Avodah Mailing List

Volume 32: Number 130

Sat, 06 Sep 2014

• 1. Zemanim (Micha Berger)
• 2. Re: Zemanim (Kenneth Miller)
• 3. Re: Zemanim (Kenneth Miller)
• 4. Re: Zemanim (Zev Sero)
• 5. Re: A Temple in Flames (Arie Folger)
• 6. Re: Zemanim (Zev Sero)
• 7. The Meaning of Am Hanivchar; the Source of Anti-Semitism ()
• 8. Re: Zemanim (Kenneth Miller)
• 9. Staying Healthy in Halacha (Prof. Levine)
• 10. Re: Zemanim (Micha Berger)

Does anyone know where I can get ahold of Sefer haYesod leRabbeinu Tam
with the AhS's Or laYsharim? I'm looking for chiddushim siman 181 or 221,
whereever the AhS discusses his shitah of zemanim. There are either
conflicting citations floating around the web, or his discussion is
split in two places.

Here's why I'm curious...

Based on AhS OC 233:14, I have a question: RYME defines a sha'ah zemanis
as 1/12 of the time from haneitz to sheqi'ah. And chatzos is 6 sha'os,
which would be half-way between haneitz and shaqi'ah, not between alos and
sheiq'ah. But directly overhead is half-way between alos and sheqi'ah.

(And according to some shitos, between haneiz and tzeis; although the
Gra says R' Tam means haneitz to alos is the same amount of time as
sheqi'ah to tzeis *kol* hakochavim, which isn't the 3-star tzeis we use
lehalakhhah. But that's not the AhS anyway.)

BUT, we also know, and the AhS acknowledges lehalakhah, that the 30 min
after chatzos that we add before minechah gedolah is because it's hard
to determine when the sun is beyond exactly overhead.

So, what is it? Is a sha'ah zemanis in the afternoon shorter than
those in the morning? Or is chatzos slightly before the sun is directly
overhead? Or something else I haven't thought of?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Here is the test to find whether your mission
mi...@aishdas.org        on Earth is finished:
http://www.aishdas.org   if you're alive, it isn't.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                        - Richard Bach

R' Micha Berger wrote:

> Based on AhS OC 233:14, I have a question: RYME defines a sha'ah
> zemanis as 1/12 of the time from haneitz to sheqi'ah. And chatzos
> is 6 sha'os, which would be half-way between haneitz and shaqi'ah,
> not between alos and sheiq'ah. But directly overhead is half-way
> between alos and sheqi'ah.

You lost me. Why are you mentioning anything at all about alos? That AhS does not ever mention it.

Why would you think that "directly overhead is half-way between alos and
sheqi'ah"? You're talking about the sun, right? So think for a moment about
the sun's path. Wouldn't the sun be directly overhead halfway through its
travel? And wouldn't "halfway" imply that there's some sort of congruence
between the first half and the second half? So why would you define this
path as having one side *at* the horizon, and the other sid *below* the
horizon?

(Nothing I've written in this post should be construed as arguing against
Rav Moshe Feinstein's shita, which I explained in another post a few
minutes ago. RMF says that the morning will be longer or shorter than the
afternoon, but they will still be *approximately* equal. The difference he
talks about results from the elliptical orbit of the earth and similar
factors, which are much less significant than the imbalance we'd have if
the day went from alos to sunset, or sunrise to tzeis.)

Akiva Miller
____________________________________________________________
The #1 Worst Carb Ever?
Click to Learn #1 Carb that Kills Your Blood Sugar (Don't Eat This!)
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3131/5403ac1ba8e6e2c1b6477st04vuc

R' Micha Berger asked:

> So, what is it? Is a sha'ah zemanis in the afternoon shorter
> than those in the morning? Or is chatzos slightly before the
> sun is directly overhead? Or something else I haven't thought
> of?

I can't speak about the other poskim you mentioned, but according to Rav
Moshe Feinstein, chatzos is NOT halfway between any of the points you
mentioned. Rather, chatzos is the point when the sun is at it's
southernmost point (for observers in the northern hemisphere), and that
this is constant all year round. He says explicitly that this causes the
six hours of the morning to be shorter or longer than the six hours of the
afternoon, depending on the time of year.

