The Halachic Questions of the Australian Continent - Rabbi Tzvi Telzner shlita

00:02 Speaker 1 You’re listening to the “Lema’an Yishme’u” podcast from Machon Halacha Chabad.

00:09 Speaker 2 I now want to start talking about a very interesting, very practical subject. Here in Australia, we have about a hundred thousand Jews, may their numbers increase, and there are many halachic questions, complicated questions, about how to work out all matters of time. You know, the Torah deals with time throughout: the creation of the world, the first day, the second day, and so on. Sunset, sunrise—all the things halacha rules must be done at particular times. So there is the time of day, of the month, or of the year. But there is another problem that began at the very start of creation. The Gemara says in Rosh Hashanah that Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the world fully formed, that the world was created all at once. In other words, everything was created in the first second of the world’s existence. “In the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth.” So when did time begin? The Ramban says it began with the creation of the world, from the very first second. And the Rebbe raises the question: What about the sun and the moon, on which all our times are based? That is no problem. That is how time began. There was a clock, and that is how all time began. But now we have a small problem. Suppose the world was created in Jerusalem, the holy city, on the first day, 25 Elul, at, say, twelve o’clock. What time was it in New York? What time was it in Australia? What time was it in California? What time was it in India? What time was it in China? This is hardly addressed anywhere. I think the first to raise this question was the Chasam Sofer, who brings it up regarding Shavuos. I found that he writes that the Torah was given at Sinai on 6 Sivan, but in Australia it might have been 7 Sivan. Because you can’t say that 6 Sivan in Australia and 6 Sivan at Mount Sinai were the same thing; in Australia you have a whole day’s difference. So

02:25 Speaker 2 when did that difference begin? I don’t know exactly. It isn’t written anywhere. And really, no one thought about it, because where did the great majority of Jews live? In the Middle East, in Eretz Yisroel, in Babylonia, in all those places. Now, we know that Shabbos in each place follows the time in the place where you are. That, too, raises a very complicated question: when did that begin? But, for example, the Alter Rebbe writes in the introduction to the later edition of the Shulchan Aruch that if you are in Jerusalem and you say Tikkun Chatzos, keep Shabbos, and observe the festivals, you do what you need to do there. If you find yourself in Australia, where the times are different from Jerusalem, you say Tikkun Chatzos and observe Shabbos and the festivals according to the times in Australia. And that is how it works everywhere in the world: wherever you are, that is an auspicious time Above. The Alter Rebbe writes that wherever you are, it is Shabbos or a festival there, and so forth. Then the Alter Rebbe brings the Gemara in Pesachim: where people observe one day of Yom Tov or two days of Yom Tov, if someone travels to the Diaspora or to Eretz Yisroel, which practice must he follow? That of the place where he is. There is a major dispute about this among the later authorities, beginning with the Gemara and continuing to the halachic authorities of our time. It’s perhaps the best-known question that began in the Gemara and continues to this day. Every authority addresses how many days someone must observe when he comes from the Diaspora to Eretz Yisroel, or from Eretz Yisroel to the Diaspora. Okay. The first to raise this question was the Kuzari. As is well known, the Kuzari recounts a discussion with the king of the Khazars. The king asked him all kinds of questions, many questions, and one of them concerned the date line. What does the date line mean? The world

04:24 Speaker 2 is round, like an egg, and as you travel from place to place, the time gets later or earlier. So he asked him how that works. The Kuzari answered him, but at that time the practical difference wasn’t really a question. Before the Kuzari, though, there was a passage in the Gemara in Rosh Hashanah. There is one place in all of the Talmud that discusses this question. Many places discuss the first day and second day of Yom Tov, and someone traveling from the Diaspora to Eretz Yisroel or from Eretz Yisroel to the Diaspora. Those discussions concern the stringencies of the place he left and the stringencies of the place he went to. That is something else. But the Gemara in Rosh Hashanah discusses this question, and it is the only source for the concept of the date line. What did the non-Jews do? They established what is called Greenwich, as the point from which time is reckoned. On one side it is Sunday, and on the other it is Saturday night, or something like that. That solved the problem for them. So when you travel by plane or by ship, they tell you the day has changed. One day it’s Monday, then it’s Tuesday, or something like that. Okay. But in our halacha, non-Jews do not determine halacha. They can discuss it from beginning to end; that’s no problem. What we need to know is how it works for us. The Gemara discusses it, and there are many early commentators on that passage, starting with Rashi. Rashi is very difficult there, very, very difficult. It is hard to understand what Rashi really means. There is the Baal Hamaor, who writes a great deal about it, and then there is the Radbaz, several hundred years later, who says that great Torah scholars disagreed about how to interpret the matter. The author of Yesod Olam was one of the first major authorities; he wrote the book Yesod Olam. So the Baal

