[Avodah] international dateline

[Eli Turkel]

>From an article by R Pahmer in the Journal of  Halacha and
Contemporary Society vol 21 (1991).

The various shitot of where the halachic dateline are:

1. Brisker Rav = 90 degrees east of Jerusalem.  Accordingly Japan, Korea
and most of Australia keep shabbat on sunday
(those of our chevra in Australia looking for chumrot should keep this in
mind)

2. CI = 90 degrees east of Jerusalem but stretched to the end of the
continental mass. Since a small portion of Australia is on the EY side
therefore all of Australia keeps shabbat on Saturday. However, immediately
off the coast shabbat is on sunday. According to both these shitot in Japan
and New Zealand shabbat is on sunday.

Rav Herschel Schacter explains that this applies on on land. However, in
the air there is no end of land masses and so the line is a straight 90
degrees.
Hence, if one flies motzei shabbat from Melbourne one immediately enters
shabbat!

3. Rav Tukishinsky = 180 degrees from EY so Japan and Australia keep
shabbat on the local Saturday but now Hawaii has shabbat on friday.

4. Rav Kasher = there is no Torah definition of the dateline and so the
rabbis can set it at their convenience which is taken to be the
international dateline. Hence, all communities would keep shabbat on the
local Saturday (dont know what he would say about Samoa). Rav Kasher's
opinion is in HaPardes 28th year, vol5, p3 for anyone who wants to read the
original.

As I previously wrote in actual fact all communities that I know
essentially follow Rav Kasher, ie the communities of Melbourne, Tokyo, New
Zealand, Honolulu all observe shabbat on the local Saturday even though the
first three shitot would have it observed on a different day for some (not
all) of the communities. SBA has mentioned that some in Australia are
machmir to keep a second day of shabbat (for Torah laws) if they visit an
island off the coast. I assume the same would hold if they visited Japan or
New Zealand even though they have (small) Jewish communities.

-- 
Eli Turkel
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