Back in Avodah 10:125, R' Daniel Eidensohn pointed to four places in the
Igros Moshe where he says this: OC I #24 page 67, OC II #20 page 191, OC IV
#62 page 96, EH I #58 page 147. (In the last of those, he even gives some
examples, with specific dates and times. I found his math there to be
imprecise, but that is a different discussion.)

I have seen some zmanim charts which give Rav Moshe's chatzos to be 11:56
in New York (12:56 summer time). If this is correct, then it can be easily
calculated for any other location simply by looking at the longitude, and
add or deduct 4 minutes for each degree of latitude west or east of the
middle of the time zone. For example, the middle of the Eastern time zone
is at 75 degrees west longitude, and RMF's chatzos is at exactly 12:00 on
the clock there. New York City is at 74 degrees west longitude, which is
one degree east of the middle of the time zone, so the sun reaches its
southernmost point four minutes earlier, at 11:56.

Akiva Miller
____________________________________________________________
The #1 Worst Carb Ever?
Click to Learn #1 Carb that Kills Your Blood Sugar (Don't Eat This!)
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3131/5403a1e1a02fe21e12620st01vuc

On 31/08/2014 4:08 PM, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
> Based on AhS OC 233:14, I have a question: RYME defines a sha'ah zemanis
> as 1/12 of the time from haneitz to sheqi'ah. And chatzos is 6 sha'os,
> which would be half-way between haneitz and shaqi'ah, not between alos and
> sheiq'ah. But directly overhead is half-way between alos and sheqi'ah.

No it isn't.  It's halfway between haneitz and shkia.

> BUT, we also know, and the AhS acknowledges lehalakhah, that the 30 min
> after chatzos that we add before minechah gedolah is because it's hard
> to determine when the sun is beyond exactly overhead.

It's not that it's hard to determine, but that to bring the afternoon tamid
it has to be *visibly* after noon, so they would wait for the shadow to reach
a mark on the wall, which it would do half an hour after noon.


> So, what is it? Is a sha'ah zemanis in the afternoon shorter than
> those in the morning?

Well, that is RMF's shita, because he holds that chatzos is always 12:00 noon
on the clock (not counting modern arbitrary notions such as railroad time and
daylight savings), which means it can be up to 16 minutes off from real noon.
Thus, morning and afternoon sha'os are different lengths.   But AFAIK nobody
else has such a shita.   You arrived at it only because you started from an
incorrect premise about the metzius.



-- 
Zev Sero             Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable
z...@sero.name        from malice.
                                                          - Eric Raymond

Some poters have been discussing, regardin the identity of Rabbi Yishmael
ben Elisha Kohen Gadol, the historicity of this character and of the story
of the 10 harugei malkhut. I find a fundamental flaw or shortcoming in the
discussion: there are no fewer than 28 rabbinic sources for the story of
the martyrdom of those ten leaders, and not all stories agree with each
other. The upshot is that there are several possibilities as to when the
story is supposed to have happened, and who the people involved where. On
particular possibility is that the ten were martyred indeed, but the story
didn't happen as portrayed in the well known piyut, since the ten didn't
all live in the same era.

If so, we cannot declare the story ahistorical or a character ahistorical,
unless we declare all versions of that story as ahistorical, or all
versions of that story where said character appears, respectively.

Therefore, please specify which version of the story you believe ought to
be rejected (the one most likely to be ahistorical as portrayed is the most
popular version, by the way, with the link to the Joseph story).

Obviously, the status of the Kimchis story is related to how we want to
temporally place and identify the person of Rabbi Yishmael Kohen Gadol, but
they needn't have been related at all.
-- 
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
* Wie entstand und was bedeutet der bevorstehender Fastentag des 17. Tammus
* Do Not Forget, Do Not Shove it Under the Carpet
* ORD-Seminar in Regensburg
* Nach welchem Prinzip sind die f?nf B?cher Mose organisiert?
* R?ckblick auf Limmud.de
* In the Paris Jewish community, more women than men are recalcitrant
spouses.
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On 31/08/2014 6:28 PM, Kenneth Miller via Avodah wrote:
> I can't speak about the other poskim you mentioned, but according to
> Rav Moshe Feinstein, chatzos is NOT halfway between any of the points
> you mentioned. Rather, chatzos is the point when the sun is at it's
> southernmost point (for observers in the northern hemisphere), and
> that this is constant all year round. He says explicitly that this
> causes the six hours of the morning to be shorter or longer than the
> six hours of the afternoon, depending on the time of year.

