האם בנות יכולות להדליק נרות חנוכה? (תשפ״ג)

00:01 This is Igris, and today we are going to look at whether girls should be lighting the Hanukkah menorah, whether our daughters should be lighting the menorah. And in order to get into that, we're going to, since it is an Igris year, although this was a recommended topic, so I guess technically I didn't have to tie it to a letter. We do have a letter from our year that is highly suspicious because as we're going to see, the weight of the evidence would suggest that the Minag Chabad is that girls don't light their own menorahs. We're gonna have some exceptions, we're gonna have some discussion about it, but the overwhelming weight of the evidence would definitely be against the practice. Nonetheless, we have a letter from our year, Taf Shin Lamed Dalet, where the Rebbe talks to a group of girls who are graduating from Beis Rivkah as if they are people who light menorahs. I think you'll see what I mean. So we're gonna start with that letter 'cause it is our year, and from there we'll transition into a Halachic Minag Secha, uh, discussion of what exactly our custom is regarding girls lighting the menorah. The letter that we're looking at is labeled Yud Aleph Lamed Dalet. It is from the year Taf Shin Lamed Dalet, and it is written to the girls who are graduating Beis Rivkah, Hashem Aleihem Techiyana. And the Rebbe writes, Berach Shelom. And he says, it's all on your screen. I'm, uh-- I was very pleased to hear that

01:06 you've completed your studies. Uh, in, in the Rebbe's classic way, says that this end of this graduation should really just be a beginning for, uh, for the, the for further advancement in your studies um, and to have better custom and to improve your, uh, your ways of acting as befits Jewish women who are, uh, those who proudly wear the moniker, the daughters of Sar Rivkah Imeinu, those who built the Jewish people up. So this graduation should really just be a beginning where you will begin to carry yourselves as proud Jewish women. Certainly, you heard recently how I spoke about Hanukkah. These are teachings that should be pushing us forward throughout the entire year. This applies to all of our holidays. That the idea of every Jewish holiday is that it shouldn't just affect those days, but it should affect the entire year. This is the part that's a little suspicious. Obviously, the Rebbe's speaking in a Drush-style way, but pay attention to the words here. The Rebbe says the main takeaway is that of the teachings of Hanukkah, the main takeaway that we're supposed to get from Hanukkah is that every single person, every every male and female from among the Jewish boys and girls should be should be lighting candles. Now, here I don't mean literal candles. Here I mean to light up their souls. And the soul is lit up by the flame of mitzvah and by Torah, which is a light. That they should light in a way of constant increasing, uh,

02:49 just like mitzvah of Hanukkah, where every night you add one more light. So the Rebbe says, we're supposed to get from Hanukkah is the idea of lighting up our souls increasingly every single night. Even though the Gemara does say that only according to only according to the very highest standard, do you actually need to add one candle every night? The Rama is already passing that every single member of the house should light one candle on the first night and become and then from there on increase. Again, he's using the Now, this is-- he's quoting the Rama, but the Shulchan Aruch does say that every single member of the house should be lighting the menorah. The what we're getting out of this spiritually as a life lesson is that we shouldn't be satisfied with the way we are right now. Even if it's technically good enough, we have to increase every day and go from strength to strength. When it comes to Torah and mitzvahs and good customs, and since they are all based in the infinite God, they are in fact infinite as well. It's a really interesting point that's happening in this paragraph. The Rebbe is saying that you only need to light one candle every night, and you don't need to increase. And this is also part of the This is also part of the lesson we're supposed to take. Technically, I might be doing well enough, my life might be good enough, I might be doing a good enough job at Torah

