Calculating the month, the beginning of the day, and Hanukkah candles
Hello Rabbi
Recently, a guy named Ronen Cohen uploaded videos to YouTube in which he claims that the words of the sages are nonsense and he attacks the entire idea of the Oral Torah. He says that he is not a Karaite because they accepted our calendar and he is not, but his method is Karaite because he claims he adheres to writing.
He claims that our calculation of the month is wrong because we are based on the moon and therefore all the holidays we celebrate are not on time.
He claims that Shabbat is observed from Saturday morning because according to the Torah, a day begins in the morning.
Regarding the Chanukah candles, he claims that the blessing that we sanctified with his commandments is a lie because it is a commandment of the rabbis and that we should perhaps say that our sages commanded us. He presents this as if we attribute divinity to the sages like Christianity.
I would appreciate your feedback.
Thank you very much.
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Okay, I'll give you an example of the beginning of the day.
And this is what you shall do on the altar: two year-old lambs, daily.
You shall do the first lamb in the morning, and the second lamb you shall do at dusk.
Here it is stated that you must bring a lamb twice a day:
One in the morning and one in the evening.
So from this we can understand that if two lambs are offered on one day, one in the morning and one in the evening, then the day does not begin in the evening, and on Shabbat, we say, we observe from midnight on the seventh day to midnight.
On the other hand, it is also written, "And there was evening and there was morning, one day."
Do you think there is a mistake in the way we are doing things?
I did not understand the argument. First, the order of writing in the Torah does not necessarily dictate the order of time. Second, you yourself bring up that the Torah itself (“And it was evening…”) has the opposite reference, so why did you decide in favor of the first source? And third, as is known in the commentators on the holy books, the night does indeed follow the day, and only in the rest of the Torah does the day follow the night. A hint at the beginning of Tractate Berakhot, which discusses the question of what follows what.
In a more explicit form, see, for example, Mishnath Chulin 5:5:
One day, which is said in the same and his son, the day follows the night. This was demanded by Shimon ben Zuma, it is said in the act of Genesis (Genesis, 1), one day, and it is said in the same and his son (Leviticus 22:28), one day. What is the one day, which is said in the act of Genesis 18 — the day follows the night, nor the one day, which is said in the same and his son — The day follows the night.
And in Bartanura there:
One day, which is said in the same and his son, etc. – according to the interpretation of him and his son, near the holy places, as it is written, he will offer a woman as a sacrifice, and he will consecrate him and his son to her. And in the holy places, the night follows the day, as it is written (Leviticus 7) on the day of his offering he shall eat it; he shall not leave it until morning, unless the night after which is called the day of his offering until morning. This too can be so [it says here another day] and it is said in the act of Genesis one day etc.:
See also this article: https://asif.co.il/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/1.-7-10.pdf
You can find many more references online.
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