Daylight Savings Time

What problem arose in Israel this year in regard to Daylight Savings Time?

ABecause the ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) community does not support the concept of Daylight Savings Time, which impacts the start and end times of Shabbat and holidays, leaders of their community chose to totally ignore the time change. Among other issues, they blocked buses from entering their neighborhoods on Friday afternoon as their Shabbat beginning time was an hour earlier than the official time, and many Haredi Jews showed up late for work, as their scheduled time for morning minyan was later than that of the rest of the religious community.

B. Israel's Daylight Savings Time schedule aligns with the schedule of the European Union. This year, the change came on Yom Kippur, causing the holiday to last an additional hour. Hundreds of Israelis fainted from the lack of food over the extended fast, while others angered their rabbis by breaking the fast an hour early.

C. No problem arose, as Israel does not switch to Daylight Savings Time.

D. For the first time this year, Israel aligned the country's Daylight Savings Time schedule with that of Europe, meaning that the clocks would be turned back an hour on October 25, rather than on a date right after the Fall holidays as in previous years. Golan Telecom failed to implement that change in their system, so their customers’ cellphones all changed time a month ago, causing many people's cell phone alarms to go off an hour late, resulting in missed appointments, late arrival at work, and massive confusion throughout the country.

E. Many Israeli clocks have Hebrew letters rather than Arabic numerals, and these clocks rotate counter-clockwise (like reading Hebrew from right to left). Therefore, many people who were instructed to turn their clocks backward did not know if they should in fact move their clocks forward. Meanwhile, the ultra-Orthodox refused to participate in Daylight Savings Time, the Arab community moved their clocks backward two hours to align with Daylight Time in Egypt, and the Catholic community moved their clocks forward two hours to align with Vatican time, thus leading to total chaos as everyone in the country was on a different time.

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