Avodah Mailing List

Volume 38: Number 115

Thu, 24 Dec 2020

• 1. Re: Where is the Molad announced for? (Micha Berger)
• 2. Re: "Ha'od Avi Chai?" (Akiva Miller)
• 3. Re: "Ha'od Avi Chai?" (Micha Berger)
• 4. Re: Le'ilui Nishmas an Infant (Micha Berger)
• 5. Re: If Asara B?Teives would fall on Saturday, the fast would be observed on Shabbos (Micha Berger)
• 6. Re: Where is the Molad announced for? (Zev Sero)
• 7. Re: "Ha'od Avi Chai?" (Zev Sero)
• 8. Re: Where is the Molad announced for? (David Cohen)
• 9. Re: Orthodox Union Guidance Regarding Coronavirus (Moshe Y. Gluck)
• 10. Re: Where is the Molad announced for? (Micha Berger)
• 11. Taking a Shower This Friday (Prof. L. Levine)

On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 06:45:49PM -0500, Prof. Levine wrote:
> At 05:08 PM 12/22/2020, Micha Berger wrote:
>> Except it isn't solar time for Yerushalayim.

>  From https://oukosher.org/halacha-yomis/how-is-the-molad-calculated/

>> In addition, it is worth noting that the molad is announced in 
>> accordance with Jerusalem time.
...

I already explained why I think it cannot be, as it would have been
23 minutes off in the last days of the Sanhedrin if they meant J-m
local time.

I don't know what else to add. I just think people assume Y-m time,
because it just seems obvious.

Then we get to the Rambam, who we cannot just dismiss like that...


On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 06:50:22PM -0500, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
> The point of difficulty I have with your explanation is that it rests on an
> assumption that the interval in our tradition was completely precise when it
> was enacted. It seems to me that it was always rounded to the nearest
> chelek; if there happened to be a time when it was precise, that's nice, but
> it's not necessarily the time it was enacted....

It's more than that... The time it was most accurate "just happened" to
be the same generation that established our calendar. (Minus one dechiyah
window that didn't get resolved until R Saadia Gaon.)

To me, that just cries "siyata diShmaya".

But the minimum for the error margin for the time of the molad on Y-m
ih"q local time is not zero. It is on month number 44,609, Tammuz 3607,
154 BCE, 10 years after Chanukah. You get to earlier months than that,
and the the molad as a multiple of days becomes too short again. That
minimum is 15min 27 sec (and I neglected to write the chalaqim) off. That
would be a meridian a little over 4deg East of Y-m.

Again, I have made numerous math errors here in the past. I am only confident
this time because any Google hit of someone else who did the work got
similar results. (Or at least, once I googled and fixed my errors, we have
the same results. <grin>)

At least with my assumptions, we get very close to the middle of the
yishuv in the days when VeSein Tal uMatar was set to either EY's climate
or Bavel's. I am not sure what we gain by being only 1/3 of the way
to Bavel.

> I do think the plain implication in the Rambam is that it was *intended* to
> be Y'm time, and therefore was set a few centuries earlier than you suppose,
> or else the rate of change has itself changed and we can't know now
> precisely when it was accurate.

We can know the curve exactly, unless you want to say nishtaneh hateva
and orbital mechanics worked differently back then.

I looked for "Yerushalayim" and "Yerushalaim" (without a second yud) in
Hil Qidush haChodesh on Bar Ilan. I found the latter in a few places about
yom tov sheini shel goliyus, and then this one, which is I assume your
maqor.

See 11:17.
<https://www.sefaria.org/Mishneh_Torah%2C_Sanctification_of_the_New_Month.11.17>
The Rambam talks about basing his calculations
    on the city of Y-m and the other places that surround it, during the
    6 or 7 days in which we always see the moon and come and testify in
    court. And this area is off about 33 degrees (from 35 to 29) north
    of the equator that encircles the world. And it is also off about
    24 degrees (until 27 to 21) west of the median line of civilization.

We don't know where the 0 deg meridian, "mei'emtza hayishuv" was in the
Rambam's maps. But, since more people testified in court from Bavel than
from Egypt or points west, it's not impossible that he didn't nmean
an area CENTERED on Y-m as much as one centered on the middle of the
population that would come to testify there.

