Question

19. The Khazar said: Is not the beginning of the fixing of the days from China, because it is the easternmost edge of the inhabited world?
 
20. The Rabbi said: But surely the beginning of the Sabbath is only from Sinai and from Alush before that, where the manna first descended; and the Sabbath begins only for one upon whom the sun has set after Sinai, moving step by step until the farthest west, and after that until what is beneath the earth, and after that until China, which is the east of the inhabited world. And the Sabbath reaches China eighteen hours after the Land of Israel, because the Land of Israel is in the middle of the inhabited world; and when the sun sets in the Land of Israel, it is midnight in China, and when it is midday in the Land of Israel, it is sunset in China. And this is the secret of the calendar calculation, which is built on eighteen hours, as they said: “If the molad occurred before noon, it is known that it will be seen near sunset.” And the intent is to the Land of Israel, which is the place of the Torah, and it is the place where Adam was brought down from the Garden of Eden on the night of the Sabbath, and from there the counting began, close to the six days of creation, and Adam began to give names to the days. And as the earth became inhabited and mankind multiplied, they counted the days as Adam had established them. Therefore mankind does not differ regarding the seven days of the week, for their beginning is from midday at the western end of the inhabited world, which is sunset in the Land of Israel. And at that point the first light was created, and afterward the sun, because there was light, and when its time came it became night for the inhabited world; and the order proceeded by placing the night before the day, as it says: “And there was evening and there was morning”; and so too the Torah warned: “From evening to evening shall you keep your Sabbath.”

And do not challenge me with those astronomers, the observers, the thieves of wisdom. It was not their intention to steal, but they found the sciences uncertain from the time prophecy ceased, and they used their own intellect and composed works according to what their reasoning gave them. Included in this is that they made China the beginning of the days, contrary to the Torah—though not in complete opposition, because they agree with the people of the Torah that the day begins from China; the dispute between us and them is only that we place night before day.

And those eighteen hours must be the main principle in naming the days of the week, because the Land of Israel, which is the place where the naming of the days begins, is six hours from the sun at the time when the naming first begins. And the designation “Sabbath” continues, conceptually, from the start of the day, when the sun began to circle from the farthest west, and Adam, being in the Land of Israel, saw it setting and called that the beginning of the Sabbath, until it reached the point opposite his head eighteen hours later, when it was evening at the beginning of China, and there too the beginning of the Sabbath was called. That was the end of the boundaries of this designation, because what lies beyond that is indeed called east relative to the place from which the days begin. One cannot avoid there being a shared place that is the beginning of its east and the end of its west, and for the Land of Israel this is the beginning of the inhabited world.

And this is not only by the law of the Torah but also by the law of nature, because it is impossible for the weekly days to bear one and the same name throughout the whole inhabited world unless a place is fixed as the starting point of the naming, and that place must be compact, such that one part of it is not east relative to another part of it; rather, part of it must be wholly east and part wholly west. Otherwise the days cannot have a definite designation, because every place around the sphere of the earth is both east and west at once. Thus China is east of the Land of Israel and west of the underside of the earth; the underside of the earth is east of China and west of the west; and the west is east of the underside of the earth and west of the Land of Israel. Then there would be neither east nor west, neither beginning nor end, and no definite names for the days.

The Ordainer mentioned above gave fixed names to the days beginning from the Land of Israel, though the naming must have some breadth in every direction, because it is impossible to distinguish the position of every single point on earth. For even in Jerusalem itself there are many eastward and westward points, and what is east of Zion, for example, is not east of the Temple, and the circles of their horizons differ in actual reality in a way the senses cannot grasp. How much more so Damascus relative to Jerusalem. It is impossible not to say that the Sabbath of Damascus precedes the Sabbath of Jerusalem, and the Sabbath of Jerusalem precedes the Sabbath of Egypt; yet in any case we admit a certain breadth.

And the breadth within which the regions differ while still bearing the designation of one and the same day is eighteen hours, neither less nor more. The inhabitants of that longitudinal band all call it Sabbath, while the inhabitants of another band have already left the Sabbath, band after band, until eighteen hours have been completed from the time the Sabbath designation began, until the sun stands opposite the head of the Land of Israel. Then the designation of that day departs, and no person remains who still calls it by that day; rather, the naming of the following day begins. Therefore they said: “If the molad occurred before noon, it is known that it will be seen near sunset”—as if saying: If it occurred before midday on Sabbath in Jerusalem, it is known that it will be seen on the Sabbath near sunset. That is because the designation “Sabbath” continued for eighteen hours after it had ceased at the place where it began, until the sun returned to the point opposite the head of the Land of Israel after a day and a night. Then the moon was bound to be visible to one who was at the beginning of China on Sabbath evening, and this agrees with what our Sages said, that “there must be a night and a day from the month.”

And the name “Sabbath” had already departed from the inhabited world and Sunday had begun, even though the inhabitants of the Land of Israel had already gone out of the designation “Sabbath” and entered into Sunday. For the intention is the weekly designation that extends across the whole inhabited world, so that if one asked someone in China and someone in the west, “On which day did you establish Rosh Hashanah?” they would answer, “On the Sabbath,” conceptually speaking—even though one of them had already been leaving the festival while the other was still in it, according to their places relative to the Land of Israel. But with respect to naming the days of the week, the festival was for them on one and the same day.

Thus knowledge of the Sabbaths of God and the festivals of God depends on the land that is the heritage of God, together with what Scripture calls it: His holy mountain, His footstool, the gate of heaven, and “for from Zion shall Torah go forth”; and with the eagerness of the Patriarchs to dwell there while it was in the hands of idol worshippers, and their longing for it, and their bringing of their bones there, like Jacob and Joseph; and Moses’ plea to see it, which was denied him in wrath, though showing it to him from the mountaintop was an act of grace; and the fact that the nations—Persia, India, Greece, and others—sought to offer sacrifices on behalf of themselves and to pray for themselves in that honored Temple, and spent their money on that place. And if they adhered to other laws, that was only because the true religion had not accepted them. And they exalt it even now, despite the absence of the visible Divine Presence upon it, and all the nations celebrate toward it and long for it—except us, because of our exile and oppression. And if I were to recount what our Sages said of its greatness, it would take too long.

These words seem to me full of contradictions. I’d be glad to hear your conclusion regarding the date line from this text. I think the meaning is that the date line passes through the middle of China.