important; they’re more for the men—mivtzoim, the shul, and everything.

26:31 Speaker 6 And now, does every child need to light his own menorah?

26:36 Speaker 2 Every boy, yes.

26:37 Speaker 6 Once he’s reached bar mitzvah age, or—

26:39 Speaker 2 No, no, no. According to Chabad custom, even young children do. Again, it very much depends on whose ruling a person follows. Yes, Sephardim generally don’t light separately, but someone who follows the Rema does. And by the way, there’s a very interesting ruling for Sephardim from Rabbi Ben Zion Abba Shaul. Although Rabbi Ovadia holds that it’s a blessing in vain and only the head of the household lights, Rabbi Ben Zion Abba Shaul, who is also Sephardi, says this: If a boy comes home from kindergarten with his own little menorah, and he’s fond of it and wants to light, then from the standpoint of—

27:21 Speaker 6 It’s his experience too.

27:22 Speaker 2 Exactly, it’s an experience.

27:23 Speaker 6 A blessing. The boy has already lit with a blessing—

27:25 Speaker 2 He holds that the boy can even say a blessing. Again, Rabbi Ovadia holds otherwise. Yes, he holds that it would be a blessing in vain.

27:32 Speaker 6 That’s Chabad.

27:32 Speaker 2 For Chabad, certainly. Yes, yes, for Chabad it’s absolutely certain. Every boy lights with a blessing, definitely. Now look, I just want to say something very important about the laws of a guest, and if you like, I’ll stop there. When we’re invited to people’s homes—and this happens a lot—say someone is going to his parents, who live in Haifa. He leaves before plag haminchah, so he can’t light before leaving. He sets off for Haifa at three, okay? Now he’s spending the evening with his parents. People say—and many don’t know this properly—“We’re at our parents’ place, so we’ll light the menorah there together and eat.” But that lighting doesn’t fulfill the obligation, because the mitzvah of Chanukah candles is “a light for each man and his household.” It’s tied to his home. A person doesn’t have to be at home: if he asks his neighbor to come to his house and light there, he fulfills his obligation. But if he lights at the neighbor’s house, he doesn’t. When can he? There’s what’s called the law of a guest. If I sleep at someone’s home, then I’m staying there. But if I only eat there, most poskim hold that eating alone isn’t enough. There’s one exception, based on a ruling of Rabbi Yurov[?], and it’s fairly accepted among Chabad poskim too. If someone spent Shabbos at his parents’ home—they live in another city, so he slept there for Shabbos—and on Motzaei Shabbos he has Melaveh Malkah there, then because it’s a continuation, and he already lit there with a blessing on Friday afternoon, he can light there with a blessing on Motzaei Shabbos too and fulfill his obligation, even though he’ll be going back to his own home. Yes? But otherwise, when we spend an evening at someone else’s home,

29:20 Speaker 2 we don’t fulfill our obligation there. That’s a bit awkward, because I can only light when I get home. Right? But until then, I can’t eat more than a kebeitzah of mezonos or bread. So if I went to my parents’ house to eat doughnuts, I’m stuck. Right? That’s the issue. When you get home and light, if it’s before midnight, you can certainly light with a blessing. If it’s after midnight, then, as it says in most Chabad sources, including the Chabad calendar and Rabbi Raskin in London, it’s less straightforward to light with a blessing if the person is alone. But if someone else is there, he can light with a blessing until dawn. Right?

30:03 Speaker 7 Now, if I light at my father’s house, I don’t say a blessing, right? Because I’m helping him light.

30:08 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. As far as you’re concerned, you don’t say a blessing.

30:11 Speaker 7 But afterward I go home and light.

30:12 Speaker 2 At home, with a blessing, certainly.