[Avodah] YT Sheini Shell Golah and the Internet

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Rich Wolpoe wrote:
> [NB: RH would not necessarily afford time to notify the
> planet before the onset of YT with a Qiddush al pi reiya]

I do not understand why you are hedging, using terms like "not necessarily".

It seems clear to me that Rosh Hashana definitely WILL NOT "afford time to notify the planet."

There are several different scenarios which can play out for Rosh Hashana. One is that at some point on the 30th of Elul, the eidim will be accepted by the Sanhedrin, and the whole day will have been Yom Tov, retroactively. Everyone has to be choshesh for this, and so we will all turn off our electronic devices on the afternoon of Elul 29, just as we do now. When the eidim come, it will be Yom Tov, and the next day will be chol -- but only the residents of Yerushalayim will receive the information that RH was only one day long. It will be just like in the old days, that Rosh Hashana could be one day in Yerushalayim, but a full two days everywhere else.

Much has been written in this thread about how modern technology will make it easy for everyone to know when Rosh Chodesh has been declared. I say that's fine for Nisan - it will take far less than two weeks for everyone to know when Pesach will be. But it doesn't help for Rosh Hashana. If it turns out that the first day was the "real" Yom Tov, no one will know about it, because our computers are all turned off.

Another scenario is that eidim will *not* be accepted on Elul 30, and so the following day will become Rosh Hashana automatically. Inside Yerushalayim, this news will get out by word-of-mouth exactly as it did long ago. But outside of Yerushalayim, how will anyone know?

Some may suggest ideas like allowing rabbonim to leave their computers on, and a display-only program will be running, so that if it turns out that the second day of Rosh Hashana is not needed, they'll know this simply by looking at their screens. I'd respond to this in several ways.

First, time zone problems would introduce mass confusion: By the time anyone in Yerushalayim can tweet "Just made havdala. First day was the real RH", everyone in Melbourne will have long since made kiddush and gone to bed.

Second, you can't rely on such a simplistic system to guard against hackers -- All the proposals made so far in this thread about not needing Yom Tov Sheni presume that the anti-hacker police will alert the world to bogus announcements. Again, that's fine for Nisan, but I'll bet that on Rosh Chodesh Tishrei all the frum (read: ne'eman) techies will be home, and *not* at the office watching for hackers. Maybe the frum techies will have some sort of heter to do certain things, similar to the witnesses who could ride their horses even on Shabbos. But that heter was only for *declaring* Rosh Chodesh, not for merely *publicizing* Rosh Chodesh.

My bet is that as far as Yom Tov Sheni, Rosh Hashana of the future will be exactly as it is now.

Akiva Miller

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