Decimal Versus Sexagesimal Based Zmanim Location Errors

Decimal Analog Clock
Converting from one number system to another can be tricky. What time would 6:19 am/pm on this decimal based analog clock be on a regular duodecimal (12 based) clock? See the end of the article for the answer.

There are two different ways to reference latitude and longitude. One uses a sexagesimal (60 based) system of degrees indicated by a ° symbol, minutes indicated by a ' and seconds indicated by ". Think 60 minutes in an hour, 60 seconds in a minute and apply it to latitude numbers. The other system uses the more familiar decimal based format. For example The main BMG beis hamedrash is located at latitude 40.096, longitude -74.222 in degree/decimal. In degrees, minutes and seconds this would be latitude 40° 5′ 46″ N, longitude 74° 13′ 19″ W.

I was recently shown a zmanim calendar that seemed to be slightly inaccurate. Researching the issue showed that the intention was to generate the calendar for the location XX° 46′ N XX° 15′ W (latitude and longitude degrees are masked), but was mistakenly calculated for XX.46° -XX.15°. This confusion of the sexagesimal based system with the decimal based system is not uncommon. The discrepancy in sunrise and sunset in the calendar versus what it should have been was about 80 seconds in the summer. If someone were to confuse XX° 9′ with XX.9° (for both latitude and longitude) you have a much more significant relative error of 0.75°. The impact of this type of mistake is mostly caused by longitude, but latitude changes impact zmanim calculations as well. This 0.75° mistake can result in a zmanim discrepancy of up to five and a half minutes at the latitude of Lakewood, NJ. As confirmed by Dr. Noson Yanofsky, this scenario has the most extreme error, while 10′ confused with 0.10° has the least significant error of 0.066°.

An interesting variant of such a mistake is calculating a zman for a depression angle (how far the sun is below the horizon) that is based on degrees and minutes using degree/decimal. An example is mistakenly calculating tzais of 7° 5′ , or 7.083° as 7.5°. See Hazmanim Bahalacha vol II p. 520 footnote 21 for a case where this mistake happened. It should be noted that some are of the opinion that a depression angle of 7.5° is the proper time of tzais. This was used in the first ever known printed calendar calculated based on depression angles. It was published in תקכ״ו / 1766 by Raphael Levi Hannover. See Hazmanim Bahalacha p. 524 for a picture of the luach and a list of other calendars that calculate tzais as 7.5°.

To answer the question in the image caption above, the time in a regular 12 hour / duodecimal based clock would be 7:40. With 10 hours instead of 12, each decimal hour on this clock is 72 minutes of regular time. Therefore 6 hours = 432 minutes. Add ~19/50 decimal minutes that are equivalent to ~28/72 regular clock minutes and you end up with 460 minutes after noon/midnight, or about 7:40 🙂.

The Yereim’s Bein Hashmashos

Rabbi Eliezer of Metz (known by his acronym The רא״ם Re’em), a disciple of Rabbeinu Tam, in his Sefer Yereim ספר יראים chapter 274, states that bein hashmashos starts the time it takes to walk three quarters of a mil before sunset, and ends at sunset.

פירוש משתשקע החמה דר׳ יהודה ור׳ נחמיה משמתחלת לשקוע שנוטה מעט ומכירים העולם שרוצה להכנס בעובי הרקיע … ולשון משתשקע משמע הקדמה … וכן נראה לי עיקר דמשתשקע החמה הוא קודם שקיעת החמה דעולא ולא כדברי רבינו יעקב … ואין להקפיד על צאת הככבים … אע״ף שאין הכוכבים נראים … שלילה גמור הוא כפירושי.

The Yereim’s opinion is brought down by other Rishonim including the Mordechai and Rav Alexander Suslin HaKohen in his Sefer Agudah. The Yereim is mentioned by the Bach as a reason for the minhag of starting Shabbos early. The Yereim’s times are not brought down by the poskim lehalacha.

The Time to Walk a Mil

The time to walk a mil is based on the Gemara in Pesachim 93b – 94a. The time ranges in the poskim and includes 18, 22.5 and 24 minutes. Three quarters of these mil times would be 13.5, 16.875 and 18 minutes. It should be noted that the Yereim is of the opinion that a mil is 24 minutes. The above mentioned Mordechai who quoted the Yereim is also of the same opinion. We will hopefully discuss in detail the various opinions on the time to walk a mil in a future article.

