Avodah Mailing List

Volume 27: Number 172

Wed, 08 Sep 2010

• 1. Re: Which way to Jerusalem? (Micha Berger)
• 2. The Importance of Studying Mathematics and Astronomy (Prof. Levine)
• 3. Re: Which way to Jerusalem? (Akiva Blum)
• 4. Re: Which way to Jerusalem? (Liron Kopinsky)
• 5. Re: Stephen Hawking and God (Harry Maryles)
• 6. free will (Eli Turkel)
• 7. Selichos and Kinnos (Moshe Y. Gluck)
• 8. Re: Which way to Jerusalem? (Moshe Y. Gluck)
• 9. Re: Which way to Jerusalem? (Zev Sero)
• 10. Which way to Jerusalem? (Jonathan Dickson)
• 11. Re: Which way to Jerusalem? (Simon Montagu)
• 12. Re: How game theory solved a religious mystery (Arie Folger)
• 13. Re: free will (Micha Berger)
• 14. Re: Selichos and Kinnos (Micha Berger)

On Tue, Sep 07, 2010 at 12:43:27PM -0700, Simon Montagu wrote:
: It's easy to see from a globe that the same is true, lehavdil, for the
: distance from Alaska to Jerusalem. Does anyone happen to know in which
: direction Jews in Alaska pray?

We here in NY do not face ENE, even though that's the shortest route
around the surface of the earth. (Ever fly from here to Israel, going
over New England, Newfoundland, etc...?)

This is so counterintuitive to some, you might need to see a map Here is
an azimuthal equidistant projection of the world, centered upon NY City:
http://www.wm7d.net/az_proj/maps/1283891264.gif

Azimuthal equidistant projection is used by ham radio operators and
sattelite TV customers to aim their antennas to another point using the
shortest path.

We use plumb line directions, meaning -- you get to Israel by heading east
then south, or south than east, without looking at diagonals. Probably
because we care more about our symbolic acts being intuitive than being
correct. (Much like Birkhas haChamah.)

(The previous description could be replaced with a reference to "Taxicab
Geometry" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicab_geometry>, which also
defines "distance", sometimes called Manhattan distance, in terms of
getting there on a grid only via right and left turns. IOW, spherical
geometry and spherical taxicab geometry give grossly different results.
But I doubt that helped much.)

If you really wanted shortest distance, you should face at a downward
angle, cutting a line *through* the planet...

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Brains to the lazy
mi...@aishdas.org        are like a torch to the blind --
http://www.aishdas.org   a useless burden.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                 - Bechinas HaOlam

Volume 15 (2008 - 2009) of The Torah U-Madda Journal contains an 
article by Jeremy Brown titled Rabbi Reuven Landau and
the Jewish Reaction to Copernican Thought in Nineteenth Century 
Europe. The entire article can be read at http://tinyurl.com/2d92z7r

Rabbi Landau was  born in the early 1800s, but the exact date is not 
certain, and there are conflicting accounts of the date of his death 
in 1883.  He married apparently at a young age as was the 
custom-Bruna, the only daughter of Rabbi Yosef Landau of Lafli in 
Romania, and probably adopted the name of his wife's family as his 
own. This town, known as Yas in Yiddish, was a center of Jewish life, 
and the capital city of Moldavia; its Chief Rabbi was an influential 
and important figure.

Reuven Landau was appointed to the position of the Chief of the 
Rabbinical Court of Padutark, where he served for some forty years 
until his death in 1883.

R. Landau wrote several works which were published late in his 
life;  Middah Berurah (1882) on trigonometry; Degel Machaneh Reuven 
(1884) on Aggadah, and Shem Olam (published posthumously in 1890) on 
the correct spelling of Hebrew names. But the book which will concern 
us is Mahalakh ha-Kokhavim (The Path of the Stars), which was 
published in 1882 in Chernovstky and never reprinted. It appeared in 
the last year of R. Landau's life, and represented the culmination of 
his life-long fascination with astronomy and mathematics.

On page 115 the article says

As a young man R. Landau realized that to acquire an expert
understanding in astronomy and the formulation of the Jewish calendar
would require a strong mathematical background. In order to attain
this, he dedicated part of each day to the study of mathematics and
trigonometry. The texts that he used for his course of self-study that
culminated in Middah Berurah are not known. R. Landau articulated
several reasons why the study of mathematics and astronomy was so
important:

