Torah Time

Does a full day start at the beginning of the night and continue until the next evening, or does it begin in the morning and continue until the end of the night? Any observant Jew (and his employer) knows that, according to the Torah, a day begins with the night. That is why Shabbos - and all days - begin at sundown/nightfall.

However, it is not clear that this was always the case. The question has been raised how the patriarchs could be described as following the entire Torah, including observing the laws of Shabbos, if a gentile is not allowed to fully observe Shabbos. (Whether the patriarchs literally observed all of the commandments is irrelevant. How can they be described as doing so, when it is prohibited?) R. Pinchas Horowitz, the famous author of the Hafla'ah and other works, explains in his Panim Yafos that for all those to whom the Torah was not given, the day begins in the morning and continues with the night. After all, as R. Ya'akov Kamenetsky (Emes Le-Ya'akov, Bereishis 8:22) adds, Adam was created during the day and started counting his days beginning with the daytime. So, the natural day begins with the daytime and continues through the night. However, when the Torah was given, it defined a day as beginning with the nighttime.

Thus, to the patriarchs, whom had not received the Torah, Shabbos began Saturday morning and concluded Saturday night. Thus, they could observe the Jewish Shabbos which, according to the Torah, begins on Friday night while still not keeping the pre-Torah Shabbos, which concludes at the end of Saturday night. As long as they performed "work" on Saturday night, they were within their rights. (Note that R. Akiva Eiger disagrees with R. Horowitz. See R. J. David Bleich's article in Tradition 25:3, pp. 54-55. I'm pretty sure that this was reprinted in Contemporary Halakhic Problems vol. 4.)

So, according to these authorities, there are two types of days - natural days and Torah days. Natural days begin with the morning while Torah days begin with the night. Until the Torah was given, the whole world observed natural days. After the Torah was given, the Jews oberved Torah days.

A hint to this is found in the verse "Day and night shall not cease" (Bereishis 8:22) which lists day before night.

However, the Pardes Yosef (ad loc.) quotes others who raise the following question: In the Creation narrative, the Torah consistently uses the phrase "va-yehi erev va-yehi boker - and it was evening and it was morning." Clearly, night came before day from the time of Creation, and not just from the giving of the Torah.

I think there are 3 possible answers to this:
1. The Creation was done with the Torah in mind and was referring to Torah-days (Pardes Yosef).
2. Adam was not aware of this verse. No one was until the Torah was given, which was when the transition took place (R. Ya'akov Kamenetsky).
3. Even though there are talmudic passages that understand this as meaning that night comes first, it is possible that those are only asmakhtos and the peshat of the verse really means the exact opposite. As the Rashbam explains, erev means the time right before night which is actually day. Thus, consistent with the natural days, daytime comes before nighttime.

According to all of these explanations, there was a transition from natural time to Torah time with the giving of the Torah. As we shall see at a future time, there is another example of this.