[Avodah] Q re tonight's RYReisman shiur on the chamah

[Micha Berger]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 02:26:12PM -0400, Zev Sero wrote:
:>                                                                 (BTW,
:>R' Eliezer Ehrenpreis suggests this underlies the machloqes about the
:>halachic date line.)
: 
: The only shita I know of that relates the dateline to the creation is
: Shu"T Benei Tzion by R David(?) Shapiro (vol 1, Jerusalem 1930), which
: is a very rare sefer.   But he doesn't quote anything about sunrise;
: he quotes a medrash that the me'orot were installed into the sky at 9am,
: and another one that the sun was directly over Gan Eden, from which he
: deduces that Gan Eden is 45deg east of EY (and presumably on the equator).
: He then puts one edge of the dateline 90deg east of that, which is where
: it was shkia at that moment, and the other edge a varying number of
: degrees east of THAT, where it was tz"hk....

R' Eliezer (Dr Leon) Ehrenpreis assumes that the sun was "installed"
based on the Even haShesiah, not Gan Eden.

He traces it to the machloqes about Adam's apparant age at the time
of creation. If we hold like R' Eliezer, then Adam, saplings and eggs
were created in infancy, and presumably the sun was too -- IOW, at dawn
over the Har haBayis. This means that the only way each part of the
globe would have gotten sunlight for the first time on day 4 is if the
date line is 180 deg opposite Y-m. (Try doodling it out for yourself,
I can't post a diagram.)

Whereas if we hold like R' Yehoshua, then Adam, trees and chickens were
created fully developed, the parallel for the sun would be to be created
at noon Y-m time. A similar bit of math would put the date line 90deg
off from Y-m.

Within the 2nd shitah, you now have a second machloqes as to whether we
allow the confusion of the dateline crossing a land mass, or if it hugs
the coast that is further from Y-m.


Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When memories exceed dreams,
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