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ubiquitin,
For goodness’ sake, when will you be quitin?
Here we go for the third time:
Obviously we are now 27 seconds more out of sync with chazal’s molad calculation than we were in 1972 before the leap second business. But WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THAT in comparison with the approximately 3 hours that the pre-1972 time scale was ALREADY out of sync!? (And which we don’t take into account for determining our calendar!)ubiquitin,
Please read my posts more thoroughly before responding. Leap seconds have been introduced to keep in sync with an arbitrary time scale which has nothing to do with halacha. Before the first leap second was introduced that scale was already way off from what is relevant to halacha. What is relevant to halacha is a scale based on seconds of fixed length where each of those seconds from the time of chazal through today stayed equal to the mean solar second at the time of chazal. This would be about three hours off by now. Please google universal time, terrestrial time, and delta t for more information.adocs,
The rate of the earth’s spin is slowly changing, so if we add 86400 seconds for every day that has passed from the time of the gemara, but keep those seconds fixed equal 1/86400 of the length of the mean solar day AT THE TIME OF THE GEMARA, we end up with a time which is about three hours off from what is currently shown on our clocks. Chazal gave us a fixed amount of time between molads. They could only have meant in their time scale, which means our calculations are off by this amount. However halachically we don’t take this into account when fixing our calendar.ubiquitin,
Did you even read my first post (directly before the one that begins “Follow up…”)?
I said everything you said, just in fewer words and with more accurate numbers.Although the slowing of the earth’s rotation is important, leap seconds per se are not relevant as they are added to keep solar time in sync with an arbitrary measure which came about due to lots of international confusion circa 1958 (google ephemeris time, terrestrial dynamic time, and international atomic time if you want to partake in some of that confusion!)
What is important is the value of something called ΔT (delta T). This is a measure of the ongoing difference between a time scale based on the rotation of the earth and a time scale based on seconds of a fixed length. The discrepancy between today and the time of the gemara is about 3 hours (with an uncertainty of a good few minutes either way). This is a very significant amount of time, but we don’t take it into account when fixing our calendar (the date of rosh hashana depends on the molad of tishrei with certain postponement rules), and presumably we shouldn’t take it into account for kidush levana either. Lo nitnah torah lemalachei hashareis.
Follow up: Also don’t forget to add an hour during the summer when the clocks are an hour ahead.
iacisrmma,
Don’t forget to correct for the time difference to Jerusalem local solar time.
This equals the time difference to Israel minus the difference between the local solar time there and the mean Israeli time which is quite a bit off the center of the time zone. The difference to subtract is exactly 20 minutes and 56.5 seconds at the longitude of the temple mount.Don’t you know it is forbidden to look into a mirror!?
It’s Lo Tilbash!Avi, The fact that it’s well known doesn’t make it true. If it is not really necessary then it is bal tashchis. You are right that some great people grow to such proportions that legends spring up about them that aren’t always accurate. But at least they are usually the kind of story that if it were true, would reflect an inspiring character trait that the person in question actually truly had, rather than portraying them as silly enough to believe that an unnecessary act of bal tashchis is really a praisworthy chumra!
Avi K.
Do you have a good source for that story about the Chafetz Chaim? I have a feeling it never happened. It makes no sense.
Tearing up a stamp when sending a letter by messenger is not a chumra in gezel, it is pure bal tashchis. If you haven’t used the service, there is no need to pay for it. R’ Aharon Kotler in the OP was worried that the bus would fill up while he was asleep and lose a paying passenger due to his occupying two seats, but in the Chafetz Chaim story there is no loss involved.
If he had intended to send a letter but then changed his mind, would he have torn up a stamp too? After all, why should the post office lose out just because he changed his mind!
(It is possible that the government at the time had a law forbidding the sending of letters by private messengers, but I doubt it.)Yanny
Takes2-2tango:
What a mind-boggling corruption of the idea of chillul Hashem! How can opposing avodah zarah (or “shituf” at the very least) be a chillul Hashem?! This is the biggest kiddush Hashem!
When our forefather avraham ha’ivri opposed the entire world in his time and stood up for the one G-d was he making a chillul Hashem for not respecting and being tolerant of their beliefs??!! This is the arch-typical kiddush Hashem!
Amazingly, you seem to think “nihyeh kechol hagoyim” is a kiddush Hashem, and doing the job we chosen people were put into history to do is a chillul Hashem!
Making a kiddush Hashem is more than just being honest and upright and moral. It is mainly standing up for the basic fundamental beliefs which all mankind is required to have, and which they all will have when the moshiach comes.
I only buy it for the onions. Seriously, I don’t like the texture of the fish, but the flavor is great in the onions.
So for me the actual red herring is literally just a … (i’m sure there’s a pun here somewhere)TLIK:
I’m having trouble finding the Shulchan Aruch you keep mentioning mandating reporting to secular authorities and the use of secular courts for various crimes. Could you please quote siman and se’if?
