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

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Feb 08, 2008 at 11:43:22AM +0000, kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
: (ATTENTION MODERATORS: This is a RESEND. Three digests have appeared
: since I posted it, so I'm guessing that you never received it. But it
: is possible that you did receive it, and are still discussing whether
: or not to publish it, in which case please ignore this copy.)

Avodah only has one moderator. I tend not to discuss posts among myself,
as it makes my wife nervous. I simply never got it. It's Areivim, with
its greater volume and more posts that walk the edge, that requires a
moderation team.

: When it is that we are under the influence of Mars? Well, Chazal knew
: (don't ask me how they knew) that seven specific "stars" exert their
: influence in a specific rotation. They follow one another in a specific
: sequence: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. They each get
: the same amount of time, and this sequence is repeated 24 times each week.
...
: Enter the Babylonians with their state-of-the-art arithmetic (I think
: their geometry and trig was pretty good too, but we don't need that
: for this) and behold: If the seven stars go through 24 cycles a week,
: then each turn lasts 1/24 of a day! An hour!

The Babylonians predated Chazal, and probably got their math from our
nevi'im. Their cultural explosion was during galus bavel. But this is
more like lifting their unit of measure -- we will now call this thing
an "hour" (or whatever is the proper Akkadian), and chazal lifted the
Tanach's word meaning "a point of time" and used it for this unit --
sha'ah.

: Next: Are these Shaos Zmanios or Shaos Shavos? Well, consider this. We
: are not dealing with half of the morning. We are not dealing with the
: late afternoon. We are not dealing with anything that has anything to
: do with sunrise or sunset. Rather, we are dealing with the larger solar
: system as a whole. Each star gets a turn lasting 1/168 of a week.

Which means it has nothing to do with Babylonians. The Babylonian hour
was not equal across a week or 1/24 of a day. It was 1/12 of the daylight
period, or 1/12 of the night. Except on the equinox (first day of fall
or spring), the nighttime hour wouldn't be the same as the daytime,
and in any case, Sunday's wouldn't be exactly the same as the following
Shabbos's.

And the Babybonians started the 12 hours from dawn. Which for standard
hours will give you a different answer than counding 6 hours from noon.

: Why would a star's turn be longer during a summer daytime than a winter
: daytime, or than a summer night? ....

But I will ask about your basic assumption: that the planets get turns of
equal duration. Why? Who knows why would planets get turns influencing
events on earth altogether. Why is "equal" more reasonable than a
celestian unit, the solar hour? Not saying it's less; just that I don't
understand any of it, and therefore will question any assumption of what
makes more sense.

And if they do, why is it subject to where on earth you are? Why not
simply assume even shesi'ah time, and not make qiddush between 1am and
2am EST Shabbos morning? The fact that it is related to your location on
the planet /would/ better fit solar time.

Gut Voch!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             With the "Echad" of the Shema, the Jew crowns
micha at aishdas.org        G-d as King of the entire cosmos and all four
http://www.aishdas.org   corners of the world, but sometimes he forgets
Fax: (270) 514-1507      to include himself.     - Rav Yisrael Salanter