One of the topics that has always interested me is the various ways in which we treat Friday before dark when we have already accepted Shabbat (in some way, as we will see). To what extent does our acceptance of Shabbat make it so? Without pretending to be comprehensive, I wanted to share a few examples of the way halakhah handles the issue.

For the first examples, let us take situations that are clearly connected to prayer, so that they would most likely be affected by a verbal acceptance of Shabbat. Suppose that someone who has not yet davened mincha hears a minyan saying barkhu for the Friday night davening—such as in a shul that has various minyanim, some earlier and some later. Some authorities (including R. Moshe Feinstein ztllh"h) believe that one can answer barkhu as a way to respond to the call to bless God, yet not have it be considered the beginning of ma`ariv for that person. Others (including R. Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of Israel’s Shas party) believe that responding to barkhu is inherently the beginning of maariv and therefore renders it impossible to recite mincha.

In that second view, even barkhu makes it nighttime, at least for that person. It is interesting, therefore, that R. Ovadia does allow a person who has already recited maariv to count the Omer for the previous day, without a brakha, and continue on future days with a brakha. To some extent this has to do with the peculiarities of the brakha for Sefirah— many authorities think one should be allowed to say a brakha on any day of Sefirah, regardless of whether that person has missed any previous days. Part of the reason this works, then, is that we are not so positive one needs to have a complete count in order to be allowed to recite the brakha. Another element, however, is that even the recitation of ma`ariv does not make it fully night; in terms of mentioning what day of the Omer it is, it is at least feasible that one can do so even after ma`ariv.

A third case where the distinction between actual dark and the acceptance of Shabbat comes into play is that of a baby boy born late on Friday afternoon. Even if the boy was born in a town where the entire community (or the majority, with no other established minyan reciting the prayer later) had accepted Shabbat, as long as it was not yet dark we would perform his circumcision on Friday the next week, not on Shabbat. In terms of allowing the mitsvah of milah to override the rules of Shabbat (which would be the outcome if we ruled that the milah would take place on Shabbat), the community acceptance of Shabbat has little meaning.

Another issue related to the objective/subjective entry of Shabbat brings in the question of how candlelighting affects one’s acceptance of Shabbat. Minhat Yitshak was asked whether a woman who feels unwell could take a pill after candlelighting but before the community had recited ma`ariv. The question referred to the general prohibition to eat or drink on Friday night until after one has heard kiddush. Minhat Yitshak puts together several reasons to allow the taking of this pill, among them his noting that the water is not being drunk to quench thirst, but simply to ease the pill’s path down the woman’s throat.

Related to our concerns here, though, he points out the majority view that candlelighting does not inherently translate into an acceptance of Shabbat. That means that if a woman explicitly intends not to accept Shabbat with her act of candlelighting, she can do so, but would have to verbally accept Shabbat sometime before sunset. The importance of that for this woman— who did not realize she would need to take some medicine, and therefore presumably intended to accept Shabbat with her candlelighting—is that Minhat Yitshak does not see that as a strong enough acceptance to usher in the prohibition on eating or drinking before making kiddush. Rather, he believes that it is only davening ma`ariv or actual darkness that does so.

Rema discusses the case of a woman who neglected to perform a hefsek taharah on a Friday afternoon, but remembered before dark (although after the community had davened ma`ariv). Despite the consequences of ruling stringently—the woman will lose a day in her counting— Rema rules that she should wait until the next day to do her hefsek. In mentioning this stringency, however, two bedieved avenues of leniency are relevant. First, Rema’s ruling was stated lekhathillah; if a woman had already performed a hefsek taharah in that situation, we do not make her go back and do it again. Furthermore, any woman neglected to perform a hefsek taharah late in the afternoon but had performed one earlier in the day, could, after the fact, rely on that as her hefsek taharah.

The beginning of Shabbat is thus a complicated mix of objective natural events, communal declaration, and personal acceptance. All need to be there for a full Shabbat experience, although each has independent applications as well.

Daf Yomi