Besides for those cases where recourse to the secular courts has been permitted by a beis din as the only way to stop a serial offender etc. Joseph is absolutely correct on this, and it is beyond my understanding how this is not obvious to every frum Jew.
The liberal brainwashing of Jewish opinion on this kind of issue was taken to an extreme during the Martin Grossman saga, when I remember being absolutely sickened by some of the comments on the news articles here on YWN condemning the efforts to get him a pardon and effectively saying that since he was found guilty by the law of the land he should rightly be put to death. Unbelievable.
Logically there is no difference between eating dog and cat meat and any other kind of meat. The only reason it will never be socially acceptable is because dogs and cats are “cute”. Youtube is full of videos of people going “awwww so cute” to dogs and cats.
This is the same reason that out of the hundreds of endangered species, pandas and monkeys etc. get the most attention. Remember “Justice for Harambe”? That wouldn’t have happened for an ugly insect or rodent, however endangered it might be.
Fundamentaly, the leftist liberal animal rights advocates like PETA and their ilk aren’t actually doing what they do because they selflessly love animals, they’re doing it to make themselves feel better – a sort of subconscious substitute for the lack of spiritual fulfillment in their materialistic lives.
Goq umaGoq
Should bee, eagle eat when dog and cat meet?
300 lb ± 120
The state of our technological advancement is a very relative thing. Our current technology is not at all clumsy compared to previous times. Science fiction movies portray holographic screens and suchlike because by definition they are always a step or two ahead and portray the filmmakers’ imagination of what future technology could be like.
In perhaps another few years holographic screens might be a reality, and the science fiction movies of the time would portray some even more advanced idea that we can’t even imagine yet (perhaps direct thought control of matter via some kind of exotic waves), and the OP would be asking why our technology has “only” managed to come up with “clumsy” holographic screens!
I guess it must be the pirates…
Sorry OP, I’ve looked at the picture, and as far as I can see he is looking at her just as any married couple can be seen looking at each other countless times a day on the streets of any jewish town. I’m just not getting this “amazing love and happiness” you seem to be reading into his face. Are you sure your impressions aren’t just a subjective projection of how you feel he’s probably feeling?
ubiquitin
You’re right about there being things in the gemara, I guess my main point was the fact that it is in the shulchan aruch and poskim without any dissenting opinions among the rishonim. As far as I know it is a clear historical fact that the so called “minhag” not to eat some of the simanim was simply born of neccessity and thus does not constitute a valid halachic minhag.
The only siman whose identity is in any real doubt is rubiya. If this fact induces you to substitute carrots, be my guest. That’s not what I was talking about.
What I am saying is:
a) Don’t miss anything out just because your grandfather couldn’t get hold of it.
b) Making up your own simanim is cute, but don’t feel obliged to eat something just because your grandfather happened to be fond of a particular pun.ubiquitin
I don’t think there is such thing as a minhag not to do something mentioned in the gemara and shulchan aruch without any machlokes. What happened is that some of the items mentioned were not availabe in Europe in previous generations, so they had to do without, This does not constitute a minhag, and there is no doubt that nowadays everyone should eat all the simanim that are obtainable.
The carrots were a substitute for the unavailable rubiya, because it had the SAME meaning in yiddish, but there is no indication that one should search for NEW meanings and simanim in ones current vernacular.
If you’re creative with your puns, there is almost no limit to the amount of “simanim” you can make up.
Here are some you might like:
Soup – for a super year
Mayonnaise – Hashem should open for us the wellsprings (ma’ayonos) of wisdom etc.
kiwi – As the pasuk says “ki vi yirbu yamecha etc.
apple – we should live appley ever after
lettuce – let us have a good year
raisins and celery – mentioned by iacisrmma above
liver – Hashem should de-liver as from harmAll the ones mentioned in the gemara and shulchan aruch. Why would I leave any out or add any extra?
I assume you mean toivel in a mikve not kasher. The answer is definitely not.
That headline is not misleading, it’s satirical.
What’s misleading is when YWN writes “PHOTOS IN EXTENDED ARTICLE” in big red letters, and the article isn’t any longer than usual and contains ONE extra photo practically the same as the title photo.
I find that when sweaty, iron clothes tend to react with the copper pillowcases. Believe me, sitting on voltaic piles is not comfortable!
DrYidd, are you sure those poskim you quote aren’t only taking about midnight rather than midday? At midnight we don’t have a directly observable astronomical phenomenon as we do for midday, so it makes more sense to go for the halfway-in-hours definition there than it does for midday.
Hi Mods, Why is my previous post still awaiting moderation when I see more recent posts on other threads are already going through?
Longer posts are harder to mod while driving
Sorry HaLeiVi, I know it may seem counterintuitive, but as I said this is a common misconception. I’ll try to explain.
