Written There

Katuv sham [it is written there (by Zeraḥiah)]:

That is, if the conjunction [molad] occurs in Jerusalem on the Sabbath before noon, then obviously it would appear close to sunset on Friday to those who dwell far to the east. Inescapably, etc.

After all of these words, and after this whole rigmarole, which is reminiscent of the Kuzari and the writings of Abraham bar Ḥiyya the Sefaradi, all of whom explained these laws in precisely this way (for he is adorning himself with finery that is not his own), we need not learn from the words of someone who is not one of the men of the Talmud. For they encompass all aspects of the law with their words, as he does not. We have already heard that the prince R. Isaac ben Barukh, who was expert in this branch of wisdom as well as in law, refuted this explanation. And more power to him! [ . . . ]

Who could listen to these dreams which have no dawn? And with all this, and the great length of his words, no halakhah comes to light from his words. Light comes forth only from what he wrote according to the Kuzari, following the argument presented there. One who sees it from there will understand that he assigns the beginning of the Sabbath to the land of Israel—the focus of the Torah and the commandments—where Adam was set down when he left the garden of Eden. It was there that he named the days, and all who came after him took the names from him. And when the conjunction [of the sun and the moon, which marks the beginning of the month] first occurred there, at noon [on Sunday, the first day of creation], it was the beginning of the previous night for the inhabitants of China. If it had been one moment earlier in the land of Israel, that moment would have been the end of the Sabbath in China, so the new moon would not have appeared to the inhabitants of China until Sunday, just before night. For the new moon was at its thinnest precisely at 6 pm on Sunday. From 6 pm onward [in Israel], it would already have descended beneath the globe and not be seen [due to its distance] until 6 pm Sunday [or just before], when it would still have been the Sabbath for the inhabitants of China. Even though for the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Sabbath has already departed, in any case it works out the same for them and for the Chinese, for both of them assign the first day of creation to the Sabbath, these to their Sabbath and these to their Sabbath. That is the implication of his words. [ . . . ] As for us, we have already had the explanation of this tradition revealed to us from heaven, and it is written in our commentary.