06:34 Speaker 2 Hamaor says this: If you take the Gemara as a whole, where is the center of the world? He says you go six hours from Jerusalem; that is where it starts. From there, the greatest distance is eighteen hours, and at eighteen hours a new day begins—while in Jerusalem it is that same day. And that is how the Chazon Ish ruled. He ruled like the Baal Hamaor and therefore drew his own date line, a line that placed Australia and some other places on a different day. He was the only one to follow the Baal Hamaor in practice without taking anything else into account, and he said that all the early authorities ruled like the Baal Hamaor. The question did not really arise until people went to Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and all those places. Then, suddenly, it did. You are on a plane or a ship, and the captain tells you, “Listen, it’s no longer Shabbos; it’s Sunday now.” So what does a person there do? What does he do about the prayers? What does he do about Shabbos? What does he do about all these things? There are a great many problems. There were, in fact, great Torah scholars in those places. There was a prominent rabbi in Harbin, Rabbi Kislov, who ruled that we follow the practice established by the community when they arrived—I don’t know exactly when they came, perhaps two hundred years ago. The way they kept Shabbos is the way we must keep Shabbos today. If they treated a particular day as Shabbos, then that is how we observe it in that place, whether in Japan or Australia. People came two hundred years ago and founded a community, and there were rabbis who ruled that this was how they should conduct themselves. That remained the practice until 5700, or perhaps 5703 or 5704. Suddenly, all the yeshivos left Lithuania and Vilna and traveled to Japan. They received papers allowing them to go there. It was a miracle from Above, entirely within the course of nature, all

08:58 Speaker 2 This whole business. Thousands traveled, well, they arrived in Japan, and suddenly the question arose: What do we do now? So every Shabbos, there were yeshiva students who ate kugel for two days. What’s the problem? You want to sleep a little? Sunday is like Shabbos. There was nothing to do at all in Japan. So some observed two days as a stringency. The first day, the day that was Shabbos in Japan, was the main one. And on Sunday they did no melachah; they just studied, and so on. Tefillin weren’t a problem; there’s no prohibition of bal tosif in that. But what about Yom Kippur? Suddenly Yom Kippur came. What should they do? That’s already more serious than putting on tefillin on Sunday. So they sent a telegram to the holy city of Jerusalem, and there was a large meeting of rabbis there, almost thirty rabbis or so. But the Litvish Jews sent a letter to the Chazon Ish and asked him what to do. He ruled that Yom Kippur—it was, I think, on a Tuesday or something—that they should fast on the day after people fasted there. He sent a telegram that didn’t reach anyone, and he said: You should fast, eat on Wednesday and fast on Thursday, or something like that. But in Jerusalem there were many rabbis, leading rabbis, headed by Rabbi Herzog, z"l. There was Rabbi Shalom Katsviler[?], one of the great rabbis. There was Rabbi Zevin, z"l. There were many, many leading halachic authorities who ruled: No, don’t do that. You want to be stringent for yourself? That’s your concern. But in practice, according to halachah, you have to do what people do there. So that’s how it was. Some did one thing and some did another. Some said, “We’ll follow the ruling of the rabbis in Jerusalem,” and others didn’t. But this was the first time there was a dispute. And Rabbi Kasher, who was well known and wrote Torah Sheleimah, he