The Addition of the Yereim’s Times to the KosherJava Zmanim Library

As of the 2.1.0 release of the KosherJava zmanim library, the Yereim’s bein hashmashos times have been added to the KosherJava zmanim library/API. There are six variants of these zmanim that were added. These include the three exact minute offsets mentioned above, as well as the conversion of these three times to degrees (elevation angle, or solar zenith angle). The only prior degree based time for the Yereim that I am aware of is in Rabbi Yedidya Manet’s Zmanei Halacha Lema’aseh (זמני ההלכה למעשה מהרב ידידיה מנת). The Zmanei Halacha Lema’aseh charts calculate bein hashmashos in degrees based on the 18 minute (3/4 of a 24 minute mil, see p. 27 in the 4th ed. published in 2005), but does not clarify the degrees used. At Rabbi Yaakov Shakow’s recommendation, I used the refraction value of 31/60 or 0.516° that exists in Israel, as opposed to the global average of 0.566°. This more stringent refraction is mentioned in the Zmanei Halacha Lema’aseh (p. 11) and used in the לוח עתים לבינה Luach Itim Lebinah. I also slightly rounded the times. These small tweaks resulted in a trivial maximum 19 second chumra vs the non-rounded global average refraction. The resulting degrees of elevation angle for the Yereim’s bein hashmashos are 2.1°, 2.8° and 3.05°. Solar zenith angles are traditionally calculated using the sun’s position without adjusting for refraction and without accounting for the solar radius (i.e. it is the position of the center of the sun in a vacuum). This does not impact the calculated time, it is simply the convention used. In the upcoming 8th edition of הרב דוד יהודה בורשטין Rabbi Yehuda Burstein’s זמנים כהלכתם / Zmanim Kehilchasam he mentions that

הזמן הנ״ל של 18 דקות לפני השקיעה המישורית הוא הזמן רק במרכז א״י ביום הבינוני כנ״ל, ובכל מקום בכל יום מחשבין זאת לפי שיטת המעלות, דהיינו דבודקים כמה מעלות מעל האופק נמצאת השמש במרכז א״י ביום הבינוני 18 דקות לפני השקיעה המישורית, ואותו מספר מעלות של השמש מעל האופק בכל מקום בכל יום הוא הזמן של ״היראם״. ועוד יש להוסיף זמן ל״תוספת שבת״, ובזה יוצא ידי כל שיטות הראשונים ואשרי חלקו.

A future article will address the proper date to use for converting minute-based times to degrees below (or above) the horizon and show how to use the KosherJava Zmanim code to calculate this.
I would like to thank Rabbi Yaakov Shakow for his help and suggestions.

Sample Code

Below are code examples for all six variants of the Yereim’s Bein Hashmashos (spelled BainHashmashos in the code).

GeoLocation yerushalayim = new GeoLocation("Jerusalem, Israel", 31.778, 35.2354, 0, TimeZone.getTimeZone("Asia/Jerusalem"));
ComplexZmanimCalendar czc = new ComplexZmanimCalendar(yerushalayim);
Date bh18Min = czc.getBainHasmashosYereim18Minutes();
Date bh3Pt05Deg = czc.getBainHasmashosYereim3Point05Degrees();
Date bh16Pt875Min = czc.getBainHasmashosYereim16Point875Minutes();
Date bh2Pt8Deg = czc.getBainHasmashosYereim2Point8Degrees();
Date bh13Pt5Min = czc.getBainHasmashosYereim13Point5Minutes();
Date bh2Pt1Deg = czc.getBainHasmashosYereim2Point1Degrees();

SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd h:mm:ss a z"); //set the output format
sdf.setTimeZone(czc.getGeoLocation().getTimeZone()); //set the formatter's time zone
System.out.println("Bein Hashmashos 18 min:     " + sdf.format(bh18Min));
System.out.println("Bein Hashmashos 3.05°:      " + sdf.format(bh3Pt05Deg));
System.out.println("Bein Hashmashos 16.875 min: " + sdf.format(bh16Pt875Min));
System.out.println("Bein Hashmashos 2.8°:       " + sdf.format(bh2Pt8Deg));
System.out.println("Bein Hashmashos 13.5 min:   " + sdf.format(bh13Pt5Min));
System.out.println("Bein Hashmashos 2.1°:       " + sdf.format(bh2Pt1Deg));

The output of the above code (assuming that the calendar was set to March 16, 2020).

