peculiar scheduling

[cellio]

Tonight my congregation is having the fourth-grade students lead services, so I am going elsewhere. So this morning I looked at service times in the paper to try to decide where.

Candle-lighting time tonight is around 8:05, meaning that sunset is around 8:25. Traditional congregations tend to have evening services around sundown because, duh, that's when it's evening. Liberal congregations tend to just set a fixed time for services year-round, regardless of what the sun is doing. (That's what mine does: services are always at 8:00.)

I've been meaning to check out Young People's (Orthodox, just down the street). They start at 6:30. Ok, what about Beth Shalom ("Conservadox")? I visited them once five years ago and haven't been back; maybe it's time to update my knowledge. 7:00. Ok, what about Poale Zedeck (Orthodox)? I haven't seen Rabbi Miller in a while and it might be nice to drop in. 7:00. This is an early week for Tree of Life, so that's no help. (They have two different fixed times, 5:45 and 8:15.) My usual standby, New Light (Conservative and just down the street) has a fixed time of 8:00, so that's probably where I'll go. (I see that the Lubavich have their service near candle-lighting time. I wonder if I have the nerve to walk in there tonight.)

But what's up with this scheduling? Sure, most of these places will be having mincha (afternoon service) and then kabbalat shabbat/ma'ariv (the evening service), but mincha doesn't take an hour and a half. How can places have kabbalat shabbat an hour before sunset? Do they just not do ma'ariv, then? Isn't that a little odd?

If I were to go to, say, Young People's at 6:30, then that would mean I would be adding almost two hours to Shabbat. (It's not like you can end early just because you started early. Nightfall is nightfall.) That strikes me as odd, but it must be what their congregants do. But why?

I guess I'll wait to visit Young People's until 6:30 and sunset are a little closer together, because otherwise I'd have to leave work early to be ready in time. I leave work early for Shabbat in the winter; I don't usually do so in the summer.

Comments

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Early services in the summer is not uncommon. Our synagogue has mincha (O services on Fridays tend to start with mincha and have some sort of discussion before going into Kabbalat Shabbat) at 7PM. For that reason, Jonathan goes to a different synagogue on Friday nights in the summer. :)

It is permissible to say ma'ariv up to about 1.5 hours before actual nightfall, although, as gnomi says, you have to remember to say shma'a after dark - this is covered pretty extensibly in Tractate Brachot. And it's most useful for families who don't want to wait until, say, 9:30, to serve Shabbat dinner or for people who don't want to stay up that late.

[cellio]

It is permissible to say ma'ariv up to about 1.5 hours before actual nightfall,

I didn't realize that. At some level ma'ariv is different from the others anyway, in that it doesn't correspond to a Temple service. So I was actually starting to go down the "ma'ariv is kind of optional" path. I realize that's different from what you're saying here.

this is covered pretty extensibly in Tractate Brachot

I'm actually learning that tractate with my rabbi, but we're still in the "when to say the Sh'ma" part and haven't gotten to the more general service requirements yet. Thanks for the preview!