[Avodah] The Molad of Tamuz

[David Cohen]

R' Micha Berger wrote:
>> If it were, the most efficient way would be to announce the time in
>>  local standard time. (And then I wouldn't have room to speculate
>> whether the clock being used is really J-m Mean Time rather than
>> mean time for some meridian further east.) Aside from a tiny minority
>> of us pendants, who bothers subtracting out the time to know what the
>> announcement means to them?

Leaving aside the fact that there is no consensus as to whether the molad
clock is Jerualem mean time, the mean time of a meridian further east, or
perhaps something other than mean time altogether (as R' Simon Montagu
pointed out yesterday), even if the proper way to translate "molad time" to
local standard/daylight time *were*, hypothetically, a matter of consensus,
it's still not clear that it would make sense to announce the molad using
local clock time.

It all depends what information it is that one is supposed to know.  If
"knowing the the molad" means having the knowledge to be able to state, at
any given point in the future, whether or not the moment of the molad has
passed yet, then it is, indeed, local clock time that would be most
helpful.  But if the idea is to help you keep a list of the moladot in your
head so that if you subsequently find yourself on a desert island, you'll
be able to reconstruct the calendar and observe all of the holidays on
their proper days, then knowing the molad time "as is" is much more helpful
than having it translated into local clock time.

As a parable, let's say that Reuven is standing outside with a clear view
of the western horizon.  He doesn't know what time sunset is expected to
take place.  Shimon is stuck inside in a room with no windows, but he knows
that sunset today will be at 19:53 Israel Daylight Time.  Neither of them
has a clock or watch.  Which one of them really "knows when sunset is"?
Well, that depends for what purpose.  Only Reuven will be able to correctly
say, at the appropriate moment, "sunset is..... now."  But if one of them
needs to send out a message an hour in advance and let everyone know what
time mincha and maariv will be scheduled for today, it's Shimon who's in a
better position to do that.

Given that the molad doesn't correspond to any actual event, it seems
unlikely that the point is to be able to look at one's watch and say
"now."  The fixed-interval molad was only "invented" for the purpose of the
calendar and only "exists" at all in that context, where a translation to
local clock time is irrelevant.

(Yes, nowadays we also use the "calendar molad" for kiddush levana cutoff
times, but I believe that was only adopted as a rough approximation of the
actual conjunction times, since the latter were not readily available.
That's a whole separate discussion, perhaps for another time... :-)

-- D.C.
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