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Samoa to go back to the future with dateline shift

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Samoa headed back to the future

By Peter Shadbolt, CNN
updated 6:17 AM EST, Fri December 30, 2011

Hong Kong (CNN) -- When the Vatican switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in the 16th century, legend has it that riots broke out over the "lost 11 days" the shift caused.

However, on the Pacific island of Samoa - which plans to skip Friday this week when it switches to the west side of the international dateline -- the mood is more typically laid back and Polynesian.

"Sure, people are excited," government spokesman Uale Papalii was reported as saying to foreign media. "I myself am relaxed, (we are) only changing the calendar."

The decision to push the international dateline further to the east and go back to the future -- going directly from Thursday to Saturday -- was prompted by new economic realities rather than a need to be the first place in the world to celebrate New Year's Day in 2012.

Samoan prime minister, Tuilaepa Sa'ilele Malielegaoi, said the move would put the Pacific island nation of some 180,000 people on the same footing as its key trading partners in New Zealand and Australia, taking advantage of those economies links to China and the Pacific Rim.

"In doing business with New Zealand and Australia we're losing out on two working days a week," he was quoted as saying in the English-language Samoa Observer. "While its Friday here, it's Saturday in New Zealand and when we're at church Sunday, they're already conducting business in Sydney and Brisbane."

Currently, the archipelago is 21 hours behind Australia and 23 behind New Zealand, giving it just four working days a week that coincide with some of the Pacific Rim's largest economies. By moving the zig-zagging international dateline further to the east, Samoa will be just three hours ahead of eastern Australia and one hour ahead of New Zealand.

The international dateline -- which follows roughly 180 degrees longitude but takes diversions around islands and territories to prevent it dissecting nations internally - already creates serious anomalies for Samoa.

Its closest neighbor Tonga, little more than 800km to the south, is exactly 24 hours behind the island nation.

The move, however, has raised alarm in the tourism sector which markets Samoa as the last place on earth to see the sun set and has run into opposition.

"It's a crazy idea. I see no reasoning behind a time change," Samoan resident Valentina Tufuga told the Samoa Observer. "For years we have been trading well with Australia and New Zealand despite the time difference. I think it will just be a major loss to the tourism sector who can no longer boast that Samoa is the last country in the world to see the sun."

While the switch means Samoa gains a new status as the first place on the planet to see the dawn, the tourist industry has judged this to be a less romantic and lucrative option for beachside honeymooners.

Tuilaepa has countered the tourist industry could easily set up a new draw card by marketing itself as destination where tourists can celebrate birthdays and anniversaries twice -- American Samoa, just an hour away by plane, will remain on the other side of the international dateline.

It's not the first time Samoa has crossed the international dateline.

In 1892, the then king of Samoa was persuaded to cross the line to fall into step with American ships sailing westward to San Francisco.

That shift, which gave the Samoan calendar an extra day that had to be absorbed with two consecutive July the Fourths, is now coming back in the form of this week's missing Friday; a situation that local media has mockingly referred to as TGIF or Thank God It's Friday.

Tuilaepa, whose Human Rights Protection Party has ruled Samoa since 1979, is no stranger to controversy.

Two years ago the government switched to driving on the left so that expat Samoans in Australia and New Zealand could send used cars home to their relatives.

Samoa had been driving on the right side of the road since 1900, when it was a German colony, and the change drew an outcry from motorists who defaced signs advising people to "keep left" and denounced the decision as a major hazard on the island's already dangerous roads.

Bus companies, in particular, strongly opposed the move and called on the government to compensate them for the cost refitting their passenger doors on the left hand side.

© 2011 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/27/world/samoa-dateline/index.html [with comments]


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With Samoa calendar change, question for Jews: When is Shabbat?

By Adam Soclof · December 30, 2011

NEW YORK (JTA) -- The Pacific island nation of Samoa is taking 186,000 citizens through a national time warp by moving west of the international dateline, forfeiting the last Friday of 2011 and jumping straight from Thursday into Saturday.

For Samoans, this solves a practical question: Why remain 18 to 23 hours behind chief trade partners Australia and New Zealand?

For Jews, it poses a question of a different sort: When does Shabbat start in Samoa?

And are there really any Jews in Samoa?