11:08 Speaker 2 writes an entire book about it, four or five hundred pages, on all these matters from beginning to end. He says there is no date line at all, but according to the Chazon Ish there is a date line. There really is another date line according to which Australia is on the other side. That isn’t a problem at all. So today, I don’t know of any place that rules according to the Chazon Ish. In most places in Australia, they observe Shabbos as they have from the beginning. There are places on the western side where, for example, people from the Eidah Hachareidis come and observe another day of Shabbos to take the Chazon Ish’s view into account. But everywhere else, we do what is done locally. There’s a question regarding Alaska, and the Rebbe asked about it when the shliach traveled to Alaska. The Rebbe asked the rabbis what to do. With an ordinary Shabbos, there’s no problem. With an ordinary Yom Tov, there’s no problem. The problem is when you travel. Say you leave on Sunday, and after about five hours of flying you arrive in California, in Los Angeles, on Sunday morning. You left on Sunday morning, and suddenly it’s Sunday morning again. So what do you do? You’ve already davened for Sunday. What do you do? That’s where all the problems begin. First of all, what day are you on? If there’s a fast, for example—if you fasted on Sunday, you arrive in California and suddenly you see they’re fasting again. Do you have to fast again? There are many questions. What do you say today: “the first day of the week,” “the second day of the week”? What do you say, how do you daven? With all these things, there are questions, and everyone asks his own rabbi and follows what his rabbi rules. There’s also a problem when, for example, you leave Melbourne early on Sunday morning, say at nine, for the United States. You pass over places where it’s still Shabbos, and that’s a big problem. Yom Kippur, Yom Tov, all these things—

13:16 Speaker 2 you’re traveling. If you travel for several hours right over small islands where it’s still Shabbos, that raises a serious question about whether you’re permitted to do it. I know of a young man who once traveled, and suddenly they told him, “It’s Shabbos now. We’re flying, and it’s Shabbos.” And he sat there, not knowing what to do. He couldn’t jump off the plane. But it’s one of the major problems. Some are lenient—yes, some are lenient—but it’s a problem. You’re actually traveling, and I wouldn’t say it’s a desecration of Shabbos, but something about it isn’t right. So with a question like this, everyone asks his own rabbi. For example, some people leave Tokyo for California on Motzaei Shabbos and arrive in California while it’s still Shabbos, and that’s forbidden. Some are lenient if you stay at the airport, stay there in the parking area. But it’s a big problem, because if you’re traveling on Shabbos, you have to observe Shabbos. There’s no question about it. And it’s forbidden. You can’t just arrive while it’s Shabbos, and perhaps you have to make Havdalah again. When you travel to these places, it’s forbidden. Also, [unclear], some are lenient that in Jerusalem

16:15 Speaker 3 you said it, and for Mussaf you said the same thing. With Chanukah it’s the same: if you’re there, someone should light for you, or light for the person himself and say the berachah, having you fulfill your obligation through his berachah. As for Al Hanissim, I don’t know exactly whether you’re obligated to say Al Hanissim. And for Hallel, you need to hear the berachah from someone else: listen to the berachah, fulfill your obligation through it, and say Hallel without reciting a berachah yourself. Then there’s another little question—not a little question, a big one—and that’s the matter of asking for rain. In Australia they need rain all year round. There are many places, with lawns and crops and fruit and everything, and they need rain throughout the year. The first to raise the question was the Rosh, in his responsa. The Rosh was in Germany; he had problems there, got into difficulties. I don’t know exactly what happened, but he traveled to Spain. In Spain there were the sages of Spain, and he was Ashkenazi. So he said that you have to look at what each country needs. For example, the Shulchan Aruch brings this, and the Alter Rebbe addresses it: In Eretz Yisroel we begin on 7 Cheshvan. We begin saying “Mashiv haruach umorid hageshem” and “Vesein tal umatar livrachah,” and that’s how it should be. What do the people of Babylonia do? The Shulchan Aruch says we begin sixty days after the tekufah. That is, on December fifth, or sometimes the tenth, or on 9 Teves. Why? The Alter Rebbe says it’s simple: there, in Eretz Yisroel, you need water on the land right away, while in Babylonia they don’t need it so much in the hills, so you can wait fifty days. So you see that it depends on the place: how much water is needed and when it’s needed. You have to consider all these things for the place where you are. The Rosh ruled that way, but his colleagues did not agree with him.

