All-year daylight saving time threatens Jews' morning prayer
(RNS) — American Jews say they were blindsided by the U.S. Senate’s lightning-fast passage of a bill to make daylight saving time year-round and intend to fight it.
The Sunshine Protection Act, which passed the Senate on March 15, will make it nearly impossible for Jews to pray communally in the morning, Jewish advocates say, and still get to work or school on time during the winter months.
According to Jewish law, morning prayers must take place after the sun rises. Daylight saving time, which currently begins on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November, extends darkness on late-winter mornings.
“It will affect our religious life, our professional life and our family life,” said Rabbi Abba Cohen, vice president for government affairs for Agudath Israel of America. “If congregational and personal prayers begin after 8 in the morning, how will people get to work at 9 a.m. or earlier?”
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Cohen said Agudath Israel has issued a statement and sent a detailed explanation of these difficulties to lawmakers in the House of Representatives, whose leaders have not said whether they will bring the bill up for a vote.
In Judaism, the morning prayer service, called “Shacharit” because it starts after dawn — shachar in Hebrew — typically lasts 30 to 40 minutes when recited communally. Reading from the Torah and saying certain prayers, including the kaddish, or mourner’s prayer, must take place in a group with a quorum of 10, known as a minyan.
Unlike previous legislation on seasonal time changes, leaders of the Jewish community say, lawmakers didn’t inform...