‘Keep candles out of kindergarten Shabbat parties’

Mother, medical center call on government to halt practice of lighting shabbat candles after girls suffers serious burns.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
ORIENNE sits with nurse 370 (photo credit: Kaplan Medical Center)
ORIENNE sits with nurse 370
(photo credit: Kaplan Medical Center)
After a little girl from Ashdod suffered serious skin burns and her dress caught fire while lighting Shabbat candles in her kindergarten on Friday, her mother and Kaplan Medical Center doctors called on the government to halt the practice by replacing them with virtual electric “candles.”
The five-year-old girl’s mother and physicians said that it was very risky for lit candles to be handled by small children during kindergarten ceremonies demonstrating how to make Shabbat – and that the custom has led to injuries.
Orinne, the injured girl, was set afire by the candle, and she suffered second-degree burns on her chest and abdomen on the right side. The girl got up to hand out the halla and sweets when a spark from the candles set her dress afire.
Treatment at Kaplan was successful, but it is complicated and very painful. The doctors saved her life, said her mother, Eleanor.
Now the girl will need longterm rehabilitation for her burns injury, including high doses of vitamins and proteins, creams and changes of bandages.
“I call on all kindergarten teachers to use electric candles to prevent the next case from occurring,” the mother pleaded.
Dr. Uri Schulman, a plastic surgeon, commented that “apparently, the kindergarten teachers swift actions prevented a greater tragedy. It was a deep burn, and if there isn’t satisfactory progress, we will have to use surgery to give her skin transplants.”
Demonstrating the lighting of Shabbat candles, he said, can be done behind class, without the children being close, or with electric candles that do not burn.