[Avodah] Some Interesting Remarks About Birchas HaChama

[Zev Sero]

Micha Berger wrote:

> We count physical phenomena from the start of the physical year. And
> we therefore switched for it to the closer estimate of tequfas R'
> Adda. Although it doesn't explain why we start with a molad 1 yr early.

The reason for that is simple: the world was created on 25 Elul.  If we
are to date our years from the creation, rather than tracking Adam's age
as the Seder Olam does, we must account for that stub of a year.  Since
when this system was invented we were unaware of the concept of treating
zero as a number, it was natural to number that stub year 1.  And thus
we need to start our molad calculations at the beginning of that year,
with the Molad Tohu (BaHaRaD), which is when the molad *would* have been
had the world existed at that "time".  The alternative, starting from
molad VYD, which is the first molad that actually happened, would mean
that we'd constantly be having to deduct a year from our number, which
is just awkward.  IOW to calculate the molad of Tishri 5769 we now say
to ourselves, "Well, 5768 years have passed. How many months is that?
Add them up, add BaHaRaD, normalise it all, and we have our answer";
if we were to start from VYD we'd have to always remember that in fact
only 5767 years have passed, and only add up that many months.  That
just makes things messier, for no reason, so we start from BaHaRaD.

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