It's weak, I know. But the alternative is leaving the Rambam at odds with
Kepler. And I don't think we have to.

Tzarikh od iyun.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Life isn't about finding yourself.
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   Life is about creating yourself.
Author: Widen Your Tent               - George Bernard Shaw
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF

.
R' Zev Sero asked:

> Why didn't Yosef also ask about his grandfather?  After all,
> Yitzchak had only passed away ten years earlier.  How would
> Yosef have heard about it?

Yosef knew that Yaakov was alive. He knew it because the brothers kept
talking about their father, and I can't imagine that Yosef thought the
brothers were lying about it.

Therefore, I have always understood "Ha'od Avi Chai?" to be a *rhetorical*
question. And it was part of Yosef's strategy of inducing the brothers to
do teshuva:

"You keep talking about what the loss of Binyamin would do to your father.
What about MY father? Is he still alive? Somehow he survived losing ME,
right?"

If Yosef needed to ask about Yaakov's health, then (as RZS suggests) he
would have asked about the entire mishpacha. But that's not what Yosef was
doing.

Akiva Miller

NOTE: I do concede that Sforno takes the question seriously: "It's
impossible that he didn't die from his worrying about me."  But I learned
it to be a rhetorical question, designed to help the brothers to do
teshuva, and unfortunately I do not remember where I picked that up from.
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On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 09:50:38PM -0500, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
> Therefore, I have always understood "Ha'od Avi Chai?" to be a *rhetorical*
> question...

I posted something similar to the first line I quoted, and AFTER I learned
Seforno. (He's in my shenayim miqra learning this year.)

As we both wrote, this is in response to Yehudah writing about how
the non-return of Binyamin would kill their father. The only way it could
be a real question is if he were arguing that Yehudah was lying.

But then, why doesn't Yosef wait for a reply? What does he do instead?
He reiterates, according to Seforno, giving more detail to convince them
he really was Yoseif. His whole conversation is about his being Yoseif.

But the rhetorical read also has an oddity. First, he tells them how bad
what they did was. They not only sinned against him, they sinned against
Yaaqov too, in all the ways Yehudah is now arguing. Then... It's not your
fault; it's Hashem's plan for how I would become regent and we would be
saved from the famine.

> NOTE: I do concede that Sforno takes the question seriously: "It's
> impossible that he didn't die from his worrying about me." ...

The Seforno is short enough to read in transliteration:
    ha'od avi chai: i edshar shelo meis mida'agaso alai

I didn't assume the Seforno was saying peshat is that the question is
real. I learned the Seforno as though he was saying Yoseif meant:
    Stop telling me how worried you are about the daagah of Binyamin
    coming back, nafsho kesurah benafsho and all that. If you really
    believed that, you would have thought "it were impossible for him
    to have survived the pain of losing me."

I found the above argument so compelling, it didn't cross my mind that
the Seforno was making an assertion rather than a leshitaskha accusation
reinforcing the rhetorical read of the pasuq itself.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 We are what we repeatedly do.
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   Thus excellence is not an event,
Author: Widen Your Tent      but a habit.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                 - Aristotle

On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 05:59:12PM -0500, Zvi Lampel via Avodah wrote:
>> Yes. But we're talking about how the RBSO could be Just. I would prefer
>> getting to a point of "I really don't know" than embracing theories
>> that don't seem fair. It's theology. "I don't know" is a perfectly fine
>> answer; we shouldn't insist we /can/ understand it all and settle for
>> compromises....

> True. But it is only a dilemma deserving an ''I don't know' response if you
> accept the premises that the practice of saying kaddish in such a situation
> is valid, somehow ...

Which situations?

Qaddish for a parent was something I already posted about. RMT and RHS
have a perfectly rational way of explaining Hashem's Justice. The parent
gets reward for whatever they did to inspire the child to say Qaddish,
Borkhu, learn Torah, give tzedaqah or whatever.

Qaddish for someone who you don't owe in that sort of way doesn't actually
have a long tradition. I wouldn't assume it qualifies as minhag Yisrael.

But I think that regardless of whether a person can get zekhus for a
mitzvah done, rather than for their role in causing that mitzvah to be
done, if the emotions of the moment can cause someone to say Qaddish
with kavvanah, why not say it?