04:08 and mitzvahs and customs and the way that I live my life, and it might be good enough But even then, the way that we're supposed to act is in a way of which is to continue increasing even when you're already in a good place. And of course, the Rebbe is writing to girls graduating Beis Rivkah, who are presumably already in a pretty good place, and telling them that even they should be taking the approach of lighting up their souls one more light every night. The Rebbe says that I hope that everything I told you will be a light for every single one of you. That you should act this way practically and not just take this as a message of words, but also act on it. The Rebbe gives them a lengthy berachah that we're not gonna read in detail at the bottom, but it's on the page, and he tells them So we obviously do not have from this letter an indication that the Rebbe wants women lighting candles, but certainly the Rebbe wants the girls to learn the message of having lit the candles. And he does seem to be speaking to them as though they are familiar with lighting candles, not just as people who candles are lit for them, but obviously that's not a fair dyuk to make. What I'm really doing is I'm using this letter where the Rebbe speaks to girls about the importance of Hanukkah as a launching point from which to discuss very practically whether girls do

05:13 light the menorah because that was a request. And if anybody here or anybody listening requests that we do a particular topic, I will usually do them. So let me know if you have, if you have a, if you have requests outside of the normal, um, outside of the normal Igris collection. Okay. I have a sheet here for you. It's available on WhatsApp, and the sheet we put together has a, uh, a ton of sources on this question. It's pretty straightforward in Megillah that women do light the menorah, that all women light the menorah. It's a Gemara Masacha Shabbos. It's in the You have it on your screen. The Gemara Masacha Shabbos says, A woman certainly lights. This comes after the Gemara says, not so much. That's what the Vada is doing there. But the Gemara is pretty sure that women light menorah. Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Levi says, "Women have to light," and they have to. They are They must light ner Chanukah because they were part of the miracle. We'll see what that means in just a second. There's a Rashi that explains that a little, Ran that explains it too, but it's all brought in the Taz, so we'll see it there. In Shulchan Aruch, you'll find this in Taharot Ayin Heh, uh, Sif Gimel. Same as our Gemara. A woman does light ner Chanukah. A woman should be lighting ner Chanukah. She lights the Chanukah candles because she is in it. There's a Taz that explains further what it means that she was

06:23 involved in the . There's two ways that women were involved in the miracle of Chanukah. They were involved in the gezeirah and also involved in the miracle, and the decree against us, and also in the miracle that saved us. because they were involved in the miracle, says the Taz, . That's like a hegemon, . There was a gezeirah, a terrible gezeirah, that every single, uh, unmarried woman would need to have relations first with the local governor before she was able to become married. So they were involved in the gezeirah as well, and furthermore, they were also part of the miracle. The , the daughter of . So the raised a bunch of sons who were , the Maccabees, the Chashmonaim. They ran out and fought a war. His daughter was also involved in the war. She killed one of the, uh, one of the chiefs of the enemy. The Taz then adds that it sounds from the that since the woman is 'cause she was also involved in that , sounds like maybe she has the same obligation as a man. If so, says the Taz, it sounds like a woman could even be a man, that a woman could light the menorah and a man could stand there and do nothing and say Amen and fulfill his obligation through the woman's lighting. And the Taz does seem to bring up the Halakha. He says, . And when the Gemara says that a woman definitely lights, that means that she can even other people, 'cause

07:32 you'll also find this in the Aggadah that, uh . If she doesn't know how to make a bracha, she's allowed to be even a man. So not only do women have an obligation to light the menorah, the Taz brings an Aggadah and seems to bring the Halakha that women might even be able to be a man, that a woman might be able to light for her entire household, which is certainly not something we see done in normative practice. We have a Rama. The Rama says, is in the same section. The Rama agrees. He says, "Every single member of your house, the men and the women, everybody should be lighting. This is the and this is also the ." There's a really cool Beheithit that I didn't bring you, but the Beheithit says, as far as he knows, this is the only time that Ashkenazim universally took on a minhag of the Rambam over the other, over the other Rishonim, just because the Rambam usually is where the Sephardic minhag-minhagim come from. In any event, we have across the Shulchan Aruch a pretty clear indication that women should be lighting, daughters should be lighting, young girls should be lighting, every member of the family, it sounds like, according to the Rama. Certainly, women should be lighting and maybe even can light for men. So, uh, if we're looking just in Shulchan Aruch and just in Nigla, it certainly does seem that we would think that, uh, that women would light the menorah. Nonetheless, we find that

