No more Daylight Savings Time

As Shira mentioned, we changed our clocks on Saturday night even though the people in the United States (even Indiana now keeps DST) change their clocks the first Sunday of November. It's a big political issue both in the US and in Israel for some different reasons. In the United States the proponents claim that it's better to have extra sunlight in the afternoon/evening to save energy and to give people more time to play/work outside in the evening. The opponents don't like the fact that it gets light so late in the day. We also just fail to see the benefits of changing the clocks. This is a real problem for religious Jews who live on the Western edge of a timezone (like Detroit) where sunrise can be really late and it makes it very hard to daven before work. In Israel, there is the added element of Yom Kippur. The idea is that it's easier to fast 25 consecutive hours if the fast doesn't end so late in the day. There have been many changes in the DST rules in Israel over the years:

From 1993 to 1998, the change to Daylight Saving Time was on a Friday morning from midnight IST to 1:00 a.m. IDT; up until 1998, the change back to Standard Time was on a Saturday night from midnight Daylight Saving Time to 11:00 p.m. Standard Time. An exception was 1996, when the change back to Standard Time took place on Sunday night instead of Saturday night to avoid conflicts with the Jewish New Year. From 1999 to 2004, the change to Daylight Saving Time was on a Friday morning, but from 2:00 a.m. IST to 3:00 a.m. IDT; and the change back to Standard Time was on a Friday morning from 2:00 a.m. IDT to 1:00 a.m. IST.

In 2005 though a new law was passed that stipulated:

The move to Daylight Saving Time will always occur on the last Friday before April 2nd, at 2:00 a.m.
The move back to standard time will occur on the Sunday before the tenth day of the Jewish month of Tishrei, at 2:00 a.m. The determination of the move back to standard time according to the Jewish calendar ensures that it will always occur on Saturday night between Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur.

In general I'm a big fan of standard time because I like when it gets light early and gets dark before my kids have to go to bed but this year was really great when we changed the times because it was right after the three day yom tov so the extra hour of sleep was very much appreciated and because it meant that Tzom Gedalia and Yom Kippur both end an hour earlier.

By the way, for those curious if we were going to build off yesterday's success ... the answer is no. It was right back to the old ways for everyone. Tomorrow will be better!