A few questions that have been wandering around in my brain over the past few days:
1) Do swimmers sweat?
2) Beginning this year, we will no longer begin saying v'Tein Tal u'Matar on the 4th of December or the day after depending on leap years or Shabbatot; from now on it will either be on the 5th (or 6th) of December here in Chutz la'Aretz. This effectively renders many siddurim obsolete - how will the various publishing houses deal with that?
3) Are the people who are resurrected during techiyat ha'meitim considered ta'amei meit?
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6 comments:
I don't understand #2. We start "vesein tal umatar" on a given date in Tequfas Shemu'el, which happens to equal the Julian calendar -- but with a different leap year, which is why the start can be the 4th or the 5th. In other words, 365-1/4 days. The switch to the Gregorian calendar was over skipping leap years in centuries that are not multiples of 400 -- 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200... (2,000 is a multiple of 400, so we had a leap day.) So the calendar won't shift against Tequfas Shemu'el until 2100, when there won't be a Gregorian leap year (but the Julian calendar would have had one). Why would things change for 2014?
#3: May you get a definitive answer bimheirah beyameinu.
I don't know about the whole cheshbon with the Julian setup and then the subsequent Gregorian alteration, but I remembered hearing about it a while back and when I checked my calendar projecting into the next 20 years, it falls out on either the 5th or 6th...
This century, Tequfas Tishrei (Shemu'el's estimate of the fall equinox) is on Oct 7th. The year before a secular leap year (eg 2011 or 2015), it will be after sunset, and therefore the count starts from the 8th.
This is why we today start saying vesein tal umater on the 4th or 5th of Dec, But in 1900 the Gregorian calendar skipped a leap year. In the 19th cent, for example if you check the Qitzur (19:5), we started on the 3rd or 4th: "מתחילין לומר טל ומטר, בתפלת ערבית של יום ששים לאחר תקופת תשרי והוא ביום ד' או ביום ה' לחדש דעצעמבער"
And so it will go until 2100, the next skipped leap day. Really.
I think I figured out the miscommunication, and I want to repeat it here, not just in private email with Shmuel where someone reading the page might think there is a real disagreement involved.
We in chu"l start saying "vesein tal umatar" at Maariv, which is therefore the evening of Dec 4th or 5th, until 2100. But we're only starting then because we should really start on the 5th or 6th, but the day in question is halachic -- it starts at the previous sunset. So, if you look at a calendar, it may post the start as the 5th or 6th, whereas I was speaking of the actual Gregorian Calendar date of the maariv in question.
Once again, an extended back-and-forth on what was just a miscommunication. (Did such things happen before the Tower of Bavel?)
Sweating is a mechanism used by the body to cool the body's core temperature through evaporation, a process that isn't possible while submerged in water. I think.
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