... aside from the study of the Torah, among the other ... branches of
wisdom, the study of astronomy is the most honorable and important of
all. There are five reasons for this: 1) The sanctification of the new
month and the calculation of the dates of all the festivals in the Torah
are both dependent on it, and this was the first command that the
Children of Israel were given .... 2) Through the command to calculate
and declare a new month God showed his great kindness and love for
us. By giving us the power to [calculate and] declare a new month, or to
intercalate the year [God handed over great power to the Sages] ....
3 )The other nations of the world recognize and thank Israel for their
skill in this science, for [astronomy] is extremely important to all of the
peoples of the world, and astronomy was first learned from us, as is stated
in many books (and only later, due to our exile and dispersion, was
this science lost to us and learned by the Gentile sages) ... the
astronomer Ptolemy praised us and those of us who developed the nineteen
year cycle, II and Ptolemy himself wrote that this knowledge certainly
came through prophetic insight .... 4) This science is more worthy
than the other sciences because ... its subject and focus are the
heavens and the stars which . . . are eternal. This is unlike the natural
sciences which investigate substances made of the four basic elements,
which do not last. 5) When a person studies [astronomy] in detail, and
understands the sizes of the sun and moon and all of the planets, and
the huge numbers of stars, then he will see the wonders of God ...
which are awesome, and he will recognize the greatness of God and the
smallness of humanity. In this way a person will be inspired to forever
serve God ...

These are the words of a 19th century European rov who clearly felt 
that it was important for a Torah scholar to spend time studying 
certain secular subjects.  YL

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: avodah-boun...@lists.aishdas.org 
> [mailto:avodah-boun...@lists.aishdas.org] On Behalf Of Micha Berger
> Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2010 11:38 PM
> To: avo...@lists.aishdas.org
> Subject: Re: [Avodah] Which way to Jerusalem?
> 
> On Tue, Sep 07, 2010 at 12:43:27PM -0700, Simon Montagu wrote:
> : It's easy to see from a globe that the same is true, 
> lehavdil, for the
> : distance from Alaska to Jerusalem. Does anyone happen to 
> know in which
> : direction Jews in Alaska pray?
> 
> We here in NY do not face ENE, even though that's the shortest route
> around the surface of the earth. (Ever fly from here to Israel, going
> over New England, Newfoundland, etc...?)
> 
> This is so counterintuitive to some, you might need to see a 
> map 

Google Earth will draw the shortest line (ruler). Try it from anywhere. You can
see the actual route.

Akiva

"East" from anywhere:
http://www.kosherjava.com/maps/zmanim.html?lat=61.270232790000605&
;lng=-149.94140625&zoom=4
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--- On Tue, 9/7/10, Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org> wrote:


On Tue, Sep 07, 2010 at 09:52:47AM -0700, Harry Maryles wrote:
: I see no?new explantaion here that eliminates God?in explaining our
: existence. Stating that there are multiple universes just increases
: the numbers. Big deal!?Why does it matter how many universes there
: are? So what if some of?them contain life sustaining conditions...

If there is a logical reason for there to be an infinite number of
different laws of physics all coexisting in different places, then there
is no surprise that some of them support life, produced life, and that
that life reached sentience.

The numbers allow one to apply evolution-like arguments to the laws of
physics. Something is unlikely, but if you roll the dice enough times,
even the unlikely will happen.
?
-------


that anything obeys some kind of laws of physics, the fact that one of
its universes includes laws of physics that eventually led to us is
explicable without invoking design.

But what about the existence of laws altogether? Or even the meta-laws
from which those laws arrived?
----------------------------
?
Exactly. I?can buy a lolgical argument for the origin of life based on?a
near?infinite number universes??each with its own laws of physics -?plus a
near infinite amount of time. But I cannot buy spontaneous creation. In my
opinion Stephen Hawking has not added anything to the propostion that a
Creator is not needed.

HM 

Want Emes and Emunah in your life? 

Try this: http://haemtza.blogspot.com/
?
?


      
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<<They're not saying that quantum uncertainty is the freedom in freedom
of will, but that the role of measurement places constraints on what
can determine which measurement the experimentor chooses to make.>>

Or to be more precise it places no constraints and so all possibilities
are equally possible and so maximizes the information content.
It says nothing about free will in the philosophic sense and in fact would
seem to go against the concept of nekudat habechirah. i.e. for every
such experiment every conceivable observation needs to be equally
probable.

Again, extension from QM to classical physics are always questionable

shana tova

-- 
Eli Turkel

I'd like to share a question I have twice a year - at Yomim Nora'im and
Tishah B'Av - and maybe someone can help me with it. Why did the writers of
Selichos and Kinnos do so in such difficult to understand language? Yes,
poetry is evocative, but only if one can understand it! Ve'hu Rachum,
written in prose, is also very evocative, as is - at least to me - the
collection of Pesukim at the beginning of Selichos. So why make it so
difficult on their audience?

 

KT and KVCT,

MYG

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R' Simon Montagu:
It's easy to see from a globe that the same is true, lehavdil, for the
distance from Alaska to Jerusalem. Does anyone happen to know in which
direction Jews in Alaska pray?

-----------------


http://www.myzmanim.com/messagebox.aspx?messageid=direction

KT,
MYG

On 8/09/2010 7:17 AM, Akiva Blum wrote:
>> On Behalf Of Micha Berger

>> We here in NY do not face ENE, even though that's the shortest route
>> around the surface of the earth. (Ever fly from here to Israel, going
>> over New England, Newfoundland, etc...?)

