Guarding the Flame: An Answer to Tosafos

86aTosafos asks on “and one may use its light”: “And if you ask: How does Rava know that Rav Huna holds one may use its light? Perhaps he said one may not light with them on Shabbos because he holds that if it goes out one must attend to it, and one cannot light on Shabbos.”¹ It seems to me that we can answer by way of hint. The reasoning that “if it goes out one must attend to it” rests on what the holy sefarim bring: a mitzvah needs extra guarding, so that the outside forces, the chitzonim opposed to holiness, do not take hold of it, Heaven forbid. This follows Chazal's words “Thought has an effect even on words of Torah,”² and Rashi explains there that a plan a person lays out for himself can bring about its own undoing.³ That is, when a person's will and plan are great, then “He frustrates the plans of the crafty”: the opposing side stands against it and takes hold of it. This is the reasoning. Zakuk, “must attend to it,” is also a word of joining: his thought must cleave to the mitzvah the whole time the lamp burns, and so the whole time the opposing side keeps gathering strength.

86bAnd because the oil was not good, that is, his will was not whole from the start, the outside forces can easily take hold of the mitzvah. But on holy Shabbos “all judgments pass away … and flee from it,”⁴ as the holy sefarim explain on “You sanctified”: kidashta is the same word as mekudeshes, betrothed, “forbidden to all the world like hekdesh,” consecrated property.⁵ So the outside forces have no power to take hold of it. All this holds, though, only if he does the mitzvah purely for Hashem's sake, as the Alshich explains on “whoever delights the Shabbos”:⁶ one who delights the Shabbos, not one who delights himself on Shabbos. But if one may use the light for his own needs, then even though the uses of Shabbos are also a mitzvah, we fear that he may tilt the lamp for his own needs, for his own sake and not for Hashem's. This answers the question of Tosafos: a lamp lit for Hashem alone would give the outside forces no hold on Shabbos, so when Rav Huna forbids such oils on Shabbos, we must say that he holds one may use its light. Think this through.⁷

87On the same question of Tosafos: the Siddur of the Arizal says that the Chanukah lights should be lit before the Shabbos lights. This in itself answers the question of Tosafos.⁸