18:23 Speaker 3 Most of the halachic authorities told him, no, we don’t change it. And when Jews traveled to Spain—and, as we know, to South America and all the places Jews went—many wanted to change it, because “I don’t need rain in the middle of Kislev and Teves. It ruins everything; it’s actually a bad omen.” One of the things we say is that rain in summer is a bad omen, but here it’s completely different. If you get all that rain then, it isn’t good. You need rain from Pesach until Rosh Hashanah. So it was a big problem. There were also authorities who ruled like the Rosh, that wherever you are, you need to pray according to the needs of your location. But we didn’t accept that. In practical halachah, we long ago accepted—even before the Shulchan Aruch—from the Rosh and [unclear], and all those authorities, that even if we don’t need the rain, and it might be a bad omen... In Australia you can never say rain is a bad omen, because evidently rain is needed. Sometimes there have been five years with practically no rain; the grass was really brown, very brown. The water situation was very, very complicated. They sometimes have major problems with water there. But in the end, well, what do we do? The halachic authorities write that in Shema Koleinu, an individual who wants to pray for rain—as though he were a farmer with fields and all that—may say “Vesein tal umatar livrachah,” and so on, in Shema Koleinu. That is the ruling. So the rabbi says, and many halachic authorities say the same, that the main thing is that we pray for Eretz Yisroel. Our main concern is Eretz Yisroel. What I forgot to say is, for example, the opinion

20:26 Speaker 3 The second [opinion] concerns the date line, with Jerusalem as the center of the world. That is where the center of the world begins: 180 degrees this way and 180 degrees that way. It is the center of the world, and everything starts from there. The Baal Hamaor does not put it that way, but most halachic authorities write that Jerusalem is the center of the world. It is the same with rain: when it comes to rain, we follow what Eretz Yisroel needs. That is why we say it in our prayers. But there is one difference: if someone did not say “vesein tal umatar livrachah” and said “vesein brachah” instead, he does not have to repeat the prayer. If you are somewhere else, you do have to repeat it. So what the rabbi emphasizes is that you should say it, even though you do not have to. It is praise and thanksgiving, not a request. But if “tal umatar livrachah” is appropriate and someone did not say it, according to the Shulchan Aruch he does not have to repeat the prayer. There is something very interesting that brings us to Sukkos. There is a famous book on the laws of the sukkah called Bikkurei Yaakov. Rabbi Yaakov Ettlinger wrote the Aruch LaNer and the responsa Binyan Tzion. He was a great rabbi in Germany, and he writes something very, very interesting—something quite strange, really. He was a learned man who also knew the secular sciences. I think he even went to university or something like that. Yet he asks a very strange question. We know that the lulav and esrog must be held in the direction in which they grow. So he asks: But in Australia everything is upside down. How, then, do you hold the esrog and lulav, when it is all reversed? He thought that in Australia you somehow stand on your feet differently. It is sometimes very funny: how could someone who knew some science and knew how things work say that this is not the direction in which they grow, that you are not holding them the way you should? It is the opposite of how it is supposed to be.

22:31 Speaker 3 But he really made a mistake. I do not know what else to say. He made a mistake, so... there is no difference in this respect between Australia and anywhere else. There are, however, other issues in Australia. For example, we had a major question concerning certain fruits. It is well known that orlah outside Eretz Yisroel is forbidden by a halachah given to Moshe at Sinai. But in cases of doubt, orlah is permitted outside Eretz Yisroel. There were certain fruits, many of which came from Australia, and I heard that Rabbi Elyashiv, z"l, ruled that this was not merely a doubt but a certainty, because ten percent or more of those fruits come from Australia, and everyone knows it. So if there is an orlah problem with them, one would have to take such concerns into account. That is one of the problems we have in Australia. Another thing about Australia is the month of spring. I once saw that a great Jew wanted to move to Australia, and then suddenly decided not to. When they asked him why, he gave a simple answer: “The Torah says Pesach must be in the month of spring, and there it is not spring. I do not want to be more religious than the Torah.” The Torah says it has to be the month of spring, so it has to be the month of spring. And so the seasons, autumn and summer—it is a little strange that things are different for us. For example, there is no snow in Australia, and the moon looks different too. When we sanctify the moon, here it moves from right to left; there it moves from left to right. But most things, baruch Hashem, we can observe. Birkas Ha’ilanos is one thing that you are supposed to say in Nissan. In Nissan you do not have fruit; you do not have fruit trees

24:39 Speaker 3 with blossoms. There is one, but it does not blossom in Nissan, and the main requirement is Nissan. So you can hardly say Birkas Ha’ilanos, because you cannot find the right time. The time just is not there. There actually were esrogim—there were quite a few esrog trees in Australia. There was one not far from my house. It grew a little, but not... Really, there should have been many, because the climate there is very well suited to growing esrogim, but there are not. No, there are not many. I do not know why, but that is how it is. Those are some of the problems we have in Australia. The main thing is that Hakadosh Boruch Hu should have compassion and mercy on us and bring Moshiach Tzidkeinu speedily in our days, amen.