Volume 51 Number 47
Produced: Mon Mar 6 6:46:56 EST 2006
Subjects Discussed In This Issue:
Counting for a Minyan (3)
[Batya Medad, Yisrael Medad, Esther & Sholom Parnes]
Jewish Calendar
[Nathan Lamm]
Jewish vs. non-Jewish Calendars (4)
[Mike Gerver, Saul Mashbaum, Len, David Charlap]
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From: Batya Medad <ybmedad@...>
Date: Sun, 05 Mar 2006 20:24:06 +0200
Subject: Re: Counting for a Minyan
> ...the root cause of this situation. It turns out that the "waiter"
> will not count a non-frum Jew (whatever that means) as part of a
> minyan so he waited outside to keep us from having ten with this other
> (new attendee)...
L'Ilui nishmato shel Rabbi Efrayim Wolf, whose Yartzeit is in Adar.
Among the numerous stories about how Rabbi Wolf single-handedly (with
the help of his wife of course) managed to turn Great Neck into a
thriving Orthodox community was his welcoming of any Jew to a minyan,
and believe me, for the first ten years or more they were in Great Neck,
it was hard to find a minyan of ten fully Orthodox Shomrei Shabbat
families.
He encouraged men to come to doven "just once a week," and then, "maybe
just one more day," and never repremanded them for going to the office
on Shabbat after dovening. He just made them feel more and more
welcome, until they made the decision themselves to keep more mitzvot.
Those men were good enough to make a minyan according to Rabbi Wolf.
And how did the day school function in its early days with so few
religious families? Rabbi Wolf promised "bus service" to make it easier
for the parents. Imagine their surprise when the rabbi pulled up to the
door to pick up their kids.
Yehi zichro baruch.
Batya
http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/
http://me-ander.blogspot.com/
http://samizdatblogfree.blogspot.com/
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From: Yisrael Medad <ybmedad@...>
Date: Sun, 05 Mar 2006 20:56:59 +0200
Subject: Counting for a Minyan
Re: Anonymous
>How do others handle this -- especially to avoid embarassing someone.
Well. of course, you can't. So, do you embarass a person who thinks
he's being a good Jew and giving up his time to help out with the minyan
even if that isn't his regular practice (but could becme) or the
"frummer yid"?
Why not use Adar as the "happy" month and refuse to count him in until
another Jew comes in and telling him he's just too frum for the rest of
you and maybe he should seek out his own type of minyna that isn't
exclusivist unnecessarily?
After all, sometimes frummer yidden are quite happy to be all by
themselves.
Yisrael Medad
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From: Esther & Sholom Parnes <merbe@...>
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 18:28:59 +0200
Subject: Counting for a Minyan
Anonymous posted about # 10 who waited in the hall for #11 to show
up because # 9 was not shomer shabbat and #10 did not want a non-shomer
shabbat to be counted in the minyan.
See responsa of Rav Mordechai Farkash at
http://www.haoros.com/Archive/?kovetz=835&Cat=9&haoro=19 where he quotes
the Klausenberger Rebbe among others
See http://www.beith-din.com/secular.htm
See responsa of Rav Yehuda Amital at
http://www.etzion.org.il/dk/1to899/477daf.htm#Heading9
These were the results of a simple Google search.
I shuder when I think of the potential chillul hashem involved in this
practice.
Sholom
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From: Nathan Lamm <nelamm18@...>
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 08:00:50 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Jewish Calendar
Asher Grossman mentions an "issur" to refer to any month other than
Nissan as the "first." He neglects two points:
-There is a well-known derivation of a pasuk in Yirmiyahu in which we
are told that upon return from Bavel, we will no longer say "The G-d who
took us out of Egypt" but "The G-d that took us out of Bavel." Chazal
point out that this is precisely what happened- we stopped referring to
"the first month", "the second month," and so on- that is, the referring
to Yetziat Mitzraim- and instead began referring to "Nisan," "Iyar," and
so on- all Babylonian names.
-All Jews today begin counting the year in Tishrei. Many books on the
Jewish year begin with Tishrei. Essentially, we've made Tishrei our
first month. (Which also happens to be Babylonian practice, although
that's not neccessarily linked.)
