A message just received from my cellular telephone provider (no, that's not what my phone looks like):
Shalom, winter day light savings in Israel will go into effect on
October 30th, 2016 at 02:00 and the clock will be set back one hour. In
order to avoid disruptions in setting the the time on this date it is
recommended to set your handset's clock immediately and no later than
October 30th, 2016 Manual Mode and to adjust it to the Athens-Greece
time zone. Following the change to winter daylight savings you should
reset the clock's settings of your handset to automatic mode and to the
Jerusalem time zone. For more information call the customers service
center at *0058. Sincerely, Golan Telecom.
If you are in Israel and your cell phone set the clock back by an hour this morning, you'd better re-set it to be in Athens or Cairo or Pakistan....
Cell phone developers had prepared for the annual time change without
taking into account the possibility that the Knesset might change the date.
Concerns were raised Sunday that many may be late for work, after
mistakenly believing their phone is giving them the correct time.
Israelis usually set their clocks back by one hour in the week before
the Yom Kippur holiday. However, this year the clocks will only change
at the end of October, as is customary in Europe.
Daylight savings time is controversial in Israel, where it has become
part of the debate over religion and the state. The relatively early
time change in the fall that was customary in previous years was meant
to make life easier for observant Jews who wake up early for the Slichot
prayers, and for Jews who fast on Yom Kippur.
All this confusion will undoubtedly last until the next time that Shas gets hold of the Interior Ministry. And from the first link again....
Some experts argue that Israel should not switch the time at all. Summer
Time savings are minimal in Israel due to its being located closer to
the equator than Europe, they say.
Of all the foolish things the Shas party did during its years holding the Interior Ministry, one of the most foolish things it did was play games with daylight savings time. As someone who prays at sunrise seven days a week for the last 16+ years, I appreciate more than most the desire to avoid wild fluctuations in sunrise and sunset. But what Shas did was simply selfish. In order to try to have a small portion of their voters saying slichoth prayers at 11:30 pm instead of 12:30 am, they gamed daylight savings time every year to try to ensure that it would end before the Jewish month of Elul started. The problem was that there are years like this year that the month of Elul starts in early August....
Eventually, the Knesset had enough and set a minimum number of days for daylight savings time. But the Shas ministers kept insisting that Yom Kippur had to be on standard (winter) time, because after all, 25 hours that end at 7:00 pm are much different than 25 hours that end at 6:00 pm.... And they also wanted the seder night to be on standard time (which it was this year for the first time in a long time), although not as much as they wanted as much of Elul as possible to be standard time....
But on the other hand, Meretz's Nitzan Horowitz goes way too far. He wants to keep daylight savings time into November. That's the same foolishness they have in the US, where the sun comes up at 8:00 am in November in many parts of the country. (In Europe, they can do that without daylight savings time, but that's because much of the continent is in the wrong time zone). If we were to have daylight savings time until November, sunrise would be close to 7:00 am. But in this country, many people start school and work at 8:00 am, so you're asking people to get to work in the dark (and for those of us who pray to pray even more in the dark). I often marvel how God made this country so hospitable to Judaism by our relatively small fluctuations in sunrise and sunset. And this is the world's only Jewish country - Nitzan Horowitz and Meretz notwithstanding.
I'm okay with extending daylight savings time, so long as sunrise in Jerusalem doesn't get later than the time it reaches naturally in January - 6:38 am. On my calendar, October 10 is as late as we can go without crossing that line.
You may not need to set your smart phone back, but if you live in the US, please remember to set your clock back tonight (it'll be good to have the east coast seven hours behind us again).
Israel has to be the only country in the world where something as simple as going on standard (as the Americans call it) or winter (as the Israelis and Europeans call it) time is both a political and religious issue.
The bottom line is that we are falling back tonight because most Israelis would (irrationally, in my opinion) prefer that Yom Kippur, which is this coming Tuesday night and Wednesday, be on standard time.
But certain parties on Israel's Left are accusing Interior Minister Aryeh Deri (Shas) of making a trick to thwart the change from happening on the first Saturday night in October, two weeks from now. And to be totally honest, Deri and his Shas party have done a lot to fuel these sorts of accusations.
There was no daylight savings time in Israel until 1988. When it was first implemented, it went into effect on the night Passover ended and remained in effect - at Shas' insistence - only until the Saturday night before the Jewish month of Elul began. Why Elul (which started this year in mid-August and will start next year in early August)? Because the Sfardim, who are Shas' constituents, say Slichoth prayers from the beginning of the month of Elul, and while some say them in the morning before sunrise, most say them at Midnight. No, not 12:00 am midnight, but halfway through the night, which is around 12:30 am (daylight or summer time) or 11:30 (standard or winter time) at this time of year. As you might imagine, if you are staying up every night to start Slichoth at 12:30 for about 45-60 minutes, you just might be tired the next day unless your name is Carl in Jerusalem. So.... they pushed for winter time to start by the beginning of Elul.
The next trick the Knesset tried was to make summer time last a minimum number of days. But the Interior Minister was still entitled to determine when it starts, and Shas controlled the Interior Ministry (one of the largest sources of patronage in the country), so they simply made summer time start earlier and earlier in March so that it would end by early September (which upset everyone who wanted the seder night to be on winter time).
Then the Knesset passed a law that said that summer time starts the last week of March, but the date that winter time starts was left open....
Last year, they supposedly passed a law that said that winter time would start the first Saturday night in October, and when I bought my calendar for the new year a few weeks ago, it said that winter time would start October 6. When I asked the Gabbai (basically, the CEO) of our synagogue about this (because the schedule for Slichoth this week only works if sunrise is at 5:30 am and not at 6:30 am), he thought about it, checked with a city councilor, and then told me that yes, we had a problem last Wednesday and Thursday (with two services scheduled in the same room at the same time), but that the clock would change on Saturday night and resolve the issue for the rest of the week. But still, no 'official' word.
Then, on Friday, I heard on the radio that the Interior Minister had 'tricked' the country regarding the start of winter time. And tonight, Israel Radio is reporting that in fact, we are going on winter time tonight.
Right now, it doesn't matter to me a whole lot. You see, I pray at sunrise every day anyway, so tonight I will get just as much sleep as I normally get, even though the clock will say 4:05 am when our Slichoth services start (and I will have an extra hour to study with my son when we finish services tomorrow). But tomorrow night, I will LOSE an hour of sleep if I go to sleep at my normal time.... In the spring, the effect is the opposite.
I really don't care what clock we are on for Yom Kippur. However, I am just as happy to be on winter time for Succoth, which starts on Monday, October 1. That's because I drive to the Old City (of Jerusalem) for sunrise prayers on each of the intermediate days of the holiday, and the police usually close the Old City to non-public traffic at 5:00 am. Not a big deal if sunrise is 5:35, but would create problems if sunrise were 6:35....
In any event, if you're in Israel tonight, set your clocks back an hour at 2:00 am. Someone somewhere is probably happy about it.
If you're in israel, now is the time to spring forward and set your watches and clocks for 3:00 am (actually 3:01 when this post goes up, assuming that Blogger is accurate).
Here's Avraham Fried with Aleh Katan Sheli (My small leaf) in honor of the spring.
For those of you in the US, the time changed last night (here in Israel, it changes a week from Thursday night). If you're finding it a little confusing, Mrs. Carl offers the following suggestion.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
