Precisely the multiplicity of opinions could show that the intention is to “hit” the time of going to bed and not a fixed time of day (it’s hard for me to think of such a relevant time other than evening, and for that they could have used sunset and nightfall as usual).

To Avi: notice that it cannot be that the time of going to bed could be at the time when a poor person eats his bread with salt, at the time when the day becomes holy on Sabbath eves, and certainly not at the time when priests immerse in order to eat their terumah…

I tried to look for material about the rising time of princes in our generation, and I came to the article “In Her Majesty’s Service” (on the Israel Hayom website, 20.1.12), where it is mentioned that Queen Elizabeth’s working hours were many and long, and even at age 85 she did no less than 30 hours of work a week. And when her children were small (before school age), the children would meet their parents at nine-thirty in the morning and at tea time. It seems that by nine in the morning the children were already up and about. From age six they of course went to school and got up before 8 a.m. And later on the princes served as officers in the British army and certainly rose much earlier than 8 a.m.
In any case, most people — and I am not talking about blue-collar workers — begin their workday at 8 or 9 in the morning, and if we take into account that most people travel a considerable amount of time to work, it seems to me that the rising time of the “not pressured” in our generation is not later than 8:30 a.m., give or take.
Practically speaking, though, it still requires further consideration. Best regards, S.Z. Levinger

A.H., see Rashba on the words “Rabbi Hanina is the same as Rabbi Eliezer,” where he explains that at least some of the times are trying to point to bedtime.

Certainly. I meant the sweeping statement implied by your words. As for the matter itself, as far as I know the law follows Rabbi Yehoshua, and even Rashba writes that his intent is the beginning of the night (nightfall), with no connection to sleep.

… “And I found in the book Responsa of Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld (Machon Keren Re’em, Jerusalem 2005, end of siman 23):
‘I will not refrain from calling attention to the essence of the matter: since the Torah made the matter of Shema depend on lying down and rising, and did not state the time explicitly, if the way of people changes due to the weakness that has descended into the world, and now everyone sleeps more or rises later, there is room to say that there is a Torah-level obligation here. And although I have not found this stated explicitly, in my humble opinion the reasoning is correct; and all the more so in a place where the nature of the climate causes this. In all these cases one may say: leave Israel alone.'”…

By the way, this question is familiar, and people have already gone over it a lot. It seems to me that people usually think of it as a leniency question — that is, the questioner wants permission to recite the morning Shema until a later time.

Seemingly, though, there is also a question here in the stringent direction: if we say that modern sleep culture is taken into account, then perhaps one who recites the evening Shema immediately at nightfall has not fulfilled his obligation, since almost no normal person in the Western world goes to sleep at such an hour.
Am I mistaken?

At least according to Rashi on 4a: “According to whom do the Rabbis hold? Regarding the meaning of ‘when you lie down’ stated in the Torah: if they hold like Rabbi Eliezer, who maintains that ‘when you lie down’ means the entire time that people are engaged in going to lie down — this one earlier and that one later — then let them say it follows Rabbi Eliezer, who says until the end of the first watch, for certainly by then everyone who intends to sleep has already lain down and slept.”
How is this night different from all other nights? Bedtime is sometimes later. But in any case the law does not follow him; rather, as long as someone is sleeping, one may recite it. And I already noted that no one sleeps while dipping his bread in salt, so it does not seem that the beginning time depends so much on bedtime (especially according to Rabbi Yehuda, who perhaps allows reciting from plag haminha). Another proof of this is the beginning time of the morning Shema, for it emerges from the Talmud in several places that many people would get up before then, yet no one thought to move the time earlier. In my opinion the only thing worth discussing is the end time of the morning Shema. [And it was already noted that one must say that rising time is not essentially different. The error may come from the understanding that the time for Shema is supposed to be about an hour after rising time, as is common today. Princes recited it the moment they got up. Even those who get up late today do not rise all that late.]

In a natural daily schedule that is not built around artificial lighting, a person rises for his labor with sunrise and is “pouring over from fatigue” toward the end of the day, so it is certainly possible that even before nightfall a person will go to sleep after 10-14 hours of exhausting labor. As the Sages describe, were it not for their enactment that a person should not eat before reciting Shema and praying, a person would come home from the field, eat, and lie down to sleep. It is very reasonable that what determines the time of lying down and rising is the natural time according to the order of the world, and that we should not take into account a change in bedtime caused by human-made changes.
It should be noted that even today there are exceptional individuals who go to sleep early in the night so that they can rise at midnight or at least in the night watch. If the Torah took into account lazy princes who rise late, then all the more so it should take into account the “kings among the rabbis” who are diligent about going to bed so that they can rise in the second half of the night.
Best regards, S.Z. Levinger
By the way, I heard from a naturopathic doctor that sleep during the first half of the night is more effective and healthier!

