Q&A: Saying it 90 times, which equal 30 days
Saying it 90 times, which equal 30 days
Question
Hello Rabbi, as I understand it, Jewish law says that after changing the mention from “He makes the wind blow and the rain fall” to “He brings down the dew,” the halakhic decisors say one needs to reach 90 times saying it, so that after that his tongue will be accustomed to it.
They say that this needs to be 30 days (based on the simple calculation that each day one mentions it 3 times in the Amidah prayers).
But according to my a priori calculation, that isn’t precise. Because there are all the festival days (including the intermediate days of the festival), which are a week in which an additional prayer, Musaf, is recited. And that is a fourth one.
Therefore, by definition, there must be a deviation from 30 days backward.
With a quick calculation (here I added an a posteriori dimension), I reached the conclusion that during the week of Passover (7/30), they pray 5 extra prayers.
And instead of praying 21 prayers, they pray 26 prayers.
So it turns out that after 28 days and one evening prayer… a person has reached 90 “mention-prayers,” in which he said “He brings down the dew,” and indeed his tongue is accustomed to it.
What does the Rabbi say? (Practically speaking this almost makes no difference, but mathematically it’s interesting.)
Answer
This question has already been raised. There are also Musaf prayers and more. I think these numbers are not exact in any case. A halakhic line is set, from which point onward there is a presumption that you said it correctly. We are not talking about exact counting. I assume you’ll agree with me that according to all opinions, if you said it 90 times in one day or over thirty days, you did not get accustomed to it at exactly the same level. The question is how to draw a reasonable line, not how to make precise counts.
The Mishnah Berurah brings the Hatam Sofer, who says that one should say it 101 times.