[Avodah] Which way to Jerusalem?

[Zev Sero]

On 13/09/2010 11:05 PM, David Riceman wrote:
> Me:
>>>
>>> When I was young I was told that we use the reverse of the course our ancestors took to get here, which is why we don't use the great circle route.
>>
>> RZS:
>> From which direction did Jews (let alone "our" ancestors -- whose?) arrive
>> in San Francisco? Did they come from the east or the south? Should shuls
>> in Texas and surrounding states point towards Galveston?

> I asked those same questions, and was told that the bulk of American Jewry
> arrived via the east coast, and the bulk of Jews in the west came via the
> east.

The first Jews came to New York as refugees from Recife. Subsequently
much of the early Jewish immigration to what is now the north-eastern
USA was from Jamaica.  Surely, according to this theory, they should
have davened to the south.  Then, as the source of the "bulk" changed,
at some point their qibla should have changed to the east?  When should
this change have happened?  And if in the next decade a whole lot of
Jews will move in from Canada, should it change to the north?

In addition, as a matter of metzius I believe that the bulk of Jews in
the south came through Galveston, not through New York.



> I don't know how this explanation would hold up in the era of
> migration via airplane, but it does explain, for example, why Bavel
> and EY are each north of the other.

I don't believe that was because of how they originally came to that
country, but because of how one would go to the other country.  To get
from EY to Bavel one would go north, and to get from Bavel to EY one
would also go north; to people who had never seen a map, that was how
they thought of it.  Nevertheless, the direction of tefillah in Bavel
was to the west, not to the north.  And they referred to EY as "maarava",
not as "tzipuna".

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