Around Shabbat opening hours

YaronS · 2018-06-11T11:33:24.000Z

Hey guys,

In Israel Shabbat off period is a national 24h of reduced activity according to the Jewish religion.
Starting somewhere around 7PM on Friday and ends on 8PM Saturday.

This affects especially this kinds of businesses:
Restaurants, Trains, Public Bus services, etc.

The thing is, it changes from IST to IDT (Standard and Daylight), so it can be automatically calculated somehow but it needs some sort of variable to be agile enough to actually inform about the correct working hours.

Some restaurants works from 8AM until 3 hours before Shabbat entrance and some open an hour after Shabbat ends.
This is from Chabad site:
https://www.chabad.org/calendar/candleLighting_cdo/locationId/247/locationType/1/jewish/Candle-Lighting.htm

This is the Hebcal API:
https://www.hebcal.com/home/197/shabbat-times-rest-api

I need your help finding a way to implement such change into the “Working hours” field, it will be very beneficial to tourists who come to Israel and find themselves completely stuck in the hotel because there’s no public transportation etc.

I see there has been some discussions in the Israeli community but this setting is pretty global because also in Paris (for example) there are many restaurants keeping the Shabbat tradition.

Thank you so much!

zstadler · 2018-07-02T21:47:22.000Z

It seems that the opening hours syntax is expressive enough to capture such requirements.

For example, a restaurant that is usually open from 9:00 to 21:00 but closes 3 hours before sunset on Friday and opens one hour after sunset on Saturday could have the following value in its opening_hours tag:

Su-Th 09:00-21:00;Fr 09:00-(susnet-03:00);Sa (sunset+01:00)-21:00

Also see an example of a gate closed for vehicles on Shabbat.

YaronS · 2018-08-20T07:55:40.000Z

And what can I do regarding the following case:
3 hours before Shabbat entrance?

This is a global problem and it happens all over the world in different Jewish communities.

zstadler · 2018-08-20T08:25:53.000Z

Assuming Shabbat entrance is sunset on Friday evening, then “Fr (susnet-03:00)” is 3 hours before Shabbat entrance.

YaronS · 2018-08-28T14:48:14.000Z

That’s inaccurate in a matter of about 15 minutes or more in some cases.

This is an example of the difference, we’re talking about the upcoming Shabbat Entrance this Friday:
http://www.chabad.org.il/Time/Index.asp?CategoryID=176

(Forgot to add the link).

zstadler · 2018-08-28T15:51:55.000Z

If Shabbat starts 15 minutes before sunset at the the specific location, then this difference can be taken into consideration in the spucified offset. If you want to be on the safe side, use the maximal difference throughout the year.

In practice, businesses do not change their closing time by a few minutes every week, but rather round the time to 30 minutes or an hour.

YaronS · 2018-08-29T06:20:33.000Z

Yeah, sort of.

I could possibly live without this feature, just wanted to see if it’s something worth mentioning for the sake of regional (religional?) compatibility.

zstadler · 2018-08-29T11:06:54.000Z

Comparing the proposed solution with definition of Shabbat in your initial post:

YaronS:

In Israel Shabbat off period is a national 24h of reduced activity according to the Jewish religion.
Starting somewhere around 7PM on Friday and ends on 8PM Saturday.

it looks to me that the proposal is more accurate and can be interpreted by those not familiar with the Jewish religion.

I suggest we conclude the discussion.