Q&A: Midnight — Is There Such a Time?
Midnight — Is There Such a Time?
Question
In this week’s Torah portion it is told that the plague of the firstborn took place at midnight. That got me wondering: when exactly is “midnight”? After all, every point in time can be divided infinitely, can’t it?
But that led me to ask: if so, then it should be impossible to advance to the next moment, since in order to get to the next moment you would have to pass through infinitely many moments…
I have no knowledge of the philosophy of “time.” Could you help me make some order in this topic?
Answer
See the “Good Measure” article for Parashat Balak:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BwJAdMjYRm7IY0xlc1dmYTMweVE
The fact that within some interval of time there are infinitely many moments does not mean that traversing it requires an infinite amount of time. Take a time interval of one second. Passing through it takes exactly… one second, of course.
Discussion on Answer
For that you need to study calculus (infinitesimal calculus). It’s not something you learn on one foot.
Okay. I’ll be a bit cheeky and ask the Rabbi: is there any chance to speak with the Rabbi about this somewhere (preferably not by phone)?
Call me. 0523320543
A well-known question is when the plague of the firstborn occurred, since there really is no such instant as midnight. And the well-known answer is that the plague of the firstborn was a plague of death, and death too does not occur at one specific instant; rather, until midnight they were alive, and from midnight their life ceased.
This is brought in my above-mentioned article.
Thank you very much for the answer!
I would like to know: where can I get information about the concepts you mentioned in your article (“a discrete point of time,” “the time axis,” “an infinitesimal continuum,” and so on)? My lack of familiarity with these terms makes it hard for me to understand what you wrote.
Again, thank you very much!