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A: There is a very direct textual explanation for this unusual way
of counting days. In the first paragraph of the book of Genesis,
in chapter 1, verse 5, it says: "God called the light, 'Day,'
and the darkness, 'Night.' And there was evening, and there was
morning, one day."
The ancient rabbis asked the same question you did- when does
Shabbat begin?- and they looked in the text and decided that "one
day" is described with evening first and morning second, it must
mean that the Jewish, halachic definition of "day" is from evening
to evening. They are also concerned with the moment the sun first
arises, in order to determine when we say the morning prayers,
but for them, all holidays and Shabbat and the days of the week
go from sundown to sundown. We might also note here that the Jewish
calendar is based on lunar months, and since the sighting of the
new moon determined whether a new month had started (which determined
when you'd celebrate the holidays of that month), the month itself
was linked to the cycle of the evenings. Shabbat comes around
every seven days, regardless of the month, but the Jewish calendar
is intrinsically linked to this night-day cycle.
Besides the textual basis of this tradition, perhaps we can also
point out the practical benefits of having sundown-to-sundown
days: if we had to get up real early in the morning to greet Shabbat,
many of us (including yours truly) would sleep in and miss it,
whereas we can almost always greet the sundown. Furthermore, since
we are explicitly commanded to eat the sacred Passover meal (now
our seder) at night (Cf. Exodus 12), to commemorate the miracles
and liberation which happened at night, we'd get our dates confused
if we had a "daytime" definition of our days. Finally, it would
also be impractical to get up to do havdallah (the ritual that
separates the end of Shabbat from the weekday) at dawn the next
morning- we'd be asleep for the beginning and end of our central
holy time, and it would make integrating a Shabbat schedule and
the work-week schedule very difficult.
However, your question makes me wonder: if Shabbat started at
dawn, would the traditional (Ashkenazi) Shabbat meal be French
Toast and oatmeal instead of chicken soup and kugel? Or would
we eat our Challah with marmalade for our Shabbat breakfast? Greater
minds than mine will have to ponder this question.
Your Reb on the Web, who is NOT a morning person, is very happy
with the status quo in this regard!
NJL |
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