No, RMF says that chatzos is *not* when the sun is at its southernmost
point; that is what everyone *else* says, and that is what makes it
exactly halfway between sunrise and sunset, and it varies over a range
of about half an hour.

RMF is the one who says this is not so, chatzos is constant throughout the
year, because what we care about is mean noon, not actual noon, i.e. clock
time, not sun time. Noon is always at exactly 12:00 on the clock (before
adjusting for modern nonsense such as railroad time). Thus the morning
can be up to half an hour longer or shorter than the afternoon.

[Email #2.]

PS to previous post

On 31/08/2014 6:28 PM, Kenneth Miller via Avodah wrote:
> I have seen some zmanim charts which give Rav Moshe's chatzos to be
> 11:56 in New York (12:56 summer time). If this is correct, then it
> can be easily calculated for any other location simply by looking at
> the longitude, and add or deduct 4 minutes for each degree of
> latitude west or east of the middle of the time zone. For example,
> the middle of the Eastern time zone is at 75 degrees west longitude,
> and RMF's chatzos is at exactly 12:00 on the clock there.

Well, of course. How do you think clock time is defined in the first
place? What do you think *makes* it 12:00 at that particular time?
It's *because* it's mean noon, chatzos ho'emtzo`i.

The four minute difference is because the railroads decreed that their
timetables for NYC would no longer be published in NYC time, but in
the time of the villages one degree to the west, so if you wanted to
catch the 1:37 train it would not depart at 1:37 NYC time, but at 1:41.
If New Yorkers (with their native hatred for wasting time) wanted to stop
arriving early for their trains, they would have to move their clocks
back four minutes. Obviously halacha is not dictated by railroad barons,
so the halachic noon remains where it always was, at 12:00 NYC time,
which is 11:56 railroad time.

-- 
Zev Sero             Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable
z...@sero.name        from malice.
                                                          - Eric Raymond

Quoting R/Lord Jonathan Sacks, Prof. Levine wrote: (which is quite insightful)

This probably explains the mysterious phenomenon of anti-Semitism 
which persists throughout all generations. A body naturally rejects 
foreign objects (and therefore when surgeons do an organ transplant 
they have to be concerned about the organ being rejected), and Klal 
Yisroel does not fit in to the natural system which makes up the rest 
of the world; Klal Yisroel was created as a separate yitzira which is 
l'maaleh min ha'teva. Thus we can understand quite well why all of 
the nations of the world, which are all part of teva, would naturally 
reject the "foreign body" of Klal Yisroel which does not fit in with 
the natural scheme of things!

HOWEVER, there is a glaring contradiction with this moshol. How can
am Yisroel accomplish its function as a role model and a Light unto the Nations,
when the nations instinctively reject us? If anything, there can ch?v arise another
Hitler precisely for the reasons R/Lord Jonathan Sacks has articulated. 

How odd of G-d to choose the Jews;
How odd of the Jews not to refuse

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I wrote:

> ... according to Rav Moshe Feinstein, chatzos is NOT halfway
> between any of the points you mentioned. Rather, chatzos is the
> point when the sun is at it's southernmost point (for observers
> in the northern hemisphere), and that this is constant all year
> round. He says explicitly that this causes the six hours of the
> morning to be shorter or longer than the six hours of the
> afternoon, depending on the time of year.

R' Zev Sero responded:

> No, RMF says that chatzos is *not* when the sun is at its
> southernmost point; that is what everyone *else* says, and that
> is what makes it exactly halfway between sunrise and sunset, and
> it varies over a range of about half an hour.
>
> RMF is the one who says this is not so, chatzos is constant
> throughout the year, because what we care about is mean noon,
> not actual noon, i.e. clock time, not sun time. Noon is always at
> exactly 12:00 on the clock (before adjusting for modern nonsense
> such as railroad time). Thus the morning can be up to half an
> hour longer or shorter than the afternoon.