On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 07:57:28PM -0500, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
> I understand these situations to be similar to when one asks a tzadik to
> daven for him. The tzadik is pained to some non-zero degree about the
> petitioner's problem, and he asks Hashem to fix the situation. If Hashem
> does so, it's not because of any zechus of the petitioner, but rather it is
> to do a favor for the tzadik.

But because the state of the petitioner is undeserved harm to him.

Unless the person praying for the niftar has some idea of what's happening
to the niftar and how his tefillah alleviated is, there is no balancing
of the tzadiq's account.

And for that matter, the person who didn't get some nisayon still needs to
get the work done in some other way. A niftar who isn't getting the
correcting effect of onesh or lack of sekhar... how else would he get the
work done?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   I awoke and found that life was duty.
Author: Widen Your Tent      I worked and, behold -- duty is joy.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                      - Rabindranath Tagore

On Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 04:47:19PM +0000, Prof. L. Levine via Avodah wrote:
> From today's OU Kosher Halacha Yomis
> Q. The Beis Yosef (OC 550) quotes Sefer Avudraham ... that if Asara B'Teives would fall on Saturday, the fast would be observed on Shabbos....

Likely the BY, like most Sefaradim and many Ashkenazim, pronounced his
name correctly: Abu-Dirham or maybe Abu-Darham.

> In spite of this explanation, the Beis Yosef questions why Asara B'Teiveis
> is unique?

... according to the Avudraham. We can't even assume that is would the Mechaber
would hold if the question weren't hypothetical, because he is exploring one
particular shitah.

R Chaim Brown
http://divreichaim.blogspot.com/2020/12/would-we-fast-on-shabbos-for-10-teves.html
just blogged on this topic.

Rashi (Megillah 5a "aval", on the mishnah) explicitly says that not only
9 be'Av "me'achrin velo maqdimin", but 17 beTammuz and 10 beTeiveis as
well.
See https://www.sefaria.org/Megillah.5a.6?p2=Rashi_on_Megillah.5a.6.2

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 "Someday I will do it." - is self-deceptive. 
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   "I want to do it." - is weak. 
Author: Widen Your Tent      "I am doing it." - that is the right way.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                 - Reb Menachem Mendel of Kotzk

On 22/12/20 8:16 pm, Micha Berger wrote:
> We don't know where the 0 deg meridian, "mei'emtza hayishuv" was in the
> Rambam's maps.

Well, we do.  24 degrees east of Y'm.  Rounded to the nearest degree, of 
course, since the maps weren't designed by Jews.

>  But, since more people testified in court from Bavel than
> from Egypt or points west, 

Nobody could possibly have come from Bavel to testify about the new 
moon. They couldn't have made it in time.  One would have to be Yaacov 
Avinu to do that trip in one day.


> It's weak, I know. But the alternative is leaving the Rambam at odds with
> Kepler. And I don't think we have to.

We don't have to assume the calculation was ever completely accurate, or 
ever intended to be precise.  Rounding is legitimate.  If those who 
first determined the length of a month rounded it to the nearest chelek 
they could have been at any time, including Moshe Rabbenu.  I don't 
think Moshe Rabbenu's month was long enough that it would be rounded to 
two chalakim instead of one.  And that justifies the tradition that this 
length is HLLMMS (although that term isn't always meant literally).

= = =
By the way, I don't think "Hayishuv" here means "civilization", but 
rather the upper hemisphere, which is inhabitable, as opposed to the 
lower hemisphere which is ocean and thus uninhabitable.

Before 1492 everyone thought the lower hemisphere was one vast ocean, 
and that's why nobody attempted to cross it.  Nobody (including 
Columbus) knew that there was a continent in the middle, dividing it 
into two oceans, and making the trip doable.

The geographers of the Rambam's day, apparently, had decided that the 
bounds of this upper hemisphere ran from about what we call 31 W to 149 
E, and put the zero meridian in the middle. So on those maps Y'm's 
coordinates were 24 E, 32 N.