"We here in NY" seem to face in all directions, depending on the shul.
I've seen shuls within a few blocks of each other facing in all four
directions.  So I don't know that there is a "minhag NY" to use a rhumb
line.  Also, there is a widespread but false belief that the proper
direction is "east", when in fact the gemara contrasts Jews who face west
(in Bavel) while sun-worshippers face the east.


>> This is so counterintuitive to some, you might need to see a
>> map

The experiment I recommend is to take a globe, put one end of a tzitzis
string on NY, and another on EY, and pull it tight.  There's no
contradicting the evidence of ones senses, once one has seen it.

  
> Google Earth will draw the shortest line (ruler).

http://www.kosherjava.com/maps/zmanim.html will give you both the
great circle and the rhumb line.


-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
z...@sero.name                 eventually run out of other people?s money
                                                      - Margaret Thatcher

Simon Montagu's query about which way to face when davening is, of course,
relevant wherever in the world you are - there will always be at least some
divergence (and it could be quite significant) in which way to face
depending on whether you use a rhumb line or great circle path to calculate
where Yerushalayim is.

See myzmanim.com for an explanation - http://w
ww.myzmanim.com/messagebox.aspx?messageid=direction

Kativa vechatima tova to all

Jonny

Save paper ..... think before you print.

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On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 2:27 PM, Liron Kopinsky <liron.kopin...@gmail.com>wrote:

> "East" from anywhere:
>
> http://www.kosherjava.com/maps/zmanim.html?lat=61.2702327900006
> 05&;lng=-149.94140625&zoom=4
>
>
Thanks to RLK and RZS for linking to this site.
http://www.kosherjava.com/zmanim-project/bearing-to-yerusha
layim-and-zmanim-map/has
more background information and links which I won't have time to read
be`iun before the hag, including one article here at aishdas:
http://www.aishdas.org/articles/mizrach.htm. Apparently it's a mahloket
aharonim whether we use rhumb lines or great circles. I'm still curious to
know what Jews in Alaska do lema'ase.
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RMB wrote:
> If we buy into the Rambam's model of what halakhah is
> -- which, again, has Aristotelian foundation -- not only
> did the chassidim bend the halachic process into a
> pretzel, there are NO observant Jews today. And thus
> the contrapositive, if we accept the halachic process as
> practiced by acharonim and arguably most rishonim,
> then what do we do with what the Rambam describes?

Can you elaborate, please?

Kethiva wa'hathimah tovah,
-- 
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
* Basler Gymnasium experimentiert mit Chawrut?-Lernen
* Where Will We Find Refuge ... from technology overload
* Video-Vortrag: Psalm 34
* We May Have Free Will, After All
* Equal Justice for All
* Brutal Women of Nazi Germany
* Gibt es in der Unterhaltungsliteratur eine Rolle f?r G"tt?

On Wed, Sep 08, 2010 at 09:41:16AM +0300, Eli Turkel wrote:
:>They're not saying that quantum uncertainty is the freedom in freedom
:> of will, but that the role of measurement places constraints on what
:> can determine which measurement the experimentor chooses to make.

: Or to be more precise it places no constraints and so all possibilities
: are equally possible and so maximizes the information content.
: It says nothing about free will in the philosophic sense and in fact would
: seem to go against the concept of nekudat habechirah. i.e. for every
: such experiment every conceivable observation needs to be equally
: probable.

I don't understand.

The paper is not about quantum uncertainty, it's about quantum
measurement. Yes, every observation must be probable in proportion to
the square of the magnitude of the wave function.

But the paper isn't about the findings, it's about the inability to
predetermine which kind of observation will be made. What about the
particle, if anything, will be measured.

It seems to me that you're speaking of the randomness inherent in what
that measurement will find. A different topic.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The thought of happiness that comes from outside
mi...@aishdas.org        the person, brings him sadness. But realizing
http://www.aishdas.org   the value of one's will and the freedom brought
Fax: (270) 514-1507      by uplifting its, brings great joy. - R' Kook

On Tue, Sep 07, 2010 at 10:40:12PM -0400, Moshe Y. Gluck wrote:
: I'd like to share a question I have twice a year - at Yomim Nora'im and
: Tishah B'Av - and maybe someone can help me with it. Why did the writers of
: Selichos and Kinnos do so in such difficult to understand language? ...

This is largely an Ashocentric question. The IE's piyutim are quite
transparent.

What I think the point was was to write something with as many layers
of meaning as possible. Rather than something to be understood and sung,
providing the ecstatic experience, it is to be studied and restudied and
to be understood differently each time it is said.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When memories exceed dreams,
mi...@aishdas.org        The end is near.
http://www.aishdas.org                   - Rav Moshe Sherer
Fax: (270) 514-1507


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