To S.Z.L.,

If you want to argue that Shema is connected to a “natural sleep time” and not to a “human-made sleep time,” you first need to explain why Shema is connected to lying down and rising at all, and from that we can infer which lying down and which rising the Torah was referring to.

By the way, I noticed that you often emphasize the importance of going to bed early ( https://mikyab.net/%D7%94%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%A2%D7%9C-%D7%91%D7%92%D7%A5-%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%A6%D7%9E%D7%9F-%D7%95%D7%94%D7%A9%D7%91%D7%AA-%D7%98%D7%95%D7%A8-102/ ), even though you answer in the wee hours of the night. That’s really cognitive dissonance, isn’t it?

One more thing: for some reason, it’s impossible to get to your comment through the links in “Recent Comments” on the site. Do you know why?

You need to click on the name of the general topic there, not on the title of the individual comment.

I didn’t understand.

To Aharon — hello,

There is a difference between comments on a post and comments on a responsa entry.

When you click the link for a comment on a post, you arrive directly at the comment itself (or at the comment to which it relates).
By contrast, when you click the link for a comment on a responsa entry, you always arrive at the beginning of the discussion on the responsa entry (since in responsa there is no “comment on a comment”).

Best regards, S.Z. Levinger

S.Z.L., I know.

For some reason, specifically the links to your comments don’t work for me at all — both comments on posts and comments on responsa entries (I get to the question not through the link).
When I click on one of your comments, I get:

This site can’t be reached
plus.google.com refused to connect.
Try:

Checking the connection
Checking the proxy server and firewall
ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED

Do you maybe use a different kind of network?

And perhaps my network (unlike its owner) behaves like “the remnant whom the Lord shall call” — falls asleep at dark and rises in the night watch 🙂

With a blessing for a good night, S.Z. Levinger

In “Recent Comments,” notice that for each comment the commenter and the topic he commented on appear there. Usually, you can’t click on the commenter’s name, only on the topic name. Except for S.Z.L. and Michi, whose name (in S.Z.L.’s case, he replaces it with the title he gives his comment) is a link to each one’s own site. Therefore, when you want to get to S.Z.L.’s comment, be careful to click specifically on the topic name.

Talking about a person’s natural and artificial daily schedule is silly. In general the very definition of “natural” is pretty much impossible, but when people try to divide a person’s own actions and say some are natural and some are artificial, that has no basis whatsoever and is just empty talk.

S.Z.L., your conservatism has drained all logic from your comment. If your intention in reporting on the Queen of England was to agree with Oren that there really is room to determine the time for Shema according to the waking time of royalty nowadays, I would be very surprised. After all, if I bring you the King of Norway who gets up at 11, we are not really going to reopen the discussion about waking time. I don’t think you truly agreed with the possibility of extending Jewish law from its original setting to our own day in that way. In addition, it seems that the Talmud’s intention is that princes get up late. The fact that today kings get up early misses the original intent of the Talmud. It seems reasonable that the Talmud meant a late hour at which pampered people get up. So it turns out that you did indeed agree to change the Jewish law because its meaning has changed nowadays, but you did so in a particularly dogmatic way. One could sum up the move you made here as follows: dogmatic innovation born of creative conservatism…

To Mati — hello,
Since we are dealing with a halakhic definition established by the Sages, and with the question of how it is applied under the conditions of our time, one must understand the definition established by the Sages, who, as is the way of Jewish law, tended toward “dogmatic” determinations. It is no wonder the definition seems “dogmatic” to you, especially since I studied in the exemplary school in Jerusalem 🙂
I raised two lines of thought: either to go by the bedtime of “princes” in our generation, or to go by people who are relatively not under pressure. If we are talking about princes literally, then one would seemingly need to conduct a survey of the habits of princes in our generation and check the situation among most of them. If we mean people who are not under pressure, I suggested going by people who begin work at nine in the morning, live not far from the workplace, and have a car. One could find a point of overlap between the two definitions, such as Supreme Court justices, whose authority is like that of kings, but who need to appear in court at nine in the morning. (By the way, 11 in Norway is an early hour in proportional hours 🙂
Best regards, S.Z. Levinger

And is it just by chance that the hour you suggest is identical to the halakhic time? Or did Jewish law, by holy spirit, foresee the time in our day, etc.?