08:34 they don't, and it's not just in Chabad circles. The idea that a woman doesn't light and her husband lights for her is quite an old custom, and a lot of the Acharonim take their time figuring out why that is. There's, uh, there's really three reasons that show up in classic sources. You'll find two of them in works from the Rebbe, so I brought them in the Rebbe's name. One of them is a Chasam Sofer that I don't think the Rebbe ever quotes, but it's worth knowing. There's a Chasam Sofer that I have on your screen, says that . The Chasam Sofer says, "I cannot figure out, we have not yet figured out why single women don't light the menorah." Why a married woman won't-- might not light the menorah, there are reasons that are given. A woman's considered like her husband, so it's really as if they're both lighting together. But why the single girls don't light is a mystery, says the Chasam Sofer, and he says, This the Chasam Sofer says that it's his opinion. What is the main takanah of ner Chanukah? The goal is that you should light it outside your house. You go outside the house and light in the front door area. in public. And the entire honor of a daughter of the king is internal. That means women should not be wandering around out there. It's not appropriate, especially since it's nighttime. It's nighttime. All the men walk outside at the exact same time when it's nightfall to be

09:43 out there and . It doesn't make sense that the daughter should go out to a wouldn't-be tznius. So the Chasam Sofer thinks that the minhag started that women don't light because people used to light outside exclusively, and everybody used to go outside and light together, and the idea that a girl would go out at night surrounded by a bunch of men wasn't considered tznius and isn't tznius, and therefore the, um, and therefore the custom just became over time that women stopped lighting. Uh, I don't know what that abbreviation's doing there 'cause it should be but I, I haven't, I have not been to figure out what that word is. In any event, what he's saying here is that to be strict about the mitzvah in the Mahadan, 'cause when the mitzvah of Chanukah is fulfilled in its best sense, when every single member of the family lights, to do that in to do that in the same place as . What he's saying in a nutshell is that it's very nice to keep a strict custom, but not if it's going to cause, uh, pritzus, not if it's going to cause lack of tznius or a degradation of a mitzvah or a degradation of a person. Uh, it doesn't make sense to be strict in that case. Nowadays, we light inside, so in theory, we could have gone back to what we used to do, but the minhag stayed, the women stopped lighting. So basically, women stopped lighting 'cause we used to light outside. Once

10:44 we moved the menorah inside, women continued not lighting 'cause that had been the minhag, and that's the Chasam Sofer's, uh, approach. We have two approaches we see from the Rebbe, one that the Rebbe definitely prefers over the other. One of them is in Likkutei Sichos. It is in Chelek Lamed, page three-twelve, and there the Rebbe says, It's well known what the told That when the Rebbe Hashab would need to travel for Chanukah and he'd need to be away from home, he would tell his rebbetzin, Shterna Sara, to light the menorah by herself. even though she would hear the brachos from one of the men. So she wouldn't say the bracha, but she would light. This is important. This is an edited section of the Rebbe where the Rebbe says, "Even though we see in when it comes to practical implementation, we do not find that women light their own Chanukah menorahs." The Rebbe gives a reason. He says the reason might be because it's hard to light the menorah. There's all sorts of . There's all sorts of specifics on how to light the menorah. Do you light it right to left or from left to right? There's also multiple opinions on how exactly to light the menorah. And therefore, that they could fulfill In their mitzvah through one of the men who would, who would presumably be more familiar with the dinim. So now we have two reasons that we found. We have the Chasam Sofer that says it's not tznius for them to

