The tearing of the Shema?!
I suppose that the advancement of astronomical knowledge offered people more time to prepare more on Friday for Shabbos, and gave them more time for melave malkas than they used to have. Or, looking at it negatively, a shorter Shabbos.
Mar Gavriel,
Oy. I type Hebrew using unicode. Thus, qry)t #m( is קריאת שמע, and qry(t #m( is קריעת שמע. As you can see, the difference between a ) and an ( is minimal, and lends itself to mistakes. I will correct it.
Alex, you are correct. I've seen no evidence that this imprecision meant starting shabbos later than we do, although if it did jump by a half-hour every four weeks then certainly some shabbosos begun closer to and some less close to actual sunset.
The Talmud discusses "Shaot Zemaniyot", Plag HaMincha. There must have been ways to determine the time closer than 30 minute intervals.
Sure, but not the need.
what amazed me is that this vague timetable was used all the way through the 19th c.
also, today we have exact times even for different cities, but this 18th c. table was used all over.
are there any teshuvot on whether one may use church bells for the purpose of determining ritual times?
"In case anyone is tempted to think that this was an ignorant periodical, unconcerned about zemanim"
even abraham de sola, one of the leading anglophone jewish scholars of the mid-19th c., reproduced the same calendar without comment in his "Jewish Calendar" (montreal, 1854) (it appears in the back, in the community directory)
thanks for the link
Wikipedia's article on clocks tells us that "Medieval [Christian] religious institutions required clocks to measure and indicate the passing of time because, for many centuries, daily prayer and work schedules had to be strictly regulated. This was done by various types of time-telling and recording devices, such as water clocks, sundials and marked candles, probably used in combination." Assuming Jewish communities had access to such devices, they wouldn't have yielded very exact times for Shabbos or davening. By the late 1600's there were more accurate pendulum clocks, but it seems unlikely that most houses would have had one. Electric clocks and mass-produced watches date to the mid-1800's, and it must have taken at least that long for Jewish communities to get used to the idea that they could actually pinpoint halakhic zemanim (which had always existed in theory) to the minute.
Lion of Zion: I don't know anything about teshuvot for church bells, but the Ben Ish Chai (IIRC), in his discussion of ma`ariv times, talks about their relation to the Muslim call to prayer.
______
A good sized tabernacle! Approximate measurements OK.
I think Krach Shel Romi 1 talks about Church bells.
>Alex, you are correct. I've seen no evidence that this imprecision meant starting shabbos later than we do
Well, they did, but not due to impercision. Rather, many people kept shabbos according to Rabeinu Tam leKula and leHumra. Some Hassidim were doing this as late as 60 years ago.
If not that (I'm too lazy to check it up) it talked about having clocks in the front of shuls and the applicability of jue, vduho (otherwise known as חוקת הגוים)
My last comment was in reference to this:
I think Krach Shel Romi 1 talks about Church bells.
I'm not sure why the formatting came out the way it did.
I think you guys are overdoing it.
For one thing, a lot of halacha seforim discuss zemanim in practical terms a lot more precisely than would seem to be warranted by your claims.
More significantly, you're both missing some history & science here. For one thing, it seems to have been an extremely common practice (if not a universal one) to have someone (e.g. the shamash) appointed for the specific purpose of going about announcing when important zemanim were. This practice dates back to Talmudic times, in the form of shofar announcing the approach of Shabbos. So it's incorrect to speculate about how everyone could have had their own watch/clock/sundial - all you needed was for the community to have one, and the appointed guy would take care of notifying the people.
Secondly, it is a known fact that people who pay attention to certain phenomena become adept at casually recognizing them, and people who don't lose or never acquire that ability. I've read that aboriginal Africans can easily distinguish spoor (& the like) from various animals. The fact is that while on the whole people's lives were not as closely tied to precise time as they are today, people did need to know in rough terms what time it was, and they probably got a LOT more practice in looking at the sky for this purpose. I was told that RM Feinstein would identify hanetz by looking at the sky (& he held it had to be to-the-minute, IIRC). Now we are reliant on our watches, and don't pay a whole lot of attention to where the sun is at which point of the day, but it's very likely that back in those days people could get a pretty accurate read on it.
That said, I doubt if either of the above could get you to-the-minute accuracy like we have now. But it's not like everyone just rounded everything off to the half-hours either. They probably were off by a couple of minutes here and there.
