[Avodah] 30 days or 90 repetitions

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

In the thread "Safeiq Sefirah", R' Micha Berger quoted his son:
> We know from "mashiv haruach" the rule that if you haven't
> been saying something 30 days I should assume I didn't say it.

Then he amended the question:
> It's not 30 days but 90 repetitions..

R'SBA commented:
> I once heard a cheshbon (beshem someone) that it is
> actually 101 repetitions. I am not too sure how, but it
> would include Mussaf of YT, several Shabosim, RCh etc.

R' Michael Kopinsky tried to calculate the 101 figure, but found the variations of which day of the week Pesach starts to be too difficult.

My approach is much simpler: The "30-day" rule is used for both Mashiv Haruach and also for Tal Umatar. This is true despite the fact that we say Tal Umatar less frequently than Mashiv Haruach. The exact numbers are not important. What *is* important (to me) is that several days of Shabbos will make such a dent in the exact count, that the question, "Is 96 repetitions enough?" sounds very irrelevant to me.

I do know that there are some people who sit around on Shmini Atzeres afternoon, repeating the appropriate phrase a lot of times, such that they feel that a new chazakah has been established, so that if their mind wanders during the Amidah in the next month, they can presume they said it correctly.

But I have also seen poskim who say that this procedure is *not* effective. I'm sorry that I do not remember who those poskim are, but I'd like to attempt an explanation of it, and I'll offer the the same explanation two different ways.

First, from a technical viewpoint: All poskim agree that 30 days works for both Mashiv Haruach and Tal Umatar. Some poskim suggest an alternate procedure of reciting Mashiv Haruach (approximately) 101 times, and reciting Tav Umatar (approximately) 90 times. But I don't know of anyone who offers an explanation for the 101/90 disparity. Why should 95 work for Tal Umatar but not for Mashiv Haruach? Until I encounter an explanation, it will seem to me that the "repetition" procedure is an error; a person needs *time* to become accustomed to the new text, and throughout halacha, "30 days" is the shiur for becoming accustomed to something.

Second, a personal anecdote: Prior to moving to Elizabeth, I lived for two years in a much smaller community, where we rarely had more than 25 people in shul even on Shabbos, and consequently I was called on to be Shliach Tzibur rather frequently. The shul davened Nusach Sfard, but I adapted to it rather easily, for whatever reasons, even though I personally daven Ashkenaz, and all my prior shuls and yeshivos had been Ashkenaz. When I left that town and came to Elizabeth, and tried davening for the amud in Nusach Ashkenaz, I was very surprised by how much difficulty I had. My silent Amidah had always been Ashkenaz with no problem, but my Chazaras Hashatz kept slipping into Sfrad if I wasn't careful. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that my mouth had two distinct programs available, one for quiet mode, and one for loud. My mouth's quiet mode was always programmed to run in Ashkenaz, but the loud mode was set for Sfard and needed a conscious effort to be reprogrammed. This experience suggests to me that if a person takes a section of the Amidah, and repeats it on Shmini Atzeres over and over and over, it will not affect what his mouth does later that day in the quiet of davening Mincha.

My conclusion is that time can adapt one to a new habit, but repetition doesn't work as well.

Akiva Miller

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