Daily Talk
In the middle of the laws of the new month the Rambam stops being a codifier and teaches you how to borrow when the seconds you are subtracting are larger than the seconds you have. He warns us in the same breath not to take any of it lightly, and admits the calendar we actually use could be taught to schoolchildren in three days. Why does a book of law slow down for arithmetic nobody needs?
Even by One Minute
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About This Talk
Chapter 11 opens the mathematical section of Kiddush HaChodesh with a defense of why it is there at all: great sages of the nations blundered at this work, the method is the mystery of the intercalation, and its approximations were proven not to affect the visibility of the moon. The Rambam then lays out the units of the sphere, 360 degrees and twelve constellations of thirty, sixty minutes to a degree and sixty seconds to a minute, together with the rules for carrying, for casting off full circles, and for borrowing when the number being subtracted is larger by even one minute. He closes by distinguishing a body's uniform mean motion from the true motion we measure from an earth that is not at the center of its orbit, and fixes the epoch and the latitude of Jerusalem from which everything after is counted.