You can't prove anything from stuff published in the US or England - these were not places populated by b'nei torah at the time.
I think you're perceiving some kind of agenda here, when there is none. Let's see, I maintain that there is no reason to assume that they ushered in shabbos later (as opposed to earlier). I also noted that it isn't as if they were ignoring the concept of zemanim; the same periodical included a discussion of zeman krias shema.
As for their being no b'nei Torah in England in the 19th century, there were always at least a handful. Did they have secret calendars? Furthermore, the Voice of Jacob was an Orthodox periodical. I didn't hear R. Solomon Hirschell (a great-grandson of the Chacham Tzvi, recognized talmid chochom, and part of the rabbinic establishment in the old country) object at the half-hour am haratzus which was widespread among his flock. Frankly, I bet that's when he made shabbos, too.
That said, you are right that people who live closer to nature are more attuned to the hours and sunrise and sunset. That probably meant that instead of lighting at 5:00 PM, as per the calendar, you could light closer to the actual time (say, 5:23) as the occasion demanded. However, I don't know that by virtue of living in the 18th or 19th century, especially in cities, one was so much more attuned to nature.
"I think you're perceiving some kind of agenda here, when there is none."
I'm not. Or at least I wasn't. Now that you point it out, maybe there could be - on the part of some people - some attempt to bring up the good old "mimetic" jive and suggest that people today are being overly fastidious about these things. But it hadn't occurred to me at the time, and I'm not accusing anyone of such attitudes even now, and certainly not you based on your comments to date.
So let's just treat the points I made on their merits, if we can.
"As for their being no b'nei Torah in England in the 19th century, there were always at least a handful. Did they have secret calendars?"
I don't know if the practice of basing zmanim on calendars was universal back in those days. In addition, you've not established that there were no other publicized calendars, such that their existenace would have to be secret.
It's not uncommon for the rabbis to support simplifying measures for the unlearned masses on ocasion.
"I didn't hear R. Solomon Hirschell (a great-grandson of the Chacham Tzvi, recognized talmid chochom, and part of the rabbinic establishment in the old country) object at the half-hour am haratzus which was widespread among his flock."
I don't think this is a big deal either way, but I object in principle to this type of reasoning. You wouldn't be expeceted to hear if he objected. It's a long time ago, not a very important matter, and I doubt if you've done all that much research into what R' Hischell did or didn't object to to begin with.
[This type of reasoning IS used to support all sorts of agendas - not necessarily by you here, FTR. "We never heard that so-and-so objected to such-and-such ...". It's logically unsound.]
"Frankly, I bet that's when he made shabbos, too.
Possible.
"However, I don't know that by virtue of living in the 18th or 19th century, especially in cities, one was so much more attuned to nature."
I don't know. It all depends on how widespread clocks were. If people generally didn't have access to some mechanical timekeeper they likely used the sun to know when it was getting close to closing time or whatever. So they would naturally be much better judges of how close it is to shkia (or whatever else).
Wolf and Gabbe: The כרך של רומי is discussing a clock tower in a synagogue courtyard, and his issue is indeed חוקות הגוים:
http://bdl.freehostia.com/2009/0.../the-horologio/
FP, you contradict yourself. You express doubt as to whether there were any "bnei torah" in the US or England in the 19th century. And you also refer to the "mimetic jive" with scare quotes, indicating your belief that the concept is invalid.
But there was no such thing as "bnei torah" up until 40-50 years ago. You were shomer shabbos or you werent. Period. Certain yeshivah "educated" [I can also use scare quotes] young men started thinking of themselves in those terms in the 1960s, as though they were better than other religious Jews, who by implication were not bnei torah. Prior to that point you simply dont see the concept anywhere. You have phrases like "baal nefesh" or "yorei shamayim", but not a reference to an entire class of people as "bnei torah".
Point is, that concept was a development of post war Europe. [Even among those who learned in yeshivas while still in Europe, you dont see their graduates referring to themselves as "bnai torah", as opposed to everyone else.] And that is exactly what the "mimetic jive" is concerned with.
Actually IIRC the Ramban used the term in a similar context, and I had that in mind when I wrote my post. It's in Milchemes (RH), in disputing the Ba'al Hamaor who said that the custom in EY was to have one day of RH. The Ramban countered that there were very few Jews in EY "v'ainam b'nei Torah", so their custom is not significant.
