Shabbat (and other times) on Mars

[cellio]

I was recently asked about this, and I don't know what the current thinking is.

The question of when an astronaut observes Shabbat (while in space) is well-understood. [1] But what happens when we colonize other planets and your hometown is on Mars? Do you count six Mars-days and observe the seventh as Shabbat? How long is a month (and how do you decide which moon)? Is it still desirable to stay in sync with Earthly seasons, or will that go out the window? If you follow the sun as locally experienced, what happens when that causes hardship? (Does the lunar colony observe one ~29-day Shabbat every seven months?) There must be commentary on this by now from sources other than Wandering Stars, but I don't know what the popular opinion is.

[1] I know of three opinions for the astronaut in space: follow your hometown, follow the city from which you launched (your port of departure, like for ships), or follow Jerusalem. All of these involve a ~25-hour Shabbat every seven days, like on Earth, even though your orbit might cause you to see a 90-minute day. But the astronaut is, by definition, just visiting.

Comments

[geekosaur]

Also, what direction do the shuls point? Especially considering that (a) Earth could be at any angle within 4π steradians, and (b) the angle will probably change over centuries.

[grouchyoldcoot.livejournal.com]

Whatever rule you come up with should also apply to this new earth-like planet, of course, with a 19 (?) day year.

[tidesong.livejournal.com]

Wow, I never even thought about that! It kind of hurts my head. :D

(I am meeting with a Rabbi for the first time next week....)

[siderea]

Does the lunar colony observe one ~29-day Shabbat every seven months?

Isn't doing that called "Islam"? ;)

[goljerp]

I'd say the answer depends upon what the locals do for time.

I'd guess that a lunar colony would use 24-hour earth time, since the Lunar days wouldn't make much sense. In that case, it's easy -- use the start/end times for shabbat in the largest (or most convenient) city with a Jewish population in the timezone the colony uses.

Mars, now, is tricky. The Mars day is just a bit more than 25 hours, right? If the colony starts keeping "Mars days", then Shabbat would have to be every 7th day, or else you'd have wacky things like starting shabbat at noon, local time. The problem then becomes that the calendar for Jews on Mars would start to drift... so I dunno. Maybe it could be solved by removing some of the 2-day rosh chodeshes?

I'd also hope that fasts wouldn't end up being significantly longer than on Earth.

Of course, all this is just off the top of my head, and I am not a Rabbi.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I asked a rabbi once about Mars for a novel I was writing. He said to have the Jews keep the Hebrew calendar on the colony ship in sync with Earth, and then once they land on Mars start counting their calendar from that Hebrew day, but use the Martian days instead. Yes, they'd get out of sync with the Jews on Earth, but he said that it was one legitimate way to solve the problem.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

I know of three opinions for the astronaut in space: follow your hometown....

Which is what my rabbi told me to do when I spent a summer in Barrow, Alaska, and sunset was Aug. 4

[ynyr.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and what would you do about some of the things you need for special festivals? And for Sukkot, where would you put the Sukkah? Wouldn't the entire area be enclosed? Would that be like building a Sukkah indoors?
What an interesting question.
Ynyr

[baron-steffan.livejournal.com]

It's a fascinating question, and one that I've considered in the past (mostly from SF inclinations). My first impulse is to wonder if it's legitimate to consider that from a Biblical point of view, so to speak, if you're on Mars, you're in Heaven. 'Course, that opens a theological can of worms that's rather terrifying to contemplate, doesn't it?

How far do you suppose one can stretch the concept of "following local customs" to include a calendar so ferociously out of whack with anything terrestrial?

And one might have to consider the nature of the local civil calendar itself. How do you deal with observing shabbat when the local civil calendar has, let's say, 10 months, each consisting of six 9-local-day weeks of 17-local-hour days? I'm not talking about direct astronomical matters, but a civil/legal/administrative structure developed in response to the local astronomical situation...if that makes sense. How do you manage to be observant when shabbat starts this Tuesday at 14:17 am, and the next one is 11 (local) days later, and the one after that starts at half-past-27 on Zorgday the 39th? On Earth, you at least have a situation where Shabbat is always on Saturday.

When Jews travelled, as they always have, they always observed Shabbat by local time. Surely originally this was without regard to any knowledge that their observance was not actually taking place simultaneously with Jerusalem. But certainly such knowledge didn't take modern science to determine, astronomy being a very ancient and extremely sophisticated science, after all. So clearly the rule has always been to observe the times and seasons according to local conditions, as it were. And Genesis sets forth quite clearly the definition of a day: "and there was evening and there was morning". So, if you consider yourself to be a Martian (as opposed to a traveller), you will observe a day that takes as long as it takes on Mars for the sun to go through a rising-and-setting cycle. The rules-hack here is that one can consider that any place other than Earth is unnatural for humans, so any human, even if born on Mars, is "just visiting".

The above, I should note, is just me playing rules-lawyer, and emphatically not from any expertise in Jewish law.