A Secular Date for ‘V’Sein Tal’?

Understanding An Imponderable

Rabbi Moshe Taub

December, 2021

I. The Question

     “Rabbi, why does the English date of December 4^th-5^th determine when we begin to say v’sein tal umaatar?”

“Rabbi, how is it that there is a halacha that is dependent on the secular calendar which is capricious and arbitrary in nature, while halacha is consistent and unchanging?”

      The two forms of this question express two distinct curiosities: Why we do this, and, How it works.

     To make the explanation as simple as possible, we will first eliminate the possibility of using our Jewish calendar for our v’sein tal needs and starting date.

      II. The Jewish Calendar’s ‘Flaw’

Chazal tell us that we are to begin saying v’sein tal outside eretz yisroel sixty days after ‘tekufas tishrei/autumnal equinox/the first day of Fall’ (taanis 10).

    Now, our Jewish calendar offers us no aid in giving or easily finding a fixed date for this event.

This is because sixty days from the beginning of Fall will vary in our calendar widely from year to year (e.g., for the last three years, of this writing, this would have fallen on the 27^th of kislev in 2018; the 7^th of kislev in 2019; the 19^th of kislev 2020, etc.)

    Fair enough.

       But how does the secular calendar enter the equation?

  III. Secular Calendar to the ‘Rescue’ 

To answer that question, the reader need only know the following important feature of the secular calendar:

The non-Jewish calendar was designed specifically so that the seasons of the year would fall on relatively consistent dates. Seasons was its chief focus.

      While chazal were also concerned with seasons (tekufos), and had methods for their calculation, they did not go so far as creating set dates for them in our calendar.

This being the case, we can now simply print in our siddur the date of sixty days after the Julian Calendar’s correct and consistent commencement of Fall.

(While our secular calendar was known as the ‘Julian Calendar’, we will explain below how and why it shifted to be known as the ‘Gregorian Calendar‘)

   If the reader wishes, he could stop at this point, as the basic issue has been resolved.

…However, something still doesn’t add up – literally! -as sixty days from the start of Fall is not December 4^th, rather November 22^nd!

IV. December 4th or November 22nd?

   Indeed, Rav Yosef Karo himself codifies that secular date, “…the 60^th day will come about on the 22^nd of November…” (Beis Yosef, siman 117).

Stranger still, in most modern editions of the Beis Yosef, they replace this with, or place in brackets, “4^th of December”.

           So, what’s going on here?

        To understand this, we must start at the basics:

V. What Are Seasons?

     The Seforno (bereishis 8:21) teaches us how after the mabul Hashem tilted the earth on an axis of, about, 23°.

It is this tilt that creates our four seasons.

How so?

When the earth is in its cycle around the sun, there will be times when the northern half of earth is tilted away from the sun and its southern half is therefore butting closer toward the sun, and then, some six months later, the opposite will be true, with the earth tilting its northern side closer to the sun.

     This is why those who live below the equator have opposite seasons than us.

        The above examples represent the two extremes of the seasons. Not only are the north and south sides of the equator experiencing opposite weather phenomena, but also opposite lengths of the day. When the northern half is tipped away from the sun, their days naturally become shorter, and, for those below the equator they will experience longer daylight, and vice versa when the earth moves 180 degrees from this position. These two days of the year are called the ‘solstice’, which will be either our longest (summer) or shortest (winter) daylight days of the year, depending on if one is above or below the equator.

      When the earth continues it rotation around the sun 90 degrees, or halfway from either of these two positions, then it will reach a point where the sun is perfectly equal to both the north and the south -as the tilt of the earth is no longer away from the sun, rather toward the ‘right’ or ‘left’ of it. This is called the ‘equinox’. This too effects the length of the day, but not in the same manner the solstice does -rather on the equinox day and night and day will be of equal length, a perfect 12 hours each. This happens twice a year, as well.

    The above four phenomena make-up our four seasons, or as chazal term them ‘tekufos’.

VI. Something In Common With the Secular Calendar

             Originally, the secular (Julian) calendar divided the four seasons that made a complete year equal to 365 days and six hours. This Julian calendar was tremendously helpful to us, as we follow the view of the amara Shmuel who also says to calculate the four seasons into a year of 365 days and six hours.

      Both the Julian calendar and, lahavdil, chazal (i.e. Shmuel), are not meant to be precise, rather to giove us a clean and rounded number.

