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From: R. Halevi
Subject: Baseline representation
Date: 24 Kislev 5780
I am more concerned with what we are adopting than whether it is common.
Nachmani says practicality is not endorsement. Perhaps. But consider: the English word "clock" derives from the medieval Latin clocca, meaning "bell." Which bells? Church bells. The mechanical clock was developed in medieval monasteries to coordinate the canonical hours: Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, Compline. Eight divisions of the day, structured around Christian prayer.
The very name encodes an assumption about whose prayer times matter.
Had the Islamic call to prayer dominated European timekeeping instead, we might speak of "adhans" rather than "clocks." The device would measure the same intervals, but the word would carry different assumptions. In Persian we say sā'at, from the Arabic sā'a, itself borrowed from Aramaic, itself perhaps from Akkadian. Every word for time carries the history of who needed to coordinate what.
The Talmud speaks of sha'ot zemaniyot, hours that vary with the day's length. Twelve hours from sunrise to sunset, each hour longer in summer, shorter in winter. This is a different conception of time than the mechanical hour. Not wrong, not impractical. Different.
I raised this concern with the chair after our last meeting. Have we consulted with anyone about whether adopting a framework built on canonical hours is appropriate for our purposes?
—Dov Halevi
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