12:06 go outside and light the menorah, and that custom persisted even when we moved inside. And we have the Likutei Sichos from the Rebbe where he says this is actually, uh, after the dot, dot, dot is a footnote in the Sicha, but also an edited Sicha from the Rebbe where he says that the reason why nowadays women don't light menorah is because the dinim are very difficult and they might not know the halachas properly. It's also brought in Sefer Minhagim, in our Sefer Minhagim, which is, uh, also the Rebbe's work, that girls do not light their own menorahs, so that seems to be our custom. a woman who's married, that her husband should take care of it for her and a young girl simply does not light. And then the Rebbe has a footnote here, . We already have a-- We've had the question for a while why women don't light because it sounds like from Shulchan Aruch they should, and the answer is that a woman is considered like her husband's body. It simply isn't appropriate that a daughter should light when her mother is not lighting. So this is a third possibility that's brought in Sefer Minhagim, um, that the Rebbe quotes. I forget who he's quoting. It's not-- This isn't originally-- This is-- We're not the original source for this. It's an idea found in achronim. Can't remember the name of some of the people who quote that now, but in any event, the third reason that is brought is because women, uh,

13:13 married women don't light because they're , 'cause they're considered one with their husbands who are already lighting. If the mother is not lighting, it's a little inappropriate to have her daughters lighting and not her, so we decided that also the daughters won't light. The Rebbe doesn't actually like this answer. He says in the footnote in Sefer-- In Minhagim Chabad, the Rebbe says, "I think that's very difficult." Very difficult to understand. The Rebbe says, "I think it makes a lot more sense to go with the opinion we had sort of mentioned in Likutei Sichos. It's also Mishnah Shalom that just Chanukah is complicated. Not everybody knows how to say the berakhah. Not everybody knows the dinim. In order not to embarrass women who don't know, we simply stopped having women do it." So the Rebbe, this, this opinion is quoted in Sefer Minhagim, this third reason, but the Rebbe is clearly not happy with it. In any event, we do have three reasons, three main reasons that are brought all over the place, uh, two of them at least from Shomer Chabad sources. Uh, the three reasons that women do not light nowadays, one of them being that it might not be tznius, at least it wasn't tznius when they went outside. The second reason being that they might not know the dinim properly, might not know how to make the berakhah properly, and we don't want to embarrass those who don't know. And the third one being, and the Rebbe is not happy with this

14:17 one, but it's brought, that, uh, that since the mother is not going to be lighting, it'd be weird if her daughters lit. It'd be disrespectful if her daughters lit, so we had the young girls not light either. In any event, what we do get from this, and we have this in a lot of places, I only brought you one, but, uh, the Rebbe says very clearly in a lot of places that it is not our custom that young girls light the menorah. It's not our custom that women light the menorah. It's not what we do. It's also brought that way in Sefer Minhagim. And this is simply, simply put, this is the minhag. We're going to have a lot of fun with this in just a moment, but I do wanna get the, uh, the dashe prakim out of the way. Although it does say very clearly in Shulchan Aruch that every woman should be lighting, and the Gemara strongly suggests that women are very involved in lighting. The Taz thinks they're so involved in the lighting that they can make a man. The Rama adds that every single member of the house should light, and that would include the bones. The minhag ha-peshat is that girls and women do not light the menorah for the reasons that we have listed. Now, practically speaking, is this actually our custom? That's, uh, that's a little trickier to answer. We're gonna go back and forth a little. I do wanna show you, this is from a Sefer