That's not how I read his words. Let's take a look at Igros Moshe, Even Haezer I, Siman 58, last paragraph:

"The definition of Chatzos Hayom is correct as I explained, that chatzos is
when the sun is b'emtza darom [in the middle of the south], but the halves
- from sunrise until chatzos which is in the middle of the south, and the
half which is from the middle of the south until sunset - are not equal
except for some days each year. But most of the year, sometimes the first
half is longer, and sometimes the last half is longer. ..."

I will admit that my translation of "emtza darom" as "southernmost point"
is not literal. But I cannot imagine how else they would have determined
Chatzos, back in the days of sundials. By looking at the shadow of a stick,
it's rather simple to tell when the sun is at its southernmost point
(presuming they knew which direction was south). How else might they
determine "the middle of the south"?

RZS seems to use a calculation for "mean noon". To my ears, that means that
they looked at a year's worth of middays, and averaged them out. I don't
know how they would have done that. My understanding (which very well might
be mistaken) is that they began with a study of longitude, chose midday as
the point when the sun is directly overhead -- which is exactly the same as
when it is at its highest, and is also exactly the same as when it is
southernmost -- and THEN noticed that the morning and afternoon were not
equal. This led to things like "equation of time" and "analemma".

It is quite possible that I'm wrong. My familiarity with plane geometry
isn't too bad, but I'm pretty lost in the 3D world. I'd like to think that
the sun's highest point in the sky coincides with its southernmost point.
But maybe it doesn't. Has RZS or anyone else ever examined this?

Akiva Miller
____________________________________________________________
The #1 Worst Carb Ever?
Click to Learn #1 Carb that Kills Your Blood Sugar (Don't Eat This!)
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3131/5405480ede927480e402ast03vuc

See  http://tinyurl.com/odcvtuv

[It's Kof-K's Halachically Speaking v10n8 in PDF form, dedicated to this
topic. <http://thehalacha.com/wp-content/uploads/Vol10Issue8.pdf>
-micha]

On Sun, Aug 31, 2014 at 10:28:56PM +0000, Kenneth Miller via Avodah wrote:
: I can't speak about the other poskim you mentioned, but according to
: Rav Moshe Feinstein, chatzos is NOT halfway between any of the points
: you mentioned. Rather, chatzos is the point when the sun is at it's
: southernmost point (for observers in the northern hemisphere), and that
: this is constant all year round...

Which answers my question about what one shitah would do if not using
hanetz to sheqi'ah or alos to tzeis [kol?] hakochavim. Live with the
assymetry, so that pelag is calculated using different hours from
chatzos than s"z q"sh uses. Or, to put it another way, when we speak
of 10.5 hours, those are hours of two different sizes.


But chatzos is not at a constant time. It varies by the same amount
regardless of where you are on the globe depending only on date,
and it's just over 30 min in range. This is called the analemma. See
http://www.analemma.com for a very detailed explanation with pictures
and animatinms.

Or wiki at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analemma

Or the little figure 8 thingy probably drawn in the eastern Pacific on
your globe.

This is the combined effect of the angle of the earth's axis and the
earths orbit being an assymetric oval rather than a circle.

Zemanim are usually calculated by getting the length of the day based
on longitute, latitude and if the program is really complete, altitude,
and then applying the analemma to find the midpoint.

I understood RMF as saying chatzos lehalakhah is standardized, the average
for the sun being as high as it's going to go, and not the actual time
it occurs on that day. (Which is what RZS writes as well.)

This parallels the same issue we had with Rabbeinu Tam's tzeis. in
fact, any description of the start or end of day could be:

1- fixed minutes, perhaps a legal mandate to wait as long as the most
   extreme case (this was suggested WRT R' Tam's tzeis)

2- minutes as a fraction of day length
    a- ... where the cited time is the most extreme case, cited for safety
    b- ... where the cited time is the average case

3- degrees below horizon
    a & b as above

Giving 5 different possibilities. Personally, 2 doesn't seem plausible to
me, as it creates values MORE at odds with observation than fixed minutes
would.


BTW, the sun is a shade above .5 deg in apparant diameter. So alos
is at -15' deg (when the leading edge rises), and sheqi'ah at 180 deg
15' (when the trailing edge sets). Plus altitude effects and optical
refraction from the sunlight entering the atmosphere.

Gut Voch!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Every child comes with the message
mi...@aishdas.org        that God is not yet discouraged with
http://www.aishdas.org   humanity.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                   - Rabindranath Tagore


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