Winter time in Israel

Despite the heat, and that the rest of the world is still firmly in summer time, we here in Israel have moved over to the winter clock in accordance with a 5 year old Knesset law that sees the clocks change ahead of the fast day Yom Kippur.Politicians on the Right and Left attacked and defended the traditional practice in Israel of switching to standard (winter) time during the 10 days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, thereby making sunset earlier on the fast day and synagogue services shorter. This year, the switch occurs particularly early in autumn, as the Jewish New Year is celebrated in the second week of September. More than 100,000 people have signed an online petition that calls on the public to ignore the start of standard time and operate according to daylight savings time until November.