15:14 Zikhronos. It's called Divrei Shalom. The Sefer Zikhronos from... I can't remember who it is. Um, anybody remember who the Divrei Shalom Sefer Zikhronos is? Uh, Shor. Rav Shor wrote a Sefer Zikhronos from his time by the Rebbe. From the year Taf Shin Lamed Dalet, he has the following memory. I assume, uh, Reish Yod Lamed is Rabbi Groner, but, uh, somebody tell me if I'm wrong. That's, uh, that would seem like a Yehuda Leib, yeah? Anyway, whoever this is asked, I think maybe Ra- maybe Rabbi Groner, asked the Rebbe im-- Um, I think that should be with a Dalet. Let me just fix it. That should be Admor Shalita. Asked the Rebbe if, uh, girls who are above age bas mitzvah need to light neres Chanukah. This was the question that was asked to the Rebbe in the year Taf Shin Lamed Dalet, and apparently the Rebbe answered. Remember, this is not from a terribly reliable source, meaning this isn't an edited source, it's not a letter, but this is in someone's, uh, Sefer Zikhronos that the Rebbe answered, if they want to, they can, which is a strange answer. Uh, the Rebbe here seems to have said that if the girls want to light the menorah, they can, which would mean that they don't have to if they don't want to, and if they do want to, then they can. That doesn't really fit with anything we've said. According to Shulchan Aruch, it sounds like they have to, and according to, uh, the three opinions

16:18 we saw down here, it sounds like they don't have to. Uh, it sounds like at least on one occasion, the Rebbe answered, if they want to, they can. I'm showing you that because it's actually going to sound a lot like something the Rebbe says in a sicha in the year nineteen eighty-seven Taf Shin Men Ches. There's a sicha from Taf Shin Men Ches. Anybody having this discussion about what our minhag is always will quote the sicha. As a matter of fact, some people who were on here early asked me if I was going to be mentioning it. It is a well-known sicha on this topic. Uh, one year, this was a shnas hakhel, the Rebbe specifically ordered that every single girl under bas mitzvah age, over bas mitzvah age, whatever, that every member of the family, especially the daughters, should be involved in lighting the menorah. We're gonna read the sicha together. when it comes to lighting menorah Chanukah as was mentioned previously, the Rebbe says, even though according to Pesukim Hanisah, in order to publicize the miracle, all we need is one menorah in every house. Since this year it is a shnas hakhel, that was, um, Taf Shin Men Ches, nineteen eighty-seven was a shnas hakhel. At the time, there was a strengthening of unpleasant things. I don't know what he's talking about. Some, some of these bad things already happened. Some of these bad things could still happen, God forbid. It would be the best thing and the most appropriate thing to

17:27 spread more light in the world. So the Rebbe says, "This year is a special year. We have particular dangers ahead of us, and it's also a hakhel year. I'd like to see more light than the requirement." So in addition to the menorah that is typically lit, I also want you lighting a menorah in the children's bedrooms. The veterans of the boys and the girls. By day, resembling a yeshiva, but at night, a house of learning. This will increase in chinuch and also in the, uh, impression that is left on the children themselves, the children, and also on their parents. And to everybody who's invited to the house. Regarding this, there are que-a couple questions that need to be asked. Number one, should every boy light? Number two, should we light in every room? And number three, should we also have the daughters light? The Rebbe asked three questions. One of them is, should the daughters also be lighting? Generally speaking, here is my explanation. Since our entire point is to increase in chinuch, increasing the education of our children. We should look into every single situation to figure out what will be the outcome practically. Will this increase their chinuch? This seems to be a general rule from the Rebbe, the way that he's phrasing it. That the general way of looking at this is, is that when I'm trying to figure out should my boy-- should all my boys be lighting? Do I light in every room? Should my daughters be lighting? The operative

18:50 question is, will this increase their chinuch? Will this be good for their education? And if so, yeah, and if not, no. When it comes to every mitzvah, there's an outcome. The whole point of us getting mitzvahs was for us to perfect ourselves. That's only one of the reasons out there, but it's the one from the Rambam, I believe. Uh, in any event, the reason why we do mitzvahs is to, is to, uh, is to fix up, to improve every single Jew. Also people who are at a slightly lower level. I'm not... Oh, here we go. If there's going to be an outcome to lighting in the rooms, we have more publiciz-pu-public-publicizing of the miracle, and also on the chinuch of the children. Figure out the way to have the best outcomes. The Rebbe is saying, "I want results. My goal here is that you should have, that your children should have a stronger chinuch, that there should be more publicate-- pu-publicizing of the miracle of Hanukkah. And if having the girls light will do that, then I want it done." So it sounds like from the sicha that this could be a reversal, that it could be the from the sicha. And by the way, it's a, it's a yechidas, uh, but it's printed in, in, in Toras Menachem, uh, Tesh"h-Mamches, volume two. I have the source here. Uh, Toras Menachem, Tesh"h-Mamches, volume two, page ninety-one. It sounds like from the sicha, this may be a reversal. We said up until now it's not our

