[Avodah] The Moon By Night; A Wrinkle In Time

[Jonathan Traum]

On 4/9/21 10:11 AM, Jay F. Shachter wrote:
> Where do you live? In Eretz Yisrael, the moon is never directly
> overhead.  Maybe you meant that the moon would be at its highest point
> for that night.  How are you going to know when the moon reaches its
> highest point of the night?  You'd have to wait until it starts to go
> lower, and only then would you know that it had been at its highest
> point, a moment earlier.  Are you then going to travel back in time?
No need for time travel.  Like the sun, the moon rises in more-or-less 
the east and sets in more-or-less the west. If you are in the northern 
hemisphere above the tropics (e.g. in Yerushalayim) and it's the full 
moon (e.g. the first night of Pesach), and the moon is due south, that's 
a pretty good approximation of midnight.
> Anshei Khnesseth Haggdolah, who established the benediction Mxaddesh
> Xodashim to be recited on such an occasion, never saw the moon
> directly overhead.  They never spoke to or heard of anyone who had
> ever seen the moon directly overhead.  They did not know that there
> were any inhabited places on the globe from which you could see the
> moon directly overhead.
That may be overstating the case, as they were not so very far away from 
places where the moon might be directly overhead on occasion (which is a 
bit above the tropics because of the angle of the moon's orbit). 
Certainly by the time of Chazal, Aristarchus had made it well-known that 
the *sun* can be directly overhead in some places and at some times.

JonT