Possibly a stupid question, but after realizing that I haven’t driven home in daylight in over a month, and probably won’t for several months longer - I was wondering if there were exceptions made when the sun sets earlier.
In a few weeks, it’ll have set by 4:20pm (and I’m not even all that far north), and that could mean needing to have left work at 3:30 to make it home (if a person lived any distance from work at all) and I can’t imagine that would go over really well with employers. Or schools, which don’t necessarily get out that early.
Is there an exception to the rule? Or is it just something that you work around?
But, one of my Jewish clients informed me that his Rabbi begins Synagogue at 8:00 Friday night year-round. Whether Sabbath “officially” begins when Synagogue begins is up for a SDMB Jew to tell you, because I sure as hell don’t know.
Anyway, the 8:00 year-round thing in Central Illinois means that the sun has been down for four hours by the time synagogue begins during a few weeks of the winter, and it means that the sun won’t go down for another hour for a couple of weeks during the summer.
It’s something we work around. All my employers have known that on winter Fridays I have to leave work early and I make up the time on other days of the week. Once, when I was unemployed, I actually had to pass up a job because it would have required that no exceptions be made for work hours on Fridays.
Sabbath officially starts at sundown (actually, 18 minutes before although there’s some leeway until sundown). If one prays the Sabbath prayers before sundown, he has already “accepted” the Sabbath for himself and in that sense, the prayers can “begin the Sabbath”, but once sundown hits, it’s Sabbath, whether one has prayed or not.
IAAJew… So I’d say that it depends on your level of observancy, and the nature of the community. In the more observant communities, they would conduct their services at sundown, when Shabbat begins, be it 8:30 in the summer or 4:30 in the winter. My Orthodox friends would plan their schedules and make arrangements accordingly.
Now communities that are less observant and/or more spread-out have to make other accomodations. Many smaller shuls do have their services the same time year-round regardless of when sunset is. Usually these are the Conservative or Reform shuls, who know when their members are able to congregate.
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Dang, Chaim beat me to it. what he said.
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Religious Jews work around it as cmkeller mentioned. Their children often go to Jewish schools where classes end early on Fridays. Here in Boston, we are far east enough in the time zone that Shabbat starts even before 4 pm for a few weeks each winter IIRC.
IAAJ, although nonobservant, but one of my officemates is super-duper Orthodox (her husband is a rabbi). She has made arrangements to make up during the week for the time she leaves early on Fridays in the fall/winter.
The boss, also a nonobservant Jew, has been most accomodating, since she works her butt off the rest of the time. Some of the others in the office are resentful, though, which I think is silly. She’s doing the same work as everyone else, if not more; her hours are just shifted a few months of the year in a rather minor way.
There are a lot of businesses in the East that are geared toward Jewish employees. B&H Photo in NYC is a major national retailer and has strict observance of sabbath and holidays. They close very early Friday afternoon in preparation for Sabbath and are closed on all holy days. They publish an online calendar so gentile customers will know why the phones aren’t always being answered or orders processed. I can’t think of any other major mail order house that is closed for sometimes more than a week at a time for religious observance.
Hmm, seems they just now upgraded the website so I can’t get to anything and post the link to the calendar. I hope they didn’t mess it up as it was already one of the best e-commerce sites I’ve used.
Ah, got into the site. In addition to Jewish holidays they are closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, new year’s day and indepandance day. Succos took a lot of customers by suprise as they were closed from 1:00 PM Friday Sept 20th until monday morning the 30th. Passover is a big one too as they are closed eight consecutive days.
This is misleading. What there are are some businesses in the East that are owned by Orthodox Jews. Therefore the business follows the same schedule as the Orthodox Jewish employees, simply because the owner too must close up at these times. I don’t believe there are businesses that close up on Friday afternoons & Jewish holidays simply to accomodate their Jewish employees.
In my experience, it is usually less-observant synagogues that have these 8 PM Friday services. This does NOT mean that their leaders do not begin the Sabbath until then. As far as I know, all Jews believe that the Sabbath begins at the very beginning of Friday night. But in the less-observant synagogues – rightly or wrongly – more people will attend the services in the later evening than at sunset time.
But there’s nothing really wrong with scheduling it like this. The afternoon prayers will have to be skipped, but the evening prayers do not have to be said at the very start of the evening. There’s no problem saying them at a later point in the evening.
[Pre-emptive note to any of the more learned Jews who might be tempted to argue that last point: I agree that there are some minor objections to an 8 PM Friday evening service year-round, but they apply equally to 8 PM evening services for the rest of the week too, and those objections are minor enough that plenty of synagogues do schedule late-evening (or even late-night) services on other nights of the week.]
When I hired a director who happened to be an Orthodox Jew, I wasn’t concerned. He stayed later on Fridays in the summer, and left mid-afternoon on Fridays in the winter. It all came out in the wash.
And we did sometimes close for Jewish holidays, despite the fact that we were a public company, and none of the officers where Jewish.
If they bitch that much couldn’t the boss say ‘ok, everyone comes in half an hour earlier in the morning and goes home early on friday?’ I think they’d change their minds.
I feel the need to point out that minimizing the fact that “the afternoon prayers will have to be skipped” is not something to do lightly. Jewish men are required to pray 3 times a day and each of the three services has an official “beginning time” and “ending time;” a window of opportunity, if you will. If, during the Winter, when sunset occurs early in the afternoon, Friday Night services begain after sunset, the congregation would be deprived of the opportunity to pray Mincha (the afternoon service) with a Minyan (a quorum of 10). This is, at best, frowned upon.
Not really. While I’m sure some of our lawyer Dopers could supply the correct terminology, the upshot is that if the nature of the job will be compromised by the religious observance, that is not an accommodation that the employer is required to make. In this case, the job required that programmers be monitoring the system (I guess…I never did get too many details about it after finding out it wouldn’t be good for me religious-wise) during those hours.
I’m curious: If an Orthodox Jew owns a business, but some of his employees are not Jewish, can he keep his business open on Friday evening and Saturday? Is there any prohibition against profiting from his employees’ labor on the Sabbath?
There are some who try to get around these strictures by having a gentile partner who “owns” the portion of the profits earned on Saturday. The legitimacy of these arrangements is beyond the scope of this MB.
How would the timing of prayers and services be handled if you lived in the far north or south where during mid-winter and mid-summer there may be no sunrise or sunset?