Hot answers tagged calendar
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Obligatory Summary
The Jewish day starts at night, but V'sein Tal Umatar is based on solar calendar, so it can sometimes be a day later. Plus the date was established in Julian Calendar, so there's also the Julian->Gregorian shift to keep us busy...
Real Answer
The Gemara (Taanis 10a) says that in Bavel we start saying V'sein Tal Umatar on the 60th day ...
19
Yes.
The website uses UTC time. Since I live on the west coast in the US, each "website day" starts at 5 PM. Thus, I simply visit the site after 5 PM on Friday, which during the summer months is not yet Shabbos, and then visit again before 5 PM on Sunday. As far as the website is concerned, I just visited on two consecutive days.
The only remaining problem ...
17
If you have a piano keyboard handy, you can use it as a mnemonic aid:
Y mod 19 =
│ ▐██▌ ▐██▌ │ ▐██▌ ▐██▌ ▐██▌ │
│ ▐██▌ ▐██▌ │ ▐██▌ ▐██▌ ▐██▌ │
│ ▐██▌ ▐██▌ │ ▐██▌ ▐██▌ ▐██▌ │
│ ▐██▌ ▐██▌ │ ▐██▌ ▐██▌ ▐██▌ │
│ ▐██▌ ▐██▌ │ ▐██▌ ▐██▌ ▐██▌ │
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ ...
17
There is no way to know for certain.
However, there are a few indications that what we have the "correct" day.
Firstly, there is the halacha that if you do not know what day it is, you keep Shabbat on the 7th day from the last time you kept shabbat. So even if the calendar did a shift, presumably the Jewish people would have shifted the name of the ...
16
"Nittle nacht" is the Yiddish reference to the night going into Christmas. (It was observed on different dates, depending on if you lived in a Catholic/Protestant country, or an Eastern Orthodox [Christian] country; the former have Christmas on December 25th, thus "nittel nacht" starting at sunset December 24th; the latter have a different calendar.). ...
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In Hayom Yom (17 Teves), the reason given (in the name of R' Shalom Dovber Schneersohn, fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe) is "to avoid adding vitality." The point is that the person whose birthday they're celebrating on this day was a Jew, and since on a person's birthday his mazal (spiritual source) is stronger, we don't want the spiritual benefits generated by our ...
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Going through all of the possibilities (already mentioned, and that I can think of) mathematically, using the data on frequency of year types provided on Remy Landau's page, and the tables of kevios in Jewish Chrononomy, by Yehudah (Leo) Levi:
Miketz: usually that's Shabbos Chanukah. The exceptions are the year types זחא (regular) and זחג (leap). These ...
13
I don't know