A country adopting a new stance vis-a-vis the international dateline is nothing new. In 1995, the island nation of Kiribati [ http://archive.jta.org/article/1984/05/23/2999096/israel-establishes-diplomatic-ties-with-new-southwest-pacific-nation ] also shifted westward. Even in Samoa, this isn't the first time they have dateline-hopped: In 1892, the country jumped east to better align itself with American trade interests. That year, Samoa made the adjustment by repeating July 4. Alaska also adopted an extra day when it switched from Russian to American hands in 1867.

Rabbi Dovid Heber, an adviser to the Baltimore-based Star-K kosher certification agency and a lecturer on halachah and astronomy at the Ner Israel Rabbinical College, said he fielded two questions this week about when one should observe Shabbat in Samoa and neighboring Tokelau, which is also participating in the change.

"Neither were traveling there," Heber noted of the questioners. While the Star-K does send kosher supervisers to the Pacific to inspect fish and food oil factories, he said none have been to Samoa or American Samoa, which is not adopting the time change.

Nevertheless, Heber formulated a two-page halachic opinion on the issue. The upshot: Sabbath-observant Jews should avoid traveling to these areas. If they must travel to New Zealand, Japan or other areas in the Pacific over the weekend, they should consult their local rabbis.

"In Samoa it is 'safek Shabbos' (questionable as to when Shabbos begins) every week," Heber's opinion said. "Shabbos would begin every Thursday night at sunset and end when it gets dark on Saturday night -- or 49 hours of Shabbos.”

With this week's clock change, the 49-hour period would commence Thursday at sunset and end Sunday night.

"No wonder nobody comes here!" joked resident Samoan Jew Max Lapushin in response to the notion of a 49-hour Shabbos in Apia, the Samoan capital.

Lapushin, a 25-year-old American citizen, lives in Apia and has called the Pacific island nation home for nearly four years. A Jewish day school graduate from Atlanta, Lapushin first arrived in Samoa as a Peace Corps volunteer in October 2007 to teach computer classes. He was on the ground when the devastating 2009 earthquake and tsunami hit, killing more that 180 people. Lapushin recently returned to Samoa after a few months overseas to work as a computer consultant.

"This place is so disconnected," Lapushin said. "Judaism without a sense of community -- it’s something, but there’s no community."

“I don’t think there’s any island in the world that has no Jews,” Rabbi Menachem Mendel Goldstein, a Chabad emissary in New Zealand, told JTA. "We have had an inquiry from Samoa, but every indication was that there’s basically no Jewish community of any kind whatsoever," he said, noting that the inquiry was an email from a group of curious Protestants a year ago.

Previously stationed in Christchurch, Goldstein was reassigned to Auckland after the Christchurch Chabad house was damaged beyond repair in a massive earthquake in February. Although Goldstein recalls sending emissaries to Fiji and French Polynesia, he said he had never heard of Chabad emissaries traveling to Samoa.

In 1951, JTA dubbed Arno Max Gurau, a member of the Legislative Assembly of Samoa, "the only Jew in Western Samoa [ http://archive.jta.org/article/1951/05/29/3028329/only-jew-in-western-samoa-elected-to-legislative-assembly-is-one-of-five-europeans ]." According to infomation from the cemetery in Apia, Gurau married two Samoans and one half-Samoan and passed away in 1961.

“[The clock change] would certainly be relevant for any Jewish tourists or humanitarian volunteer personnel -- who obviously now I am aware exist in Samoa,” Goldstein said.

At present, Lapushin only knows of two other Samoan Jews -- both Peace Corps volunteers -- who were on vacation this week. If he's correct, it would make him the only Jew present on the Samoan mainland when the island nation turned the clock forward.

While The Associated Press reported that the Seventh Day Adventist parish in Samatau village will continue to observe Saturday as the Sabbath, Radio New Zealand International indicated that most Seventh Day Adventist churches will adopt Sunday as the new day of rest.

“I will follow their lead and light Shabbos candles on Saturday night,” Lapushin told JTA.

In a way, Lapushin's decision seems fitting.

“When you talk about being Jewish," Lapushin explained, "people say, 'Oh, you're Seventh Day Adventist!'”

© JTA

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/12/30/3090969/samoa-calendar-change-impacts-sabbath-but-affects-few