Bein Hashmashos 18 min:     2020-03-16 5:29:58 PM IST
Bein Hashmashos 3.05°:      2020-03-16 5:29:40 PM IST
Bein Hashmashos 16.875 min: 2020-03-16 5:31:05 PM IST
Bein Hashmashos 2.8°:       2020-03-16 5:30:51 PM IST
Bein Hashmashos 13.5 min:   2020-03-16 5:34:28 PM IST
Bein Hashmashos 2.1°:       2020-03-16 5:34:09 PM IST

KosherJava Zmanim Library Package Name and Build Process Update


The KosherJava zmanim library originally went live in 2004. There was an existing C/C++ zmanim project by Ken Bloom hosted on SourceForge (that was at the time the equivalent of what GitHub is today). The Java package structure name net.sourceforge.zmanim was based on the one used by Ken’s project (despite not being hosted there), and remained that way for 16 years.
On August 3, 2020, Eli Julian modernized the library’s build process from the previously used Ant, to Maven & Gradle. This change simplified the workflow for many developers using the zmanim API. As part of the change, the package name was updated to com.kosherjava.zmanim. The KosherJava zmanim Maven / Gradle artifacts are available at the KosherJava zmanim Maven Central page. A direct Jar download is available at Maven Central (see the KosherJava Downloads page for instructions). The old code was branched into zmanim-1.5 and will allow people who do not want to upgrade to continue to use the old structure (and Ant build process) while continuing to receive emergency bug fixes. This will allow the codebase to use more modern Java language features, without impacting users who want to remain on the legacy code. The new code has a minimum Java 8 requirement (a version released in March 2014). Releases based on the new build process will use SemVer (Semantic Versioning) to make things simpler for developers.
The upgraded build process also allowed automated GitHub’s CodeQL vulnerability scanning for the KosherJava Zmanim project.
You can add the KosherJava zmanim library as a Maven or Gradle dependency. For Maven add the following to your pom.xml.

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.kosherjava</groupId>
  <artifactId>zmanim</artifactId>
  <version>2.0.3</version>
</dependency>

For Gradle, add the following to your build.gradle file.

implementation group: 'com.kosherjava', name: 'zmanim', version: '2.0.3'

Latest Kiddush Levana Time – Location, Location, Location

The full moon visible from the Inbal hotel sukkah.

In the previously published Zmanim For Kiddush Levana Before Shavuos 5778 article, we demonstrated how location plays a key role in the earliest time one can recite Kiddush Levana / קידוש לבנה. This article will focus on the Sof Zman Kiddush Levana, or the latest that one can recite Kiddush Levana. In the past we posted the technical Calculating Kiddush Levana Times Using the Zmanim API post, with a simple example of using the KosherJava Zmanim API to calculate Kiddush Levana. Here is a slightly more complex example.
The Bach on the Tur Hilchos Kiddush Hachodesh (Orach Chayim 426 תכ”ו) discusses not reciting Kiddush Levana on Yom Tov.

גם נוהגים שאין מקדשין אותה במ״ש שחל בו י״ט כי כן כתב מהרי״ל בסוף הלכות שבועות ובשנת ש״ץ לא היתה נראה הלבנה במוצאי י״כ וגם אח״כ לא היתה נראה עד ליל ט״ו והיינו מקדשין אותה בליל י״ט ולא חששנו על החילוקים כי אין זה אלא קפידא בעלמא כאילו יצא מחוץ לתחום למעלה מעשרה במחשבה להקביל פני השכינה ואין להקפיד אלא לכתחלה דאפשר לקדשה אח”כ כגון שבועות כשחל א״ב אבל בליל ט״ו דסוכות דלא אפשר לברך בלילה שלאחריו דכבר נתמלא פגימתה יש לברך בליל ט״ו

He writes that in Tishrei 5390 (1629) there was cloud cover from Yom Kippur until the first night of Succos. The Bach who was the Rabbi in Kraków at that time (see the Be’er Haitev 426:5), writes that they said Kiddush Levana on the first night of Sukkos. This is right after he mentioned that it is our custom not to recite Kiddush Levana after halfway between molad and molad (following the Maharil and Rema, and not the Mechaber who allows a little extra time). Was tzais (the earliest time to recite Kiddush Levana), on the first night of Succos in Kraków that year (5390 / 1629) after the midpoint between molad and molad? Is the Bach saying that in this case bedieved you should still recite Kiddush Levana, or is he just saying that it can be said on Yom Tov when waiting until after Yom Tov will be too late?