-- 
Zev Sero            Wishing everyone a *healthy* and happy 5781
z...@sero.name       "May this year and its curses end
                      May a new year and its blessings begin"

On 22/12/20 10:43 pm, Micha Berger wrote:
> The Seforno is short enough to read in transliteration:
>      ha'od avi chai: i efshar shelo meis mida'agaso alai

The Shelah says that Yaacov *did* in fact die of his grief over Yosef's 
death.  That is why the name Yaacov is never used during the 22 years he 
was gone.  But Yisrael, who was not Yosef's father and didn't feel the 
grief quite as strongly, lived on, and so the body they both animated 
continued to function.

When the news came that Yosef was alive, Vatechi Ruach Yaacov Avihem; 
Yaacov experienced Techiyas Hameisim, and from then that name is once 
again used.

And that is why Yaacov Lo Meis -- he had already died and been 
resurrected, so he had no need to die again.  Yisrael died, but Yaacov 
merely stopped animating their shared body and continued to exist in 
this world.

I don't know how he explains David.

-- 
Zev Sero            Wishing everyone a *healthy* and happy 5781
z...@sero.name       "May this year and its curses end
                      May a new year and its blessings begin"

R' Micha Berger wrote:
>> As I've posted in the past, we can equally ask: When the molad
>> *interval*was most accurate, on whose clock was the *time* the
>> molad actually happened similarly most accurate? ...
>> ... One explanation I find plausible: It's somewhere around the
>> middle of the Yishuv in those days, around half-way between EY
>> and Bavel.

I don't think that they *first* picked an exact meridian and *then* set the
molad to exactly correspond to the moment of the mean conjunction expressed
in the mean solar time of that meridian.  Note that the molad is expressed
to the precision of a chelek, and mean solar time changes by one chelek for
every 50 "seconds of longitude."  At the latitude of Jerusalem, that's
about 1.3 km.  You'd have to explain why they chose exactly the meridian
that they did, and not 2 km to the west or 2 km to the east, which would
result in the molad being one chelek earlier or later.

Rather, I think that the answer lies in "Molad VeYad," the molad Tishrei of
Adam's creation according to R' Eliezer (Year 2, according to our
counting), which is exactly at 14 hours and 0 chalakim into Friday (8:00
a.m.in our parlance).  A molad (of any month) will only fall exactly on the
hour, with no chalakim, approximately every 87.3 years.  Having a molad
Tishrei exactly on the hour is even rarer, with that happening, *on
average*, just once every 1,080 years.  It seems like an unlikely
coincidence for this to have happened just by chance in what was considered
by many to be the first month of our calendar.  (We now call it Year 2, but
the practice in Bavel was to call that year Year 1.)

So I think that the molad was certainly set to be accurate for that general
area of the world , and hence that first molad was set for 14 hours into
Friday, rather than 13 or 15, but that it was set for exactly 14 hours and
0 chalakim simply in order to have a nice, round starting point for
calculations.  Sure, you could then work backwards and calculate the
*exact* meridian in whose mean solar time that the molad would have been
accurate for in some given year, but I think that's somewhat beside the
point.

-- D.C.
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>
> R' YL, quoting the OU (emphasis mine):
>
> Notwithstanding these factors, the conclusion of our poskim is that,
> _pursuant to the advice of your personal health care provider,_ the Torah
> obligation to preserve our lives and the lives of others requires us to
> vaccinate for COVID-19 as soon as a vaccine becomes available.
>
> A few of the statements of guidance I've seen, including this one,
basically come down to, "Ask your doctor and listen to what he/she says,"
rather than actually telling people to take the vaccine. A critical
distinction, to me.

KT,
MYG
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On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 05:22:10PM +0200, David Cohen via Avodah wrote:
> I don't think that they *first* picked an exact meridian and *then* set the
> molad to exactly correspond to the moment of the mean conjunction expressed
> in the mean solar time of that meridian.  Note that the molad is expressed
> to the precision of a chelek, and mean solar time changes by one chelek for
> every 50 "seconds of longitude."  At the latitude of Jerusalem, that's
> about 1.3 km.  You'd have to explain why they chose exactly the meridian
> that they did, and not 2 km to the west or 2 km to the east, which would
> result in the molad being one chelek earlier or later.

We aren't talking one cheileq, though.

I'm going to step WAY back and start from alef. That means that I will
be talking down to many people as I start, and hopefully fewer and fewer
as I continue.



There are two rounding issues with the molad, because we use the word
"molad" to mean two things:

1- The halachic estimate of the average *duration* between two new moons.
IOW, 29 days, 12 hours, 44 min 1 cheileq.