20:07 minhag for girls to light. We saw in Tesh"h-Lammed-Daled that the Rebbe gave a answer somewhat similar to this, according to this, according to this, according to these, uh, memoirs, that if the girls want to light, they should light, and also, or they can light, and we also have from the sicha the Rebbe saying that if the parents think that it's good for their education, they can light. So maybe it's not such a line in the sand. Perhaps girls can light the menorah. You should know, however, that the following year, they did ask the Rebbe this question. This is printed in Itz-Itzra Melech. I don't know if it's printed anywhere else yet because it's a letter from nineteen eighty-nine or nineteen eighty-eight, so it's going to be a, a relatively, uh, it's gonna be a while till we see that in regular Yigras. Um, the, um, it says here that Tesh"h-Mamches, that in Mamches, the Rebbe told even the girls to light ner Hanukkah. In the year Tesh"h-Mem Tes, the Yanhala of Tzemach Hashem asked the Rebbe whether this would apply every single year. And the Rebbe's answer, shailah l'rav. It needs to be asked to a rav. So the Rebbe does not specifically say that this should be continued every year. In nineteen-- In Tesh"h-Mamches, he definitely wanted every girl to light the menorah. As far as, uh, as far-- I have it up on your screen if you wanna see the handwritten answer. As far as the future years went, the Rebbe was not

21:09 willing to say one way or another. He said you should ask a rav, which is a harav, by the way. So it seems like maybe our custom now is that we ask a rav whether our daughters light the menorah. But that was the Rebbe's answer to whether to keep this custom moving forward. I will note, and this is noted in a lot of the, uh, Sefarim and a lot of the sort of summaries of the Rebbe's shiur on this, that although the Rebbe does in Tesh"h-Mamches say girls should light, and although over here in Tesh"h-Mem Tes, he does write that it's a sheila-- it's a shailah l'rav. So it sounds like the Rebbe's open to the idea, and we do have the thing we saw in Tesh"h-Lamed-Daled where the Rebbe says maybe if the girl wants to, she can. Uh, the pashtus, the Rebbe continued to hold like the Sefer Minhagim, uh, because every single year after that, uh, almost every single year after that, he would mention in some sicha somewhere that girls don't light. And, uh, a lot of these are edited sichas. One example that we have here, which is the last thing we'll look at today, is in Toras Menachem, Yisraeli of Tesh"h Nun, so this will be from the year nineteen ninety, page fifty-one, Chelek Beyt, page fifty-one. The Rebbe writes, "The Rebbe says, when it comes to daughters, when it comes to girls, the custom of Beis Hanav, the custom of the Rebbe's family, of the, of the family

22:16 of the Rabbeim, is that girls do not light the neris Chanukah, not the older ones, not the younger ones who are before bat mitzvah. They first will fulfill the mitzvah through their fathers, and later on in life, they will fulfill the mitzvah through their husbands. But there's no point at which girls light menorah." And this was said after Tesh"h-Mem Tes. This is in already the year nineteen ninety. So it does look like maybe the Rebbe's final position on this is that girls don't light. But the truth is, there's, there's multiple ways to read the Rebbe's final position on this. W-we, we have the, we have the sources, but we don't really have a final ruling. What we do have is the Rebbe telling Tzemach Hashem that they have to ask a rav, which I think is our final ruling, is that a rav probably has to make this decision. In any event, let's do a quick summary and see what we can pull out of all this. We saw a letter from the Rebbe at the very beginning where he said, told the girls graduating Beis Rivkah that there was a lot they could learn from the process of lighting the menorah, and we asked the question, do they in fact light the menorah? And the answer seemed to be very straightforward. We had a Gemara, Shulchan Aruch, Hataza, Rama, that all suggested girls would light. Not only that, the girls must light. Not only that, but they must light so much that they can

