[Avodah] Not Making Kiddush Between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m.

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, February 6, 2008 11:03 am, Prof. Levine wrote:
: What I have never understood is why this is a 60 minute hour and the
: time is based on the "secular" clock. To the best of my knowledge,
: the 60 minute hour is not "generic" to Halacha. The times of the day
: are based on Shaos Z'manios. So why aren't Shaos Z'manios used in the
: determination of what between 6 and 7 means, rather than secular
: time. For the record. the 60 minute hour goes back to the Babylonians
: whose number system used base 60.

A couple of us were once invited to a shtiebl to run a singing minyan
for Qabbalas Shabbos and Maariv. The rav was getting antsy at a few
minutes to 6 EDT, when the baal tefillah started singing Mizmor
leDavid before the 2nd Borkhu. He ended up calling his wife and
daughters down for qiddush in shul before Aleinu.

Not sure of the point of RYL's last sentence, since the Babylonian
minute was 1/60 of a sha'ah zemanis, not a standard hour. For that
matter, we had a unit that was 1080 of a standard hour already, with a
mesorah that it's miSinai (or perhaps "misinai").

Also, our clocks are set according to time zone, not local time. 12:00
is the middle between sunrise and sunset averaged over the year in the
middle of the time zone (barring places like India, which are 30 min
off), not as per where you're sitting.


SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Man wants to achieve greatness overnight,
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