2- The time of a particular new moon. Like when the Chazan announces,
"The molad will be at ...."

About issue #1, the interval of the molad:

The time between new moons is not a constant. The average time between
new moons is also not a constant, it drifts down the centuries. (And even
more weirdly so since we are measuring it using days and parts of a day,
which also changes length compared to seconds on an atomic clock over
the centuries.)

So there is an error between the estimate halakhah decided was "good enough"
and the exact value. In fact, since the interval between new moons is an
irrational number of days, there is no way to express it as an exact number.
Like pi or the square root of 2, for which halakhah also has sanctioned
estimates -- 3 and 1-2/5, respectively.

But this error in estimation, at any point since Adam to well past the
year 7,000 is to the order of chalaqim, and really is within the room
of saying Chazal estimated.

About issue #2, the time of the molad:

The effects of the error in #1 are cumulative, adding up 12 or 13 times
per year, year after year, century after century. Here the difference
between the announced molad and the time the new moon would be on
average is to the order of minutes.

How many minutes? Well, that depends which clock we're using to announce
it in. We are definitely using standard hours, not solar ones. And we
are definitely using local time rather than standard time, since the
molad calculations predates trains and the invention of time zones
(as R/Prof Levine pointed out). But which local time?

The obvious assumption is Yerushalayim local time. But in that case,
the error in the *time* of the molad would be
2 hours 42 sec: nowadays
22 min, 25 sec: when our calendar was established
15 min, 27 sec: at its minimum, 10 years before the first Chanukah (164bce)

So our choices, as I see it, is:

1- Explain it is okay for the time of the molad to be 15-22 min off in the
   days of chazal, and stick to the common belief that the time is
   Y-m local.

I replied to Prof Levine forwarding the OU's claim that it is indeed
Y-m standard time. I wrote to say I found this implausible. 15-22 min
off is not a small error.

To the extent that I cannot believe that's what the Rambam means either.
And was looking for how that implication of the Rambam's words isn't a
valid inferance.

2- Use for the meridian where the local clock is 15 min 22 sec later,
   so the minimum error (164bce) is zero. That's 4 deg 7 min east of
   Yerushalayim, which is about 1/3 of the way to Bavel.

3- Use the meridian where the local clock is 22 min 25 sec later, so
   that the error between astronomy and the *time* of the halachic
   molad was zeros at the end of Chazal's day. 

I was advocating for the third option, because it is a convergance of
three issues:
    a- the meridian where time is 22 min 25 sec later than Y-m arguably
       runs in the middle between di be'ar'a deYisrael di beBavel.
    b- this eliminates the error in the *time* of the molad is the era
       when our calendar was set up, and
    c- it is also the era when the *interval* between molads ("molad"
       definition #1) was correct to the average time between astronomical
       real new moons was within a cheileq. (And it includes the time
       when it was 0.)

You can object to my support of #3 by saying that the precision of the
interval is no big deal without touching my objection to the common
assumption of Y-m standard.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Our greatest fear is not that we're inadequate,
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   Our greatest fear is that we're powerful
Author: Widen Your Tent      beyond measure
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                      - Anonymous

From today's OU Kosher Halacha Yomis


Q. This year, Asara B?Teives will be on Friday. Is one permitted to take a shower and haircut on Friday in honor of Shabbos?

A. Shulchan Aruch (550:2) writes that on all public fasts, except Tisha
B?Av, one is permitted to wash and anoint themselves. However, the Mishnah
Berurah (550:6) writes that a Bal Nefesh (one who is extra careful in
observance of mitzvos) should refrain from these activities on all four of
the public fast days. The Mishnah Berurah in Shar Hatziyun (550:8) goes
even further. He writes that the general custom today is to be strict and
refrain from bathing with hot water. This is also the opinion of the Aruch
Hashulchan (OC 550:3). Still, all the poskim write that when Asara B?Teives
falls on a Friday, as it does this year, one is permitted to bathe normally
(and take a haircut) in honor of Shabbos.

Kitzur Shulchan Aruch (122:1) writes that one may not listen to music on
Asara B?Teives. This would apply this year as well, since listening to
music on erev Shabbos is not an honor for Shabbos.

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