The Impact of Calendar Dechiyos / דחיות

The day of the molad of Tishrei is the target day for the first day of Rosh Hashana. However, the Jewish calendar has four rules that delay the start of the Jewish year by a day or two (in a case of two delays combining), a subject that we will hopefully cover at some point – עוד חזון למועד. If not for these delays known as dechiyos that occur about 60% of all years, the 15th night of the month of Tishrei, would always be early enough to recite Kiddush Levanah. The average lunar month is a drop over 29 and a half days (29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 3.3 seconds), so the halfway point that is the end of the earlier time quoted by the Bach would be 14 days, 18 hours and 22 minutes after the molad. The calculation below shows that in the case of 15 Tishrei, 5390 (the evening of Oct 1, 1629), even the earlier zman for sof zman Kiddush Levana did not happen until the morning of the first day of Succos. The molad of Tishrei that year was about 2.5 hours before the day’s end. This resulted in a dechiya of Molad Zaken / מולד זקן. This delayed Rosh Hashanah by a day pushing it from Monday to Tuesday. There was no dechiya of Lo ADU Rosh / לא אד״ו ראש, so the delay was not as long as it could have been (had there been a combination of the two dechiyos). Sunset on the first night of Sukkos that year in Krakow was at 5:18 pm (using standard time), and the moon rose at 5:54 pm, so they were able to recite Kiddush Levana that night.

Despite dechiyos, the time of tzais in Krakow is before sof zman Kiddush Levana on the first night of Succos approximately 73% of the time, making the ability to recite Kiddush Levanah on the first night of Sukkos for the longitude of Krakow (that is close to Yerushalayim) more common than not. As you will see below, the farther west you go, the less likely it is to happen.

Sof Zman Kiddus Levana Around the World

Being that Sof Zman Kiddush Levana is a fixed time globally, and can’t be said before local tzais, the farther west you are, the less of a probability you have of encountering a late Kiddush Levana. Conversely, the farther east you are, the greater your probability is of encountering a late Kiddush Levana. The chart below was inspired by Rabbi Dovid Heber’s example in his sefer Shaarei Zmanim of the rare ability to recite Kiddush Levana on the 17th of the month in Anadyr, Russia. This town is at the far eastern portion of Russia, not far from the International Date Line. The chart shows the percentage of times that Sof Zman Kiddush Levana in Tishrei and the annual average for various places around the world occurs after tzais (calculated as 8.5°) on the 15th, 16th and 17th of the month.

15thט״ו 16thט״ז 17thי״ז
Location תשרי All תשרי All תשרי All
Anadyr, Russia 91% 57% 46% 18% N/A 0.2%
Sydney, Australia 88% 73% 42% 21% N/A N/A
Yerushalayim 75% 57% 24% 8% N/A N/A
Krakow, Poland 73% 55% 22% 7% N/A N/A
Lakewood, NJ 62% 41% 8% 1.6% N/A N/A
Los Angeles, CA 56% 35% 3% 0.7% N/A N/A
Kurima Island, Japan
(Chazon Ish)
39% 18% N/A N/A N/A N/A

Molad Calculation Code Sample

The code below shows rudimentary use of the Jewish Calendar functionality and molad retrieval for the historical date of the Bach’s 1629 Sukkos night kiddush levanah.

int month = JewishDate.TISHREI;
int year = 5390;
JewishDate erevSukkos = new JewishDate(year, JewishDate.TISHREI, 14);
JewishDate molad = JewishDate.getMolad(year, month);
Date tchilas3Days = JewishCalendar.getTchilasZmanKidushLevanah3Days(year, month);
Date tchilas7Days = JewishCalendar.getTchilasZmanKidushLevanah7Days(year, month);
Date sofZmanBetweenMoldos = JewishCalendar.getSofZmanKidushLevanahBetweenMoldos(year, month);
Date sofZmanKidushLevanah15Days = JewishCalendar.getSofZmanKidushLevanah15Days(year, month);
TimeZone krakowTZ = TimeZone.getTimeZone("Europe/Warsaw");
SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("MMM dd, yyyy 'at' HH:mm:ss z");
SimpleDateFormat dayFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("MMM dd, yyyy");
sdf.setTimeZone(krakowTZ);
System.out.println("Molad: " + molad + " / " + dayFormat.format(molad.getTime()) + ", day of week: "
		+ molad.getDayOfWeek() + ", Hours: " + molad.getMoladHours() + ", minutes: " + molad.getMoladMinutes()
		+ ", Chalakim: " + molad.getMoladChalakim());
System.out.println("Tchilas Zman Kidush Levanah 3 Days: " + sdf.format(tchilas3Days));
System.out.println("Tchilas Zman Kidush Levanah 7 Days: " + sdf.format(tchilas7Days));
System.out.println("Erev Succos: " + erevSukkos + " / " + dayFormat.format(erevSukkos.getTime()));
System.out.println("Sof Zman KidushLevanah Between Moldos: " + sdf.format(sofZmanBetweenMoldos));
System.out.println("Sof Zman Kidush Levanah 15 Days: " + sdf.format(sofZmanKidushLevanah15Days));

