88 WITH A HAND TIED BEHIND ME
93 SHUL WITH A VIEW
94 OFF THE COUCH

The

96 NORMAL LIKE ME
100 ENDNOTE
103 THE KICHELS

A Potpourri of Encounters and Impressions
10 Questions

Time on22 Shevat 5778 | February 7, 2018

Latest hour for Krias Shema? Readyto leave for the first Maariv? Just
look at your watch and see if it’s reallysuch a long day
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10QUE STIONS FOR› Rachel Bachrach

EliezerGreer

is the creator of the Jewish Halachic Analog Clock, which was recently
launched on MyZmanim.com. He is based in Waterbury, Connecticut.

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What is a Jewish halachic analog clock?

Let’s start from the beginning: Every halachic day is
divided into 12 segments, sha’os zemaniyos, based onwhen the day starts and when it ends. Sunrise, sunset,
the time interval separating them, and the sun’s angular
position from your location are all used to calculate this
proportional halachic hour. This special unit of time
takes into account the seasonal changes in the lengthof the day, and it has special meaning in halachah —when we say a certain mitzvah may be performed three hours into the day,we don’t mean at 3 a.m. or three 60-minute hours after sunrise, we mean
three halachic hours. The data for calculating sha’os zemaniyos already exists
in various programs and online, but the concept to put it all in analog-clock
format with set hours has never been implemented. That was my idea — tocreate an analog clock interface marking the day’s halachic zmanim.

Why do this?

So we can mentally orient our day aroundthe focal halachic times and milestones,
rather than the 60-minute, 24-hour cycle.
Many mitzvos are time-based and have to be
performed before, during, or after specificzmanim — tallis and tzitzis, Krias Shema, when fast days,Shabbos, and Yom Tov start and end. These zmanim aredetermined by the position of the sun in the sky and canvary greatly, depending on the time of year and your latitude
and longitude — Shabbos in the summer starts several
60-minute hours later than Shabbos in the dead of winter,but halachically, it’s the same time. My clock graphicallydemonstrates how zmanim define our connection toHashem through time-bound mitzvos by marking halachic
times and benchmarks throughout the day.

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5When did you get started?

What does it look like?

Imagine a traditional clock face. On myclock, the zmanim remain at set locations — chatzos is at the top, where the12 would be on a traditional clock, andalos and shkiah are at the bottom, at the 6 position.
The decision about the location of these zmanim
was an ongoing discussion, but we finally settled onwhat we think is the clearest, with chatzos and highnoon in consonance with each other. There are also
markings on the clock indicating zmanim: haneitz,tefillah, plag, Minchah ketanah. Another design feature is that the face changes color between daytime
and nighttime hours to help users differentiate between the two.

How did you comeup with the idea?

Last Pesach, we were discussing the different
shitahs of what should be completed by chatzos during the Seder — the first matzah, afikomen, or Hallel. That got me thinking abouta clock that calculates this important time forus. I ran the idea by family and close friends
at one of the seudos, and our guests urged me to create a prototype,but for me the question really was how to disseminate the idea andthe clock to the tzibbur. Initially, I wanted to make a zmanim clock tohang alongside standard clocks in shuls, but I realized that for users,
that could be too costly and complicated to gain traction. I needed tofigure out how to best transmit the concept without the idea being
lost because of cost or detail.

I cogitated for a month or so before sitting down with a paper andpencil. I fused concepts by drawing clocks, numbers, arrows, andzmanim. Then the questions arose: how to best graphically convey
the daily calculation of an astronomical phenomena, pinpointing theposition of the sun in the sky for the user’s exact latitude and longitude while
synchronizing the hour, minute, and second hands, all while simultaneously
accommodating different proportional hours during daytime and nighttime
and jiving them with the limitations of a standard clock that operates with a
60-minute hour? Overwhelming, I know! At that point, the analog clock justwasn’t ticking for me, so I shelved the idea for a few weeks.

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Did you ask any sh’eilos?

Not specifically, but we did have halachic challenges, thebiggest being how to demonstrate both major zmanim
calculations: the Magen Avraham and the Gra. There are twobasic approaches to daylight: the Gra, who holds that daylight starts withhaneitz hachamah — sunrise — and ends with shkiah — sunset, and the
Magen Avraham, who holds that a day is dawn — alos hashachar — untilnightfall — tzeis hakochavim. According to the Magen Avraham, if thesky lightens at 5 a.m. and stars appear at 7:30 p.m., that day has 14 anda half clock hours, or 870 minutes, and dividing by 12 produces thevalue for the sha’ah zmanis on this date at 72-and-a-half minutes.
According to the Gra, this same day would have sunrise at about 6:30
a.m. and sunset at 6:40 p.m., with one sha’ah zmanis being almost
exactly 60 minutes. Clearly, a Magen Avraham day is longer than a
Gra day, so displaying both in one clock is a challenge, which is why theinterface offers different options — you can select to view Gra or MagenAvraham.

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What wasthe toughest
part of theprocess?

Using e-mail to convey halachic
concepts that I had imagined visually.
I’m a visual person by nature, andclarifying it all in e-mails was tricky. The
process was decidedly longer than I expected —it took six months, instead of the few weeks I’denvisioned. Fortunately, my wife gave me thelebensraum to venture into this project in addition
to my daily job as a property analyst; bzei’as apecha
tochal lechem.

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How did MyZmanim
get involved?

I reached out to multiple
organizations that have zmanim calendar websites
and apps for guidance and direction, including
MyZmanim. MyZmanim is an organizationthat provides detailed zmanim information forpeople worldwide via its website, app, and otherservices — you type in your zip code, they tell you
the zmanim for that day in your location. Several
weeks later, I spoke with support rep Nachum
Adler. We e-mailed back and forth for a while,
fine-tuning the idea. MyZmanim copyrighted
my concept and design and created a page atclock.myzmanim.com to host it on their site, as
well as a page explaining it all.

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What’s the next step?

We launched only recently, butthere are so many applications forthis. It makes a great pedagogicaltool, teachers use it to teach theconcept of sha’os zmaniyos in a visualmanner everyone relates to. This past
Shabbos, someone told me he wouldn’t
be surprised if in the very near future,someone takes my concept and makes awireless zmanim clock for shuls.

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Have you gotten
memorable
feedback?

Whenever I explain thisproject, the almost immediate
reaction is, “I need to see it tounderstand!” People have a lot of
fun with time and clock expressions
and sayings and I’m guilty of thistoo. I tell people the idea clocked
in, time was ticking, there are somany! I remember when someone
told me, “Time will tell how thezmanim clock becomes embedded
in our schedule — you have timeon your side.”

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