[Avodah] minhag shtus

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

On Wed, Nov 30, 2016 at 07:36:20PM +0200, Eli Turkel via Avodah wrote:
: Another strange halacha (again outside EY) is to start ten
: u-matar le-brachah on December 5th.
: The gemara says that (at least in Bavel) the rain season begins 60 days
: after the tekufah (equinox). 60 days after September 22 is about November
: 22. The difference between November 22 and December 5th has to do with the
: shitah of Shmuel that the solar year is 365 1/4 days and the equivalent
: Julian calendar where both are wrong...

Although the truth is, any value is an approximation. And Shemu'el's
tequfah wasn't so much his shitah, as his proposal as being "close enough"
for certain uses. See Rashi BM 85b DH "Shmuel" and the Tashbetz vol 1,
#108 DH "teshuvah da'a". The Tashbetz proves that Shemu'el's knowledge
of sod ha'ibur (referred to in the gemara) included knowing that the
year was really shorter than 4o of his tequfos.

(I was pointed to those sources by R' Mordechai Kornfeld, BTW.)

So what you're really asking is that now that it's easy to use the
more accurate Gregorian approximation, why don't we switch? We'd still
be off, but by far less.

:                                     The answer seems to be that we continue
: old customs even when the basis is known to be incorrect.

Yes, lke in pretending that the majority of Jews living in the golah
care about the rainy season in Bavel.

(During the Second Iraq War my father quipped: The reason why Saddam
Hussein was so anti-Israel is that he knew that the more Jews he forces
into the golah, the more Jews will be praying for the agriculture in
his country. <grin>)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
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