The output in Central European Time (CET) is:

Molad: 29 Elul, 5389 / Sep 17, 1629, day of week: 2, Hours: 15,
        minutes: 46, Chalakim: 5
Tchilas Zman Kidush Levanah 3 Days: Sep 20, 1629 at 14:25:19 CET
Tchilas Zman Kidush Levanah 7 Days: Sep 24, 1629 at 14:25:19 CET
Erev Succos: 14 Tishrei, 5390 / Oct 01, 1629
Sof Zman KidushLevanah Between Moldos: Oct 02, 1629 at 08:47:21 CET
Sof Zman Kidush Levanah 15 Days: Oct 02, 1629 at 14:25:19 CET

Odds & Ends

While Tishrei has much higher odds than most months for a late Sof Zman Kiddush Levana, Shevat is very close to Tishrei, and sometimes exceeds it. Cheshvan and Kislev are the only variable length Jewish months. In a chaser (Deficient / short) year they will both have the short month length of 29 days. The months of Cheshvan and Kislev are followed by Teves that is always 29 days. With the possibility of three 29-day months in a row and being in the winter with early tzais times, the month of Shevat is the most likely to have a very late sof zman Kiddush Levana, as pointed out by Rabbi Heber in his Shaarei Zmanim.

The reason that Anadyr only has a 57% chance of being able to recite Kiddush Levana year-round on the 15th VS 73% in Sydney, even though Anadyr is 3% more likely to have Kiddush levana on the 15th of Tishrei, is due to the high latitude of Anadyr (64.7° N) that results in 25.4% of the months not having tzais on the 15th.

The closest case to almost not being able to recite Kiddush levanah on the 15th of Tishrei without dechiyos would be in a location immediately to the east of the Chazon Ish dateline such as Kurima Island on a year when the molad was exactly at sunset in Yerushalayim and the true opposition (full moon) was much earlier than the average opposition, causing the moon to rise after sof zman kidush levana. Calculations show that this would never actually happen on Sukkos though it is likely to occur on Pesach since the molad of Nisan is much more likely to be before Rosh Chodesh.

ZIP Codes and Zmanim – A Practical Approach

99557 ZIP code area (the largest in the USA)
99557 ZIP code area (the largest in the USA)
As mentioned in the ZIP Codes and Zmanim – Use With Care article, using ZIP codes to geolocate your position for zmanim can be problematic when the zip code is large. With large zip codes, zmanim on the west side of the zip code can be quite a bit later than zmanim on the east side of the zip. Recently, Lazer Guttman created an SMS based zmanim service at (914) 409-9394 that provides a warning when zmanim are requested for large zip codes. This approach is probably the best that can be done. I would recommend that any zmanim service that is zip code based (and does not have a map to allow zeroing in to a precise location), use this data to provide a warning whenever the zip codes is wider than 0.5° of longitude. A degree of longitude spans 4 minutes (regardless of the latitude), so half of a zip code with half of a degree would span 2 minutes (one minute east or west of the center). It should be noted that Canadian postal codes are much smaller than zip codes (usually covering one side of a city block), and most likely do not face the same issue. A spreadsheet listing all zip codes with the maximum longitude and latitude distances (in degrees), was generated by Avraham David Gelbfish from OpenDataDE that is based on US Census data. His Python source code is below.

import json
import csv
​
jsonfile = open("tl_2019_us_zcta510/out2.geojson")
zipcodes = json.load(jsonfile)
​
def getop(geolist, operation, longitude = None, latitude = None):
    if isinstance(geolist[0], list):
        answers = [getop(geo, operation) for geo in geolist]
        for answer in answers:
            lat, lng = answer
            if latitude is None:
                latitude = lat
            if longitude is None:
                longitude = lng
            latitude = operation(latitude, lat)
            longitude = operation(longitude, lng)
        return latitude, longitude
    else:
        return geolist
​
with open("out2.csv", "w") as csvfile:
    zwriter = csv.writer(csvfile)
    zwriter.writerow(["Zip", "Latitude max distance", "Longitude max distance"])
    for zipcode in zipcodes["features"]:
        zip = zipcode["properties"]["ZCTA5CE10"]
        geometry = zipcode["geometry"]["coordinates"]
        maxlat, maxlng = getop(geometry, lambda x, y: x if x > y else y)
        minlat, minlng = getop(geometry, lambda x, y: x if x < y else y)
        dlat = abs(maxlat - minlat)
        dlng = abs(maxlng - minlng)
        zwriter.writerow([zip, dlat, dlng])