23:10 even fulfill the mitzvah for men. But then we saw that achronim generally accept that they don't, and the question has been why. We saw three possible reasons why. One was a Chasam Sofer that says that it wouldn't be tznius for them to go outside, uh, to light outdoors. We had the Likutei Sichos, which says that they might not know enough, they might not know the dinim, they might not know how to make the bracha, so we stopped having women do it so as not to embarrass the women who didn't know. We have one that's brought in Sefer Minhagim that, uh, that it wouldn't be appropriate for a daughter to light when her mother isn't lighting, but the Rebbe doesn't really like that one. And so we did have a couple reasons, but it does seem that the custom was that girls don't light, especially since we have in Sefer Minhagim that a Beis ain madlikos with nei'atz man. So it looked like the discussion was closed, although in Gemara and in Shulchan Aruch says they do, our minhag clearly is that they don't. But then we saw some reasons to believe that maybe they do. We had the Zichronos and the Divrei Shalom Tesh"h-Lamed-Daled, where the Rebbe had told somebody who asked that if the girls want to light, they can. We had the Sicha Tesh"h-Mem Ches one year where the Rebbe specifically commanded that girls light the menorah that year, uh, regardless of what the minhag might be, and specifically wanted it that year

24:05 for particular reasons. And that sounded like maybe now we think the Rebbe does want girls to light the menorah. But then we have one year later, a, uh, question written to the Rebbe, should this be, should this practice be carried on into the future? From now on, do girls light the menorah? And the Rebbe doesn't say yes, and he doesn't say no. He says, "Ask a rav." But regarding the Rebbe's responses in subsequent sichas, we see him continuing to say that our custom is that girls don't light. What we get from all of this is that if your daughters are lighting the menorah, you have what to rely on, and if they're not lighting the menorah, you have what to rely on. I think there are some important points from this sicha here. Uh, I think the Rebbe's, um, the Rebbe's under-- The, the Rebbe's way of looking at whether a girl should light menorah, he sort of explains to us in the sicha. He says, "Abivah zeh vefinklali." I'm just gonna read this section again because I think it's important. "Abivah zeh vefinklali." In general, when it comes to deciding what your children should be doing and what customs to introduce in your home, there is an overarching question, which is, "Nikev sh'kol mata'arav etzdavim lihihleset bechinuch ha'yeladim." If the entire point is to increase in the chinuch of your children, "yesh la'ayin v'lidchek bechol makom guf ha'shalim nimtetz havapeil." You need to look into every specific thing you're doing and ask yourself, what

25:03 is the practical outcome? "Be'ezeh efen yesivu bechinuch." Will this be increasing or, God forbid, the opposite, decreasing their chinuch, decreasing their education? So the question I think is going to be twofold, uh, my own opinion, is that first the fi- li- final ruling we have from the reb on this is that this goes to a rav. So this is a question for a rav and a mashpia. And as for the rav and the mashpia, I think the question probably comes down to, on one hand, we have a pretty strong and pretty long-standing minhag that the girls don't, but certainly it's not a halakhic problem, because halakhically girls absolutely can. So it's a minhag problem, and when you put that minhag up against the question of what is the tze'at hapel, the real question that probably needs to be asked is, will having the girls light be good for their chinuch or not? This is more or less what Rav Bryan writes in his, uh, in his, uh, day-to-day guide for Hanukkah, that if there's a good chinuch outcome, if there's a likely good chinuch outcome, if the parents decide that this is good for their children's education, then it makes sense to have girls light, even though s- the regular minhag is that they don't. But obviously, there is, uh, there is what to discuss in all directions here. I do think we've explored the topic though, and, uh, that's it for now. Thank you.