In any event, the term is not important - the concept is. (And it's not that there weren't *any* b'nei Torah, but that they were few and far in between, and they did not determine community standards.)
I should add, FWIW, that if you want more information about the underlying concept of the b'nei torah distinction, try looking up phrases and concepts like chaver & am ha'aretz, which refer to groups of people and which go back thousands of years.
FP, I'm sure you can find isolated references to the phrase "bnai torah" in more than 2000 years of rabbinic literature. Finding such a term no more means it existed, any more than unearthing an example of "da'as torah" from before the 19th century mean that concept existed before then.
But I agree with you that the term is not important, the concept is. Where we differ, I think, is whether the way the Lakewood communinty's self-perception is merely a continuation of an already existing mindset. You seem to think it is, comparable to the way chazal spoke of the term chaverim.
I disagree. The Lakewood community, or whatever you want to call it, views itself as "bnei torah" as opposed to other religious Jews. It holds there are secular Jews, orthodox Jews, then "Torah Jews", or, "bnei torah". Naturally you don't find this stated explicitly on the front pages of Hamodiah/yated, but the attitude is unmistakbaly there. It IS explicit, mind you, in the speeches of their rabbis and roshei yeshivah. When they speak of themselves seff-congatulatory as "torah Jews", they are not comparing themselves to Reform [who are not goires bichlal.] They are comparing themselves to other religious Jews, who are, in their mind, NOT bnei torah.
I dont believe that mindset - creating entire classes within sabbath-observant Jews - has ever existed on the scale we see now, in large part because the entie koillel concept has never existed on the scale we see now. The chaver/amhaaretz distinction you mention, for example, was more with reference to tumah tehara than anything else. The disdain with which chazal viewed amharatzim [not a feather in their cap, agav] was always around, yes, but thats incomparable to the way Lakewood sees itself as practically a separate denomination of Jews.
I agree, but I disagree. I think that it existed, but the bifurcation was among what many historians call "Rabbinic" and non-rabbinic circles. People like R. Yaakov Emden and the Neziv (two names which flew into my head) were born into and a part of "Rabbinic" circles, as well as countless thousands of people without such famous names. Other observant Jews very often were not.
Today, the Lakewood world and their satellites and counterparts view themselves in the same way as the rabbinic world of old, the difference being that Lakewood et al actually do encompass a much wider popular group which are not and never would have been part of that rabbinic world back in the old days. In a certain way, this circle has expanded and become much more open to admission. After all, as long as you can dress the right way and train yourself to think and act the right way, you can belong. You don't have to actually be a talmid chochom or anything like that.
I agree with your point, Fred. I tried to anticipate it, sort of, by acknowledging how rabbis always felt some sort of superiority, and so, yes, there was a bifurcation in that sense. But that was limited to a small group of people, and however repulsive that attitude was, it was at least justifiable numerically. But there is nothing elite about Lakewood today. Every Chaim, Yankel and Moishe is sitting in koillel.
Thus, I dont think the Lakewood mindset comes from viewing themselves as the continuom of rabbis - I think it's a new creation altogether, started in the 1960s, of a society of "bnai torah". Within this society you have rabbis, and nebach you also have ballei battim, but they are all bnai torah. Unlike, of course, anyone outside of Lakewood, who is not a ben torah, but, rather, little more than a potential donor to fulfill "melahctam nasos al yedei acheirim."
[FP, this is just a little sidebar discussion, nothing more. Please dont accuse me of being obsessed with Charedim, I know your pet theory!!]
DF, I think you're getting carried away with something that - for purposes of this discussion - existed only in your own head. Whether or not the reference to the Ramban was an isolated example or not, the point I was making was the exact same one that the Ramban was making and you can't draw any inferences from what I said that were not in what he wrote. IOW, if you think there's no reference in the Ramban's words to two separate communities then don't read it into my words either.
Bottom line is that there have been communities that are largely comprised of less educated or less religious or what-have-you - whether in 10th century Palestine or 19th century US or England - and the customs of these communities are not necessarily representative of what these customs would be or should be in a more educated and religious community. That's all.
So the issue is invalid to the extent that it has anything to do with this particular discussion.
