Q&A: Time for Reciting the Shema
Time for Reciting the Shema
Question
This is an example question; what interests me more is how you relate to a question of this kind, and less your specific take on this particular topic. So I’d be glad if you would describe your principles rather than your conclusions.
The Talmud says that the time for reciting the Shema is three hours, because princes get up within three hours. This is not a rabbinic enactment but an interpretation of the Torah commandment, which said to recite the Shema “when you rise up.” The question is whether this time should not change nowadays, since our sleeping habits have changed completely. We can’t keep clinging to the existing framework. In my view, it would make more sense in our time to say until 8 a.m., because that is when children’s frameworks begin and most people are already up by then (except for loafers). Or some other time. But certainly not three hours according to how the sages of the Mishnah, who lived 2,000 years ago, interpreted it.
Surely the same is true for the evening Shema. We can’t just copy and paste all the times that appear at the beginning of tractate Berakhot (“when the priests enter,” “when the poor man goes in to eat his bread with salt,” etc.), since they reflected the reality of their lives. Today nobody goes to sleep based on how dark it is outside or based on the time when a person goes in to eat his bread on Sabbath nights.
Not that I have a more absolute definition for the times of Shema, but it is clear that the times given in the Mishnah can no longer guide us.
Answer
Hello,
Precisely with regard to the times for the evening Shema, the Talmud brings various events that mark the time, and it is clear that these are not the essence but signs indicating the real time. So at least for the evening prayer, I would not change the time until I had some objective criterion (that is, not a sign but the essence).
As for the three hours in the morning, nowadays there are no princes, so I do not know whether to measure according to our sleeping schedule or to remain with the time of the princes as it was in their day.
The times given in the Mishnah certainly do not guide us today. Nobody checks when poor people go in to eat bread with salt. But as I said, that is a sign and not the reason.
In general, I see no problem if someone were to come and establish a sensible time as the time of going to sleep or getting up on average in our day. That is completely acceptable. True, I am not certain, but it is reasonable—no less so than leaving the current situation as it is.
It’s not that in the past they measured and saw when princes got up, and it turned out they got up within three hours, no less and no more.
Rather, there were two blocks of time that depend on the sun, not on waking habits: 1. the beginning of the day (= from when one can recognize someone / sunrise, when the sun is in the east), 2. the whole morning (= the first quarter of the day = as long as the sun is closer to the east than to the south).
Both of these time-blocks are considered the beginning of the day, and the choice between them depends on the question of when people get up. Princes do not get up דווקא at the very beginning of the day, and therefore the morning period as well is considered the time of rising. But even if princes got up only in the first two hours or the last four hours (or shift workers, or teenagers on summer vacation), we would still say that the time of rising is the morning block (which is one distinct unit during which people get up), when the sun still leans eastward.