Mr. Grossman then goes on to say:
"When is Yom Ha'Atzmaut? Roughly %95 have no clue!"
Well, I'd cut some slack, as the actual day varies depending on the day
of the week. Sometimes the "rule" changes from year to year. In any
event, let's be honest- the Gregorian calendar happens to be much more
regular in regards to time, seasons and so on. Which leads to one more
point:
"we Jews have a calendar which is older than the general one by about
3700 years, and yet so well regulated that it is still accurate (whereas
the general calendar gets "fixed" by some seconds every few years to
prevent what happened to the Julian calendar)."
This is simply incorrect: The Julian calendar, which itself was nearly
identical to a much older Roman calendar, was fixed about 400 years
before the Jewish, and the virtually identical Gregorian about 1200
years after the Jewish. Furthermore, the Jewish calendar certainly does
contain "errors," however slight, which, lacking a central authority, we
can't (or, better, can't bring ourselves to) fix. In a few thousand
years, Pesach will fall in the wrong season, to take one example. May
Jewish unity arrive well before then.
Nachum Lamm
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From: <MJGerver@...> (Mike Gerver)
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 18:57:12 EST
Subject: Jewish vs. non-Jewish Calendars
Asher Grossman writes, in v51n44,
The sad fact is that many Jews forget completely about the Jewish
dates and run their lives around the goyish calendar. This
sometimes borders on the tragic-comic. In many conversations with
secular Jews in Israel, my father will ask them: When is Yom
Ha'Atzmaut? Roughly %95 have no clue! Mind you, this is a National
holiday - not a strictly religious one. Could you imagine an
American not knowing when is Independence Day?
which is a sentiment that I completely agree with. I would add that the
problem seems to be worse among younger people, say in their 20s or 30s,
than it is among people my age (in their 50s), which I attribute to a
decrease in the quality of Jewish education in secular Israeli schools
over the past generation. (There are also serious problems with secular
education in both religious and secular schools in Israel, but that's
another topic.)
But then Asher goes on to say,
But then, they were never taught that we Jews have a calendar
which is older than the general one by about 3700 years, and yet
so well regulated that it is still accurate (whereas the general
calendar gets "fixed" by some seconds every few years to prevent
what happened to the Julian calendar).
This is confusing two different things. The need to add leap seconds has
nothing to do with the accuracy of the calendar, but is due to the fact
that the length of the second is based on the average rotation period of
the earth in the year 1900 CE, and the earth's rotation rate is slowing
down due to tidal drag. You would need to add the same leap seconds
whether you were using the Jewish or secular calendar, if you want your
electric clock time to continue to coincide with sundial time.
It is true that the fixed Jewish calendar is somewhat more accurate, as
far as the seasons of the year are concerned, than the Julian calendar,
but it is much less accurate than the Gregorian calendar. The Julian
calendar is off by 1 day in 128 years, the Jewish calendar is off by one
day every 217 years, and the Gregorian calendar is off by one day every
3200 years. But the fixed Jewish calendar was not invented by Jews, it
was invented by the Greeks, who called it the Metonic calendar, after
the Greek astronomer Meton. The Jews adopted it when they needed a fixed
calendar, due to the collapse of the organized the community in Eretz
Yisrael in the fourth century CE, and their inability to continue
relying on a Beit Din to decide each year whether to add an Adar Sheni.
The fixed Jewish calendar is even more accurate with respect to Rosh
Chodesh continuing to coincide with the new moon, which is a separate
issue from the chagim falling at the right seasons of the year. The
length of the month used by the fixed Jewish calendar, 29 days, 12
hours, 44 minutes, and 3 1/3 seconds, was accurate to within about 1/10
of a second, at the time the calendar was adopted. Nowadays, if days,
hours, minutes and seconds are defined by the earth's rotation period,
this figure for the length of the month is too long by about 1/2 second,
due to the absolute slowing down of the earth's rotation rate, and due
to the speeding up of the moon's orbital period around the earth (part
of a periodic variation, over about 80,000 years, caused by the
gravitational pull of Jupiter and other planets). This value for the
length of the month was also not original with Jews, but was taken from
the Greek astronomer Ptolemy, who based it on lunar eclipse observations
in Babylon over a period of more than 800 years.