But FWIW, you're wrong about the history as well, and the divide between the chaverim and the am ho'aratzim in Talmudic times was greater than that between the b'nei Torah and non-b'nei Torah in our times, and back in the day the "neki'ei had'as shebiyerushalayim" would not sit down to eat before checking out everyone else there, in case one of them might be an AH. Mostly about tuma and tahara, as you say, but not all, and the Talmud warns against anyone marrying his daughter to an am ho'aretz ("as if he bound her in front of a lion"), and this attitude provoked great resentment on the part of the AH at the time ("greater than the hatred of the Gentiles for the Jews") to the point where R' Akiva wanted to bite any TC he could.
As to whether it's justified is another question. I say on the whole it is, although there are always exceptions. Much as there were in Talmudic times as well (the well known tz'vuim, "who act like Zimri and demand reward like Pinchos"). YMMV on this score, but since you are the type of guy who feels qualified to mouth off on whether Chazal's attitude on this is "a feather in their cap" or not, I don't think someone who finds such an arrogant attitude abhorrent - a group that would strongly correlate with b'nei Torah - needs to be concerned about what you think of Lakewood people either.
S. you are oversimplifying. In addition to the rabbinic versus non-rabbinic, there was also a divide between "am ho'aratzim" and better educated. Mussar seforim that say "such and such level is good for am ho'aratzim" (or sometimes "for women and am ho'aratzim") were not referring to non-rabbinic circles. And certainly the well-known phenomenon of "Yishuv-niks" refers to something far more primitive than merely non-rabbinic (they lived on isolated farms with barely any Jews in the area and were ignorant of the most basic aspects of Judaism).
I think the level of Jewish education and practice in the US & England in the mid-eighteenth century was a st
ep or two below that of, say, mainstream Poland and Lithuania, even outside of rabbinic circles. Do you disagree?
>I think the level of Jewish education and practice in the US & England in the mid-eighteenth century was a step or two below that of, say, mainstream Poland and Lithuania, even outside of rabbinic circles. Do you disagree?
No, with the caveat that there were levels of education in Poland and even Lithuania in the 19th century which were quite appalling. We're talking about many Jews who did sit at the feet of a melamed as youngsters, but were never taught to write, and indeed grew up being unable to write their name, or only knowing how to misspell it (eg, documents signed by a "מרדחי"). I agree that among the more successful Jewishly educated (and I don't only mean in "rabbinic circles") there was at least a step or two more Jewish knowledge than in the US or England at the time, albeit at least some of it must have been due to greater observance and closer proximity to Jewishly knowledgeable people in the environment than to successes in the educational methods.
I agree that I am oversimplifying (really, how can you capture entire cultures and entire centuries in a few lines, as if I knew enough to even do so in volumes?), but so are you! Unless by "bnei Torah" you mean to exclude only am haratzim?
If so, surely you would agree that the kind of discussion in the Voice of Jacob about zman krias shema may not be high level, but is not an article by or for am haratzim?
FP, I have no idea what you are saying in your last paragraph, not least because I dont know what "YMMV" means. But, since I dont truly care, please do not bother explaining.
Good night, everybody.
S. "I agree that I am oversimplifying (really, how can you capture entire cultures and entire centuries in a few lines, as if I knew enough to even do so in volumes?), but so are you! Unless by "bnei Torah" you mean to exclude only am haratzim?"
In the context of my original comment, that was in fact what I meant.
"If so, surely you would agree that the kind of discussion in the Voice of Jacob about zman krias shema may not be high level, but is not an article by or for am haratzim?"
Not by, but why not for? It's just practical instructions on when to daven, and does not presuppose any prior knowledge of the subject.
DF: "FP, I have no idea what you are saying in your last paragraph, not least because I dont know what "YMMV" means. But, since I dont truly care, please do not bother explaining."
I remember that from when I was in third grade. "LALALA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU, LALALALA!!"
YMMV = Your mileage may vary.
"For one thing, it seems to have been an extremely common practice (if not a universal one) to have someone (e.g. the shamash) appointed for the specific purpose of going about announcing when important zemanim were . . ."
i've seen references to this in central european communal privileges (i.e., the shul klopper). but this was more about residency rights than ritual accuracy. did the position of the shul klopper exist in other areas where residency was not an issue? also, having shul klopper might work in a tiny jewish community where all members live in an isolated area, but would have been useless (as far as up-to-the-minute accuracy) in places where jews did not all live in area the size of a city block. (e.g., in new york in the 1850s).
finally, if the average person really did have that close connection to nature (although i suspect you are highly exaggerating this), then why were the calendars so vague?
