March, 2022
A classic and well-known Jewish joke:
“There is a zoology course at a distinguished university in which the students were requested to write a term paper on the subject of elephants. The French student writes a paper with the predictable title, “On the Food Habits of the Elephant”; the German student submits a teutonically comprehensive “Introduction to the Bibliographic Sources for the Study of the Elephant”; the American student submits a paper on the topic of “Breeding Bigger and Better Elephants”; and, finally, the Jewish student chooses as his theme —what else?—“The Elephant and the Jewish Question.” (Santer, Johns Hopkins University Press).
While my next sentence may sound like the above joke’s continuation, I wish to discuss ‘Daylight Savings Time and the Jewish Problem’.
The issue of Daylight Savings Time has always been discussed, debated and even experimented with. I am a contrarian. Put me in front of a chavrusah and have him say a pshat that I’ve always thought of myself and, suddenly, I will see its flaws.
I never really thought deeply into Daylight Savings Time, save for every November when I would have a flash-of-a-thought, “Why don’t they just keep the time-gain of an hour of sunlight?”
But then, the other week, I heard on the news that the Senate voted unanimously to make Daylight Savings Time permanent. It was only then when, all of a sudden, I was awakened to the many issues it would cause for bnei Torah.
The bill was titled ‘The Sunshine Protection Act’. It is an odd name, as if they were Yehoshua who can, by fiat, decree the sun stay in the sky longer. In fact, Senator Marco Rubio, who introduced this bill, made sure to explain on his website that, “This bill does not…change the amount of hours of sunlight, etc.”!
According to this law -which still must be voted on by congress and then signed by the president -in 2023 we will change the clock one last time, leaving DST in place for good.
In truth, this is not the first change relating to DST. Let us go back in history for a moment.
DST was enacted in the United States following Germany’s 1916 effort to conserve fuel during World War I. Initially, it was authorized for only half of the year, but in 2005 Congress extended DST to eight months, leaving only four months of standard time. The United States has also gone through periods where we have had year-round DST, including in 1942-1945 and 1974-1975.
Those brief changes, obviously, didn’t last. In the Fall of 1974, a poll was commissioned where opposition to DST outran support by a 53% to 41% margin. The reason was as clear as day -or as dark as night! -people didn’t want to send their kids off to school, or go to work, in the pitch black.
Funny enough, polling hasn’t gotten much better, with over seventy percent in favor of keeping the status quo (CNN, March 14th 2021, ‘Americans Don’t Like Changing the Clocks, But Can’t Agree on a Solution’).
The reader may be wondering what the problem may be for us. After all, Chanukah licht would be at around 6pm instead of 5pm, allowing for more fathers to be home to light on time! In addition, even during the winter, most shuls would be able to expect ballabattim to have returned from work so that everyone can make a unified mincha and maariv each and every night of the year. So what’s the issue?
The issue is davening in the mornings!
Right now, the goal of ST and DST is to have it so that the sun will be rising as most people get up in the morning. Sunrise changes within a two-hour window throughout the year.
So, dear reader, follow me into the future:
Let us fast-forward to March 12th, 2023, the first day of our new permanent DST. In New York City, sunrise, or neitz hachama, will be at 7:12am. From there it will get earlier, reaching its nadir around June 15th, at 5:24am. By November 4th, 2023 – the morning before we would have switched back to ST -sunrise will be at 7:29am.
Now, would laws stay the same, the next day would be a 6:30am sunrise, but if we stick with DST, it will be at 7:30am.
The time for sunrise will keep moving up from there, reaching its zenith in the beginning of January 2024, when sunrise will be as late as 7:20am, even at ST…and 8:20am if we keep DST!!!
It goes without saying -leaving halacha to the side for a moment -that our challenge of getting our young boys and girls out of bed in the morning will only be greatly increased because of this, and, that safety in bussing will also be pushed to its brink.
Yet, it will be the halachic and societal changes that will be the most noticeable. Most insignificantly, no Shabbos of the year will end before, around, 6:30pm, but let’s go back to those sunrise mornings.
Chazal teach that the ideal time to daven is netz (Berachos 30a). But when is the earliest one may daven? While the gemara does allow for an earlier (and certainly, later) time, it is unclear when that is.
The Rambam rules that one could, bdieved, daven at alos, or ‘dawn’ (hil. teffila 3:7).
The Rosh gives a later bdieved staring time, when the eastern sky is illuminated (Berachos 4:1).
Rabbeinu Yeruchem gives, still, a later time than that: when one can recognize a friend at four amos distance (nesiv 3:3; see Beis Yosef to siman 89).
We rule that one should never daven before the time of the Rosh, unless one has no other option.
Now, to be sure, when alos/dawn is exactly is a debate with close to ten opinions. But let us take the most lenient view. Say one wishes to daven at alos (already a great leniency), and takes the view that this is 90 minutes before netz (another lenient indulgence) -even then the earliest minyan would still be after 7am! And this is only if our poskim sanction such a broad halachic allowance. They may instead urge that, like with mincha, people find minyanim near their offices at a more lichatchila time. We cannot overstate how troubling this would all be to the chinuch of our children. Part of yiddeshkeit is the witnessing of thousands coming to and from shul each morning.
In addition, yeshivos and chedarim will have to have learning start much later -as certainly they would never sanction a chinuch of a bdieved. Imagine the amount of bitul Torah this will cause!
Gevalt!
Rabbi David Warshaw, the president of the National Council of Young Israel recently lamented –“Since Covid, shuls need stability now more than ever. This new law will take our shuls five steps back!”
So, what do we do?
I am not sure. The first step, of course, is to inform.
I hope this column will be a good start.
Shul Chronicles 
Leave a comment