When I was growing up on Shirley Avenue,
off the 3900 block of Park Heights, here in Baltimore, I loved summer vacation
when, after supper, my friends and I had plenty of time to jump rope and play hide-and-go-seek
even without daylight saving time. As the sun was setting, we would sit at the
bottom of the high steps leading up to our row houses and play a game called
Time.
As a child, I
didn’t realize that time really isn’t a game to be tampered with. It’s a
precious gift from Hashem to use wisely, enjoying the beautiful world and the mitzvahs
He gave us. Now the United States Congress wants to pass a bill making daylight
saving time year-round. It’s only an extra hour, but in the winter, it would be
disastrous for the Jewish community.
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Last March,
during the 117th Congress, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL)
introduced the Sunshine Protection Act of 2022 doing away with standard time
and making DST year-round. It passed unanimously so quickly in the Senate that
Jewish leaders hurried to influence representatives not to pass the bill in the
House.
Agudath Israel,
the Orthodox Union, and the Rabbinical Council of America sent letters to
members of the House of Representatives pointing out concerns about this
legislation. “It was an intensive few months working behind-the-scenes on this
issue, which is so fraught with problems for the religious, economic, and
family life of the Orthodox Jewish community,” says Rabbi Abba Cohen, Agudath
Israel’s Vice President for Government Affairs and Washington Director. Rabbi
Cohen states that there was tremendous pressure to push the bill through the
House of Representatives. He says,“We immediately went into action and were
successful in helping to shut it down during the critical weeks and months that
followed.”
One letter or
legislative memorandum circulated in the House by Agudath Israel was written by
Rabbi Dovid Heber, administrator of the Star K and Rav of Khal Ahavas Yisroel
Tzemach Tzedek (KAYTT). Rabbi Heber is a well-known authority on the luach
(calendar) and zmanim. In
his letter, he included a chart of sunrise and morning davening times in major
American cities for December and January if DST becomes year-round. With
prayers ending as late as 8:40 a.m., Rabbi Heber asks, “how can individuals
during the winter pray before going to work if work starts at 8:30 or 9:00?
Rabbi Heber
also cites the problem affecting children who would walk to school in the dark
if DST becomes permanent. And for Jewish children who might start their
davening later at school, their daily schedules would be disrupted.
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My husband says that daylight saving time is a “hot” topic, allowing
people to barbecue earlier in the year. Seriously, though, DST has an
on-again/off-again history. In 1794, Sir Benjamin Franklin was the first person
to suggest daylight saving in a letter to the editor of a Paris newspaper,
titled “An Economical Project.” He proposed that by pushing the clock ahead,
Parisians would save the use of candles and get people up earlier in the
morning. To many, his idea was a joke.
In 1895, a New
Zealand entomologist, Jules Vernon Hudson, proposed adding two hours to the
summertime calendar, probably so he and similar scientists would have more
outside time studying insects. On July 1, 1908, residents of Port Arthur (now
Thunder Bay), Ontario, were the first to turn their clocks forward for daylight
saving. In 1916, several years after British builder WilliamWillett proposed
DST in Parliament, England passed a law establishing it there.
During World
War I, the United States instituted DST to give soldiers more daylight hours.
Right after the war, the law was reversed. Then, during World War II, it was
reinstated for three years. In 1966, daylight saving time became an official
law in America. By 2007, after much compromise, the current system, pushing the
clocks ahead in March and back to standard time in November, was adopted.
In an article,
titled “The U.S. Tried Permanent Daylight Saving Time in the 1970s – Then
Quickly Rejected It,” Susan Davis, of the GBH News (formally called WGBH
affiliated with NPR in Boston) quoted Senator Marco Rubio, pushing his law to
make daylight saving time year-round. “The good news is, if we can get this
passed,” he said, “we don’t have to keep doing this stupidity anymore.”
Answering
Rubio, Davis writes, “America tried this before (for a proposed two years
during an energy crisis), and the country hated it.” She adds, “Americans do
not like changing their clocks, but they disliked even more going to work and
school in the dark for months.” The result was it didn’t lower energy
consumption and it created serious safety issues for children walking or
waiting for a bus in the dark. The federal government changed back to standard
time before the two-year period was up. Now, almost 50 years later, “Congress
is back at it,” says Davis.
This past year,
the Sunshine Protection Act of 2022 didn’t make it onto the floor of the House
of Representatives, but Senator Rubio isn’t giving up. In a March 2nd
press release, Rubio reintroduced the Sunshine Protection Act (now of 2023). And
Representative Vern Buchanan (R-FL) introduced its “companion legislation” in
the House.
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Agudath Israel’s
stance on this issue, to fight against year-round DST, is in line with a 1971 teshuva by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, who addressed the issue when it
was brought up in the legislative session. He wrote that we must fight against
such a bill with every means of advocacy, stating that it constitutes a “gezeirah
mamash al hatefila l’yirei Hashem Yisborach.”
Rabbi
Ariel Sadwin, Executive Director Agudath Israel of Maryland and the
Mid-Atlantic Region, has been heavily involved on the state level and across
the region. He has lobbied the Maryland state legislature in opposition to the
permanent DST bill. If asked to pick all year daylight-savings time or standard
time, he would surely identify year-round standard time as the one that is more
conducive to Orthodox Jews. However, he pointed out that the momentum to get
rid of changing the clock is primarily by those who prefer all-year DST.
Maryland
Delegate Dalya Attar, who has made her colleagues aware of her view not to
support a year-round DST, shares that for the last several years, a delegate in
the Maryland General Assembly has been introducing a bill supporting Eastern
Daylight Time year- round. She says that it hasn’t passed in prior years, and
since we are approaching the cross-over time in Annapolis, “It likely will not
move this year again.”
We don’t know
where the issue of a permanent DST will end up in the federal and state
legislatures, but we have our leaders fighting for us. “We will continue to let
our voice be heard,” says Rabbi Cohen. ”There is much at stake here in regard
to Orthodox Jewish life.”
