When does Shabbat end? This astrophysicist thinks we’ve been getting it wrong
Aster Taylor observes Shabbat on their own time — literally. For the past year, Taylor, a Ph.D. candidate in astrophysics at the University of Michigan, has been keeping Shabbat according to a schedule they devised…
Assessment
A University of Michigan astrophysics Ph.D. candidate named Aster Taylor has spent the past year observing Shabbat on a personally calculated astronomical schedule rather than following standard Jewish communal times. The core tension here is between inherited religious tradition and individual scientific rigor, with Taylor effectively treating the community's clock as imprecise. Watch for whether this personal method gains traction among other observant Jews who find the conventional timing arbitrary or inconsistent with actual celestial mechanics.