Mike Gerver
Raanana, Israel
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From: Saul Mashbaum <smash52@...>
Date: Sun, 05 Mar 2006 23:35:59 +0200
Subject: Re: Jewish vs. non-Jewish Calendars
Asher Grossman <asherg@...> wrote, in suggesting it is improper to
designate secular months by numbers
> The Passuk says, of Chodesh Nissan: "Hachodesh hazeh lachem Rosh
> Chodashim, rishon hu lachem lechodshei hashanah" - This month is to
> you a head for all months, a first shall it be to you of the months of
> the year. Chazal learned from this duplicacy that there is an (at
> least implied) Issur to call a month other than Nissan "The first
> month" - "Hu rishon, v'ein acher rishon" - [Nissan] is the first,
> another is not the first. Using a numbering system to denote the
> general months, even when referring to a month other than January,
> implicitly defines January as being "the first" - which is not
> allowed.
As Asher implies in the beginning of his post, not everyone agrees with
this reasoning.
Gil Student wrote on his Hirhurim blog (on Thursday March 3, 2005)
"R. Ya'akov Ibn Habib clearly implied, and later posekim note this
explicitly, that referring to March as the third month (i.e. counting
months from January) is a violation of the commandment to count months
from Nissan. Thus, to refer to today's date as 3/3/05 is prohibited. I
find this difficult because a Jewish month (hodesh) is one lunar cycle.
When counting days, there is no obligation to begin with Nissan. When
counting weeks, there is no obligation to begin with Nissan. When
counting years, there is certainly no obligation to begin with Nissan.
Then why, when counting solar months, is there any obligation to begin
counting from Nissan? March is not a hodesh but a solar
month. Therefore, there should be nothing preventing us from calling
March the third solar month."
I find Gil's argument persuasive, and would add the following
(elaborating on the above statement "When counting years, there is
certainly no obligation to begin with Nissan."):
The mishna which says that there are 4 New Years indicates that we
accept multiple calendars. If 1 Tishrei is Rosh Hashana l'shmitta, then
obviously Tishrei is the *first month* of the shmitta year. Would one
who says this violate the principle "Hu rishon, v'ein acher rishon"?
Surely not, since he is making a statement in the framework of a
different calendar than the one which must start with Nissan. The Jewish
calendar of months must with Nissan, and no other month; other calendars
may start with different months.
Saul Mashbaum
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From: <LenLinder@...> (Len)
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 10:59:27 EST
Subject: Re: Jewish vs. non-Jewish Calendars
The sad fact is that many Jews forget completely about the Jewish
dates and run their lives around the goyish calendar
The fact is that unless we live only in the religious world, most of our
lives (business, educational, personal, social) revolve around the
secular calendar, the calendar that is used by the society we live in
We use the Jewish calendar for the part of our lives that is Jewish
(religious).
The halacha quoted (not to use the numbers for the secular months, just
the names) dates from a period in our history when we could separate
ourselves from the secular world and have as little contact with it as
we wished.
but that isn't the case in the here-and-now.
Len
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From: David Charlap <shamino@...>
Date: Sun, 05 Mar 2006 11:17:24 -0500
Subject: Re: Jewish vs. non-Jewish Calendars
Asher Grossman wrote:
> ... In many conversations with secular Jews in Israel, my father will
> ask them: When is Yom Ha'Atzmaut? Roughly %95 have no clue! Mind you,
> this is a National holiday - not a strictly religious one. Could you
> imagine an American not knowing when is Independence Day?
I suggest that most American's would not know the answer to that
question. Most people never use the name "Independence Day" and always
refer to it as "July 4th".
Other American holidays (that are not referred to by date), like
Presidents' Day, Memorial Day and Labor Day would similarly result in
most Americans having to consult a calendar.
Never overestimate the knowledge of the typical person (American,
Israeli or otherwise.) Jay Leno (an American talk-show host) often
performs a comedy segment where he interviews random people on the
street, asking them trivial questions (like "Who is Dick Cheney"), and
gets a wide assortment of flat-out-wrong answers. It is both funny and
saddening, and seems to parallel your father's experience with the
typical Israeli.
-- David
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End of Volume 51 Issue 47
