Should Orthodox Jews Lobby Against Permanent DST?

“Yay to bipartisanship, a bill that would make Jewish religious life harder and life more annoying.”

This is how Villanova University Professor Chaim Saiman responded on Facebook to the news that the House had passed the Sunshine Protection Act (H.R. 139), a bill which would make Daylight Saving Time permanent throughout most of the country, on July 14.

Saiman noted that Orthodox Jews have already experienced the practical effects of DST expansion. The Energy Policy Act of 2005, which lengthened DST (by three weeks in the spring and one week in the fall), meant that in many more years Passover sedarim began an hour later.

But the present legislation would make the one hour change permanent throughout the entire year, with subsequent and more serious disruptions to the daily schedule of observant Jews throughout the country.

The Act has now been reintroduced and passed by the House by an overwhelming majority of Republicans and half of the Democratic caucus. Just as before, the Orthodox Union, Agudath Israel, and other Orthodox organizations are enlisting to oppose the bill.

The National Council of Young Israel and the Orthodox Union jointly sent out an email calling on community members to let their senators know that they oppose the bill, explaining, “If passed by the Senate and enacted, this would immediately upend daily life for Jewish families across the country and pose other risks too.”

They explained their reasoning as follows: “With winter sunrises as late as 9:00 am, children will be going to school in the pitch dark, a safety risk to be sure. Medical experts have said that permanent DST will cause health problems by disrupting sleep rhythms. And for us in the Orthodox community, balancing morning minyan with work and other obligations will be very difficult.”

These repeated efforts to derail a broadly popular change, even if the public is divided on what to change (a 2025 Gallup poll shows 54% of Americans opposed to DST, but divided on whether to replace it with permanent DST (24%) or permanent standard time (48%)), raise the question of whether Orthodox Jews should be engaging in what can appear to be a campaign based on narrow rather than broader national interests.

Nathan Diament, executive director of public policy for the OU, said, “Of course our mission at OU Advocacy is to advocate for the interests and values of our own community. But almost always, those interests are aligned with the interests of others and we can and do frame our advocacy arguments in that way. That’s true here – even regarding the proposed DST legislation.”

Indeed, the Orthodox Union’s advocacy arm placed an emphasis on the detrimental effects of the law for all Americans: “First, permanent DST will endanger children as they walk, ride their bikes, and wait for the bus to school in the morning. In the dead of winter, the sun will not rise in most states until 8:00 am and after 9:00 am in others – long after school has started. Second, health experts have expressed concerns about how permanent DST will disrupt our circadian rhythm and cause more health problems due to insufficient restorative sleep.”

Only then did it stress the harm it would cause Orthodox Jewish prayer and work schedules:

“Third, permanent DST will cause daily disruption to communal Jewish life. Morning prayer services cannot begin until after sunrise, making it impossible for people to attend prayer services and get to work and school on time. This move will force Jews to choose between their constitutionally protected right to exercise their religion and being a responsible employee.”

Speaking to The Jewish Press, Saiman said he isn’t overly concerned about Orthodox Jews lobbying against DST or in general expressing their concerns, whether over school choice or Israel advocacy or any other cause important to the Orthodox community – “that’s just how America works.”

Saiman also said Jews, in advocating for their interests, are not acting any differently from, say, the candy lobby which has pushed to expand DST so that they can sell more products. (The theory being that more children would be able to go trick or treating longer on Halloween thanks to the extra hour of light.)

He also said it’s easy to advocate against the change based on natural, universal reasons connected with halacha rather than specific community interests. “I think this is a small enough issue that it’s lo maaleh ve’lo morid [neither here nor there]. We can craft it into a more new-agey claim that our religion follows the natural cycles of the sun and the human body. Maybe that gets us some additional coalition partners,” he said somewhat facetiously.

Saiman concedes that there may be risks in advocacy being too tied up with a particular party, a great risk in a two-party country where majorities shift and change. However, when it comes to DST, Saiman says, “This issue is quirky enough that it isn’t really slotted partisanly. There are religious and secular reasons to like it and not like it.”

Rabbi Michael Taubes, the rav of a shul in Teaneck, N.J., and rosh yeshiva at Yeshiva University, said, “[The Jewish community has] the right to make our feelings known. We have advocacy groups, whether through the OU or through the Agudah, that advocate for Orthodox Jewish causes, and I think we have the right to say, in a respectful way, that this proposal is going to cause a certain amount of religious hardship, and therefore we side with the people, with other groups, who are opposed to it for other reasons.

“But I do not think we should make this into a major cause célèbre. I think that would be a mistake. We'll figure out how to deal with it if it passes. Similar types of shaylas have been dealt with in the past in other places, including here in the United States in the early 1970s. They went to daylight saving time the whole year, and it presented certain challenges, and we had to figure out how to deal with it.”

Rabbi Gil Student, a member of the editorial committee of the Orthodox Union's Jewish Action magazine and the director of the halacha commission of the Rabbinical Alliance of America, has warned in the past (including in an article he wrote in The Jewish Press in 2024)of the detrimental religious consequences if the law passes, saying that making either Daylight Saving Time or Standard Time permanent throughout the year could have very serious implications for Orthodox Jewish workers’ ability to attend Shacharit throughout the week and still make it to work on time.

In the article, Student argued,

“[Congregants at commuter Shacharit minyanim] look forward to the change of the clock when we no longer have to begin and end our morning prayers late and therefore leave for work late. Permanent Daylight Saving Time would force us to be late for about two months a year rather than two weeks. This would significantly affect the employment status of many people.”

But permanent Standard Time would also pose significant challenges:

“Making Standard Time the year-round default would mean that Sabbath-observant Jews will need to leave work early on Friday afternoon for six months out of the year. Rather than having to excuse yourself for early Fridays during only the winter, you would have to do so for half the year. This turns a seasonal inconvenience into a permanent employment liability. Thankfully, New York State has laws protecting Sabbath-observant individuals from discrimination. Observant Jews will be less protected in other states and even in New York such prolonged early absences may risk otherwise promising careers.”

Student also noted that in a permanent Standard Time universe, shuls may need to make Shacharit earlier to accommodate the earlier last time one can recite Shema in the morning, effectively excluding many and maybe most congregants from attending shul on Shabbat mornings, used as they are to later minyanim which start at 8:30 or 9:00 a.m.

Saiman is more sanguine. “[I]s this the biggest issue in the world? No, everyone understands that. Do we want to push to keep the status quo? Yes. But is this an existential issue where we pull out all the stops? I don’t think so.”

Saiman believes, “If it changes, it will be frustrating but we’ll all adapt and be fine…That puts this in a very different case than some of the high-stakes advocacy we undertake about more contentious issues.

“So even if you generally think we should be more careful about the scope of our advocacy, this is not the issue to be concerned about.”