[Avodah] Tzom Kal

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

RAM, quoting MOAG:
> An action - or better said, inaction - by my father when he
> assumed his rabbinical post in Toronto in 5698 (1938) will
> reveal his attitude toward a revocation of the fast in an
> analogous situation. He was asked prior to his first Yom Kippur
> as a major rav in the city to publish an announcement in the
> daily Yiddish newspaper that the fast was not over till a
> certain hour. When he asked why such an announcement was
> necessary, he was told that there were many shuls in the city
> which had no rabbis to guide their congregants, and they usually
> completed Services early and broke the fast too soon. My father,
> however, refused to publicize such a proclamation. He explained
> that among the thousands of Jews who davent in such places there
> was surely at least one who was not permitted to fast altogether.
> It is precisely because such a person did not have a rav to turn
> to personally that he would endanger his life during the few
> extra minutes by which the suggested public announcement would
> delay the close of Yom Kippur. Therefore, the only way to keep
> that individual for fasting those extra few minutes was by
> letting all the other, healthy Jews break the fast early. He
> gave the example of someone in mortal danger who refuses to eat
> unless a minyan of Jews eats along with him. In this situation
> the entire minyan is allowed to eat.

Sounds like my argument for why O Jews should vote "Pro-Choice". If
there is echad mini revava who would be denied an abortion when halakhah
considers it piquach nefesh, we cannot stop the other 9,999. And there
is no secular law that would match halakhah's guidelines in every case.

But on a less prevocative note...

According to the ge'onim, tzeis is 3/4 of a mil after sheqi'ah. Even
adjusting for Toronto and assuming a 24 minute mil, we're not talking
even 25 min after sheqi'ah.

Most of our time after tzeis (where "our" = those who do not hold like
R' Tam) is trying to get something sane out of the gemara's 3/4 mil and
yet the literal meaning of the words tzeis hakokhavim.

Were these shuls ending THAT early? Maybe we can be melamdim zekhus?

GCT!
-Micha