"You can't prove anything from stuff published in the US or England - these were not places populated by b'nei torah at the time."
who cares? what does being a בן תורה have to do with anything? my question is whether the average jew--in america or elsewhere--had the ability to distinguish between smaller units of time. not whether they had the ability to arrange a calendar with specific times for each week (i assume they did) or if they were indifferent to חילול שבת (i assume they weren't)
"you've not established that there were no other publicized calendars"
i can't speak for england, but i feel pretty confident in saying that i've seen all early (printed) calendars issued in america. as i stated in the original post, they all use the same general times that were first compiled in the middle of the 18th c. for new york.
also, just to clarify, it was not my intention to imply that these jews were מחלל שבת because they used generalized times. i assume that the timetables were arranged with the intention to prevent חילול שבת and thus give the times as earlier than they really were?
Lion of Zion: "i've seen references to this in central european communal privileges (i.e., the shul klopper). but this was more about residency rights than ritual accuracy. did the position of the shul klopper exist in other areas where residency was not an issue?"
I don't know what this means. The purpose of a shul klopper was not about residency (IOW it wasn't created for the purpose of establishing a privilege to fight about). Perhaps you can clarify here.
"also, having shul klopper might work in a tiny jewish community where all members live in an isolated area, but would have been useless (as far as up-to-the-minute accuracy) in places where jews did not all live in area the size of a city block. (e.g., in new york in the 1850s)."
It definitely would have been less useful (although even in large cities, Jews tended to live in smaller sub-communities). But I thought you were trying to make a larger point about what people did in Europe in general, and were pointing to these calendars as representative examples. It undermines this point if the calendars were made in circumstances (i.e. large cities) that made the methods used elsewhere less effective.
"who cares? what does being a בן תורה have to do with anything? my question is whether the average jew--in america or elsewhere--had the ability to distinguish between smaller units of time. not whether they had the ability to arrange a calendar with specific times for each week (i assume they did) or if they were indifferent to חילול שבת (i assume they weren't)"
The rationale for using rounded times was possibly the same as the rationale for starting programs and other schedules at rounded times. People are not interested in focusing on to-the-minute times, and it's easier and more convenient to use rounded times. People who are more into religious minutiae are more predisposed to use times that are precise to the minute.
And while I don't know if people in GB & the US were completely indifferent to chillul Shabbos, it's very likely that many people didn't appreciate the significance of "a single minute after the zman" (& thus would have been less precise about it if less convenient times were used). This was also a big problem in Eastern Europe too, FWIW, and there was rabbinic decrying about this problem for centuries.
"also, just to clarify, it was not my intention to imply that these jews were מחלל שבת because they used generalized times. i assume that the timetables were arranged with the intention to prevent חילול שבת and thus give the times as earlier than they really were?"
You can assume no longer. I've looked up all the zmanim for sunset in London (from http://www.myzmanim.com/day.aspx.../elev/-/-/-/-/)
and comp
ared them with the zmanim given in this calendar. I'm unclear about whether the calendar saying "Sabbath at ..." means hadlakas neiros or shkia. I assume the former, in which case they were giving considerable margin.
March 4 5:44:45 5:30
March 11 5:56:56 5:30
March 18 6:08:55 6:00
March 25 6:20:45 6:00
April 1 6:32:31 ?
April 8 6:44:15 6:30
(I changed the last two by an hour to account for the lack of DST back then).
"I assume the former, in which case they were giving considerable margin."
This sentence makes no sense. My apologies.
Minor correction on source: the Ramban in Michamos that I cited is actually in Beitzah (3a in the Rif's pagination) and not in RH. But I did have the language and context correct. :)
The commencement of Shabbat in England has always meant candlelighting time, which is 15 minutes before sundown.(18 minutes may have been too confusing especially if they used approximations for Shkia)
Also there was a tradition starting in the 17th Century, when the elders of the(Ashkenazi) Great Synagogue would, On Friday afternoon before Mincha, walk the 50 yards or so, dressed in ceremonial finery, to Bevis Marks, the Sephardic, elder brother Shul. They would politely knok on the door and then be informed of the following week's calelighting time, and say thank you very much, tirn around and go back to the Great and daven Mincha. I'm told this continued well into the 20th Century. The Great was destroyed in WW2.
A wonderful custom.
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