Shabbat Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld
Jan 24-25, 2025 • 25 Teves 5785 • Shemos (Ex 6-9).
Dovetailing on last week's theme of exercising your brain every day....
Yesterday I learned something about the North Pole.
Let's start it off with a trivia question for your table:
Which way does a compass point?
The answer is not north nor towards the North Pole.
The correct answer is: toward magnetic north.
Second question for your table: Where is the magnetic north pole?
I've always understood it vaguely to be somewhere north of Canada. Meaning, if you are in the center of North America, your compass may actually point north. But further east, your compass will actually point northwest and in the west, the your compass is going to be point northeast!
Like many topics in the world (and in Torah), it's actually WAY more complicated than that, because:
A compass aligns itself to the local geomagnetic field, which varies in a complex manner over Earth's surface, as well as over time (Wikipedia).
It has also been known for a long time that the Earth's magnetic field (and magnetic north) has shifted over time.
What I learned this week is that it's shifting a lot faster than I had thought – it actually appears to be accelerating. It's now moving about 35 miles per year – that's about 500 feet per day! Which is about 20 feet (6m) per hour, or 4 inches (10cm) every minute!
And the shifting seems to be sending magnetic north towards Siberia.
As you might guess, there are two longitudinal locations on Earth where compasses do perform as advertised. Try asking everyone at the table to guess where?
According to the maps, one is in central US and the other runs through central Africa and Europe. But if it continues to move towards Siberia, it looks to me like soon the line of 0 declination will run through Israel.
Question for your table - Is a moral compass analogous? Is there such thing as "True North" on a moral compass that many people miss because Moral Magnetic North is not only different, it's always changing?
If so, how does one find True North?
Shabbat Shalom
Yesterday I learned something about the North Pole.
Let's start it off with a trivia question for your table:
Which way does a compass point?
The answer is not north nor towards the North Pole.
The correct answer is: toward magnetic north.
Second question for your table: Where is the magnetic north pole?
I've always understood it vaguely to be somewhere north of Canada. Meaning, if you are in the center of North America, your compass may actually point north. But further east, your compass will actually point northwest and in the west, the your compass is going to be point northeast!
Like many topics in the world (and in Torah), it's actually WAY more complicated than that, because:
A compass aligns itself to the local geomagnetic field, which varies in a complex manner over Earth's surface, as well as over time (Wikipedia).
It has also been known for a long time that the Earth's magnetic field (and magnetic north) has shifted over time.
What I learned this week is that it's shifting a lot faster than I had thought – it actually appears to be accelerating. It's now moving about 35 miles per year – that's about 500 feet per day! Which is about 20 feet (6m) per hour, or 4 inches (10cm) every minute!
And the shifting seems to be sending magnetic north towards Siberia.
As you might guess, there are two longitudinal locations on Earth where compasses do perform as advertised. Try asking everyone at the table to guess where?
According to the maps, one is in central US and the other runs through central Africa and Europe. But if it continues to move towards Siberia, it looks to me like soon the line of 0 declination will run through Israel.
Question for your table - Is a moral compass analogous? Is there such thing as "True North" on a moral compass that many people miss because Moral Magnetic North is not only different, it's always changing?
If so, how does one find True North?
Shabbat Shalom
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