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

[Zev Sero]

Micha Berger wrote:
> 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.

So does Bnei Tzion, hence his assumption that the medrash about the time
having 9am refers to EY; the other medrash explicitly mentions Gan Eden,
so no assumptions are necessary.


> 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. [...]
> 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.

It's a bit of a stretch to call the sun an "infant" at dawn and "fully
developed" at noon, since the sun itself is exactly the same.  We do use
that sort of language about the moon moving through its phases, but that
actually does affect the moon itself, at least somewhat.  An observer on
the moon would know what phase it's in, though he wouldn't put it in those
terms; but an observer on the sun would only know whether it was dawn or
noon at any point of the Earth by looking at it.


-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
zev at sero.name                 eventually run out of other people’s money
                                                     - Margaret Thatcher