Tag: Twilight

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

FAQ: Why Some Zmanim Never Occur (Developers Beware)

Question:

Why do some zmanim never occur in some locations? Developers Beware!

Answer:

While most people realize that the sun may not rise or set in the Arctic and Antarctic Circles (see the Rabbi Dovid Heber’s article When Does One Pray When There Is No Day in the Star-K’s Kashrus Kurrents), many are not aware that some twilight dips will not occur during part of the year as far south of the Arctic Circle as London. For example around the summer solstice in London (on the zmanim map) the sun will never dip far enough below the horizon to reach alos 16°. This happens in London from June 4th through July 8th. The image seen on the top right (original at timeanddate.com) shows various civil twilights centered on London on Midnight June 21st. Look carefully to see the various bands of twilight. Gateshead will not have alos 16° from May 16th through July 28th, while Anchorage, Alaska (yes there is a Frum Shul in Anchorage with an interesting davening direction issue that is discussed in the Davening Direction from Alaska post ) will not have alos 16.1° from April 25th to August 20th. Zmanim based on sunrise such as alos 72 that is a 72 minute offset of sunrise can be calculated as long as sunrise can be calculated, something that will happen as long as you are not in the Arctic or Antarctic Circles.
For this reason, the Zmanim API will return a null when a zman will not happen. A Long.MIN_VALUE will be returned when a long is expected such as in the case of a shaah zmanis. While an inconvenience to developers who have to code for this, the alternative of a default date would mean that developers unaware of this would return incorrect zmanim, something far worse than a program error from a NullPointerException.
In recent weeks two publicly available programs using the Zmanim API ran into issues due to nulls returned for early alos times. Being something not anticipated by the developers, the nulls generated errors in the programs that quickly led to fixes. For this reason, Yitzchok updated the Zmanim .NET project to return the nullable DateTime? instead of the regular DateTime that it had previously been returning. While the Zmanim API documentation always made the possibility of a null being returned possible, I modified the documentation to make this clear on the return value documentation for every zman. Code with the modified documentation was part of the recently released Zmanim API 1.2.1.