[Avodah] Davening direction

[Zev Sero]

On 30/10/22 13:16, Eli Turkel via Avodah wrote:
> 
> Instinctively it seems silly to me davening north east towards Jerusalem 
> even though that is the direction a plane would fly

Your "instinct" is based on having so deeply absorbed the flat Mercator 
map into your consciousness that even though you know it's incorrect you 
still think that way.  But if you take a globe and a piece of string, 
and put one end on NY and the other on EY and pull it tight, you will 
see that the straight line, which is surely the only reasonable 
definition of what direction EY is, goes over Newfoundland.

The only other reasonable definition I can think of is to daven towards 
the nearest road that will lead to the airport; or, since you were at 
the airport, towards the gate where you will board your plane to EY.


> Didn't understand the logic of the rhumb line for davening
> Gut feeling is that south east is reasonable even that is based on a 
> flat earth

That *is* the rhumb line, and I don't understand the logic either; it 
seems based entirely on people sharing the above-cited "instinct", which 
is based entirely on a lifetime of looking at Mercator maps.  (I've seen 
it claimed that this is the Levush's view, but I couldn't find any hint 
of it in the Levush.  He was writing in Prague or thereabouts, where the 
difference between the two lines is negligible.)


-- 
Zev Sero            “Were we directed from Washington when to sow
zev at sero.name       and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”
		    –Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821.