Imagine an axis extending through the earth from north pole to south and extending into outer space. The sun from our perspective describes a circle around this axis once a day. The angle it makes relative to some predefined meridian is called the hour angle and it changes uniformly at the rate of 15 degrees per regular hour. The reason the length of the day changes is because in the summer more of this circle is above the horizon than below it, and vice-versa in the winter.
The simplest sundial has its gnomon (the stick whose shadow shows the time) pointing towards the north celestial pole (south in the southern hemisphere) i.e. parallel to this axis, and has its base 90 degrees from the gnomon i.e. parallel to the equator. The exact angles from horizontal and vertical will obviously depend on the latitude of the location.
On such a sundial equally spaced lines on the base 15 degrees apart extending round in a circle from the base of the gnomon will show equal regular hours of sixty minutes each. At the equinoxes the total extent of the shadow’s movement through the day will be 180 degrees, from the line marked “6 am” to the line marked “6 pm” (ignoring the equation of time (google it!) which sundials cannot take into account). In the summer the sun rises earlier and sets later, so the shadow will traverse more than 180 degrees, encompassing the lines before 6 am and after 6 pm, and in the winter the opposite, i.e. at sunrise the shadow will already be up to some line after 6 am and the sun will set before the shadow gets to six pm.
Actual sundials are more complicated than this and the marks are not equidistant. This is mainly due to the necessity of having a horizontal base, because in the winter the sun is always below the celestial equator so the sundial described above would have its shadow cast on the underside of the base (which was parallel to the equator remember). The principle however remains about the same. Making a sundial to show shaos zemanios is very complicated and involves changing the angle of the gnomon and/or the marks on the base throughout the year, and/or having a concave spherical-like base, all of which could not be done very accurately in ancient times.
HaLeiVi, I think you are making two separate mistakes here.
Firstly, it is a common misconception that sundials indicate shaos zemanios. Actually, most sundials indicate regular hours since they are based on the hour angle of the sun around a north-south axis. While sundials can also be made to indicate shaos zemanios (at least when calculated from netz to shekia), this is complicated to achieve accurately throughout the year, and was not common. Wikipedia’s article on sundials is a bit short on information about this particular point, but there are other websites devoted to sundials where more info can be found.
Secondly, R’ Moshe’s shittah about different size hours before and after midday is not based on any gradual astronomical phenomenon that could be conceivably indicated on any kind of sundial. It is based on the fact that the day starts at alos hashachar which is far longer before sunrise than halachic nightfall is after sunset. Thus the day is lopsided, and halfway through it is before midday (defined as when the sun is at the highest point of it’s path). Rather than redefine halachic midday as being before astronomic midday, R’ Moshe redefines the hours, making a morning sha’a zemanis a sixth of the time between alos hashachar and midday, and an afternoon sha’a zemanis a sixth of the time between midday and nightfall.
A sundial calibrated to show shaos zemanios from netz to shekiah will in fact have a minor gradual change in hour length through the day due to the fact that the year is advancing through the seasons at the same time, but this change is almost negligible in the span of one day. R’ Moshe’s shittah stems from the fact that he calculates the hours from daybreak to nightfall as explained above.
I once dreamt that I was eating a really huge marshmallow.
When I woke up, my pillow was nowhere to be found.I know life is unfair. I’m happy to accept that. My problem is, why can’t it ever be unfair in MY favor?
It is definitely permissible to put an electric stove on a timer for yom tov since it is permissible to cook (but not for shabbos even for fully cooked food due to issurim of chazoroh).
It’s all about how a computer program would react to such a command.
In programming languages such as BASIC, a “WHILE” statement introduces a loop that keeps on going for as long as the condition remains fulfilled. After each loop, the program checks to see If the condition is true or false. If the condition is never broken the loop continues forever.
The husband acts like a computer program would and keeps getting a dozen eggs for as long as he’s in the store.
Since the wife only said “WHILE you’re in the store get a dozen eggs” but didn’t provide the husband with specific instructions for when to get out of the store, he goes to the store and acts like a computer i.e. keeps getting eggs a dozen at a time until the store runs out of eggs, at which point the husband promptly prints an error message and crashes.It’s funnier if you understand it on your own from the start…
R4nd0m3x, the programmer joke goes like this:
Wife asks husband to go to the store, on the way out she adds “oh, and while you’re there, get me a dozen eggs”.
He never returns.Times have certainly changed. Once, if you davened from a phone in shul, people thought you were checking your email or surfing the web. Nowadays you can surf all you want and everyone thinks you’re davening!
Far from being tzanua, the woman in that video clip is clearly trying to draw attention to herself and is enjoying the sensation she is causing. All the other women are sitting quietly whilst she is the only one standing, clapping her hands and melodramatically covering her eyes and swaying.
If the liquid soap is too thick, it is permissible to water it down on shabbos itself. Same goes for swishing toothpaste and water around in one’s mouth in lieu of mouthwash.
They “strive to do everything according to halacha”!? How often do they succeed?
Here he comes – duck! (I’ll just bleat it, quick.) Is there an Old MacDonald thread?