Private Shimon Askovitz had a dilemma. As a soldier in the US Army, he was transferred to Asia in 1945 to fight on the Pacific front. Sailing across the Pacific Ocean, Askovitz and his fellow soldiers crossed the International Date Line, which set them forward one day on the calendar.
The International Date Line is an imaginary line that runs through the Pacific Ocean and traverses the globe. Due to the rotation of the earth, daybreak does not occur at the same time everywhere. In order to ensure a uniform calendar throughout the world, the Date Line was established in the 19th century. Thus, depending on the direction of travel, one either loses or gains a day by crossing this line.
Askovitz grappled with this concept. In a letter he wrote, “One reason that makes it difficult for me to make any change is the daily Psalm we say at the conclusion of daily prayers, and we say, ‘Today is so many days after the Sabbath.’ How could I say on one day, ‘Today is the third day’ for example, and then just because the boat crosses an imaginary line…I say ‘Today is the fifth day’ when my heart keeps telling me, ‘No, yesterday was three, today must be four.’”
Askovitz also struggled with a much more serious halachic question. When was Shabbos? Was it on the seventh day of the week, or was it on the calendar day of Saturday, even though that would only be the sixth day of his week? What about Pesach? When should he celebrate the sedarim?
He wrote a letter to his mentor, Reb Psachya (Charles) Ackerman, requesting a halachic response. While he waited for that reply, he tried to keep Shabbos and refrain from working on both days of the week. He described the inherent problems in a letter: “On the boat [to Asia], I started the two-day system as soon as we crossed the Line.” He explained, however, that it was proving to be difficult. “Last Saturday, the two-day system led to a difficult decision,” he wrote. “We had some clothing and equipment issued to us and then we had to sign for them. Usually the sergeant in charge won’t mind if someone else signs instead but this time he insisted that no one else could write for me but that I could sign Sunday instead. Well, I preferred to put it off, even though Sunday is my real Sabbath, with the hope I could persuade him to postpone it for Monday (which did happen, thank G-d). As for carrying the clothes to my tent, a friend of mine carried them for me.”
Unbeknownst to Askovitz, a similar experience had played itself out a few years earlier in 1941, in Kobe, Japan. Several thousand Eastern European Jews had escaped Nazi death and Soviet persecution by fleeing to Shanghai, China. Many of those refugees escaped via Vilna, taking the Trans-Siberian railroad eastwards across Russia, and spending several months in Kobe, Japan, before ultimately making their way to Shanghai. Since Kobe is situated across the International Date Line, questions regarding Shabbos arose immediately. It was Yom Kippur, however, that proved to be the ultimate quandary. The refugees reached out to the leading rabbonim in Eretz Yisroel. However, there too, there was disagreement amongst the great rabbinic authorities as to which day to observe. Rav Tzvi Pesach Frank, for example, argued that one should merely follow the local calendar, while the Chazon Ish vigorously maintained that the seventh day – i.e. Sunday – was really Shabbos. As such, since there was no halachic consensus, when it came to Yom Kippur, there were those who fasted both days or only ate on the second day less than the minimal prohibited amount. While today, this episode is well known, for Askovitz at the time, his predicament was an enigma.