Both Shmuel and, lahavdil, Julius Caesar (‘Julian’) ignore about 11 minutes and 15 seconds of the earth’s yearly rotation around the sun. They did so to help makes calculations simple (see Rav Dovid Feinstein, below).

Acknowledging this asa rounded figure, the gemara (eiruvin 56) also records the more accurate view of Rav Ada.

Nevertheless, for seasons/tekufos and most other calculations, halacha generally follows Shmuel’s less-accurate-but-far-more-simplified approach (for reason well beyond the scope of this article; see Rabbi Bleich’s Birchas HaChama).

So then why do we wait until December 4th? Why not switch already on November 22nd? After all, that date would be sixty days from the autumnal equinox, as correctly set on an established date in the Julius Caesar’s calendar?

VII. 11 Minutes=Eternity

          The above-mentioned 11 minutes discrepancy in both our and the Julian calendar may not seem as much time, but over the course of centuries it can add up.

By 1582, this discrepancy made the true Seasonal start dates off by about ten days!

To rectify this, and to keep the seasonal start dates on more accurate footing, that same year, Pope Gregory XIII implemented two changes to the secular calendar:

• The first thing he did was to skip-ahead ten days. Meaning, that year, on October 4^th, it was agreed that the next day will be October 15^th.

While this made up for the past discrepancies, how would it protect the secular calendar from continuing to slip in the future?

To ward of this concern, he made his second implantation.

• An 11-minute discrepancy adds-up to a whole day every 130 years or so. So, he imposed that we simply neglect to add an extra day to leap years in Centenary Years (1700, 1800, etc. There are certain exceptions to this rule, see The Jewish Calendar by Rav Dovid Feinstein, p. 120).

      Having ‘fixed’ the Julian calendar, we now call it after his name, the Gregorian Calendar.

It is still the one still in use today.

VIII. Putting it All Together
   

While it appears he ‘fixed’ the secular calendar, in reality, Pope Gregory, introduce a halachic complexity.

As mentioned above, halacha follows the less accurate seasonal/yearly calculations of Shmuel. The original Julian calendar also followed that ‘averaged’ halachic approach. BUt with the Pope’s changes, oddly enough, we have to figure out Julius Caesar’s original calculations!

     Thankfully, this is far simpler than it may seem, and is accomplished by adding Pope Gregory’s ten skipped days, which brings sixty days from Fall to December 2^nd.

This gets us back to Shmuel’s date of starting v’sein tal.

Why do our siddurim say December 5th?

Well, keep in mind that Pope Gregory made rules of further skipping of days in the future. As those rules of neglecting to add a leap-year day (February 29^th) came and went -as in the year 1700 – halacha would again make up for it by adding one day; e.g. in 1700 to December 3^rd, again, just so as to get back to Shmuel’s ’rounded’ calculations.

In 1800, when the Gregory’s secular calendar rules called for skipping a day for the purposes of accuracy, we added it back, pushing v’sein tal to December 4^th…

… and in 1900, when the Gregory’s secular calendar rules called for skipping a day for the purposes of accuracy, we added that day back too, pushing v’sein tal to December 5^th.

Note that the year 2000 did not have a change in the Gregorian calendar.

In 2100, when they will once again skip a leap-date, we will have to add that day back, moving v’sein tal to December 6^th.

IX. Conclusion

     In Short:

• We follow Shmuel’s division of the seasons, although meant to be less accurate.
• The original Julian calendar followed those rule as well.
• Julious Ceasor wanted to have the each season fall on a set date each year
• These alligned with Shmuel’s, and halacha
• The Jewish calendar does not concern itslef with set dates for the yearly seasons’ and therefore, from one year to the next, the seasonal starts will fall on varying Jewish dates
• V’sein Tal beings sixty days after Fall (the autumnal equinox)
• For centuries we simply added sixty days to this halachicly accurate secular Fall start date
• In 1582, Pope Gregory ‘fixed’ the calendar to make it more accurate scientifically -but not halachickly. All the days he skipped that year, we must add back so as to return us to the cheshbon of Shmuel (and, lahavdil, the Julian (cf. Machatitz Hashekel 117:1)

       Perhaps, when moshiach comes we will revert to pre-mabul arrangements, and the tilt/axis of the earth will be straightened (lulei d’mitapina -I have no source for this) causing many of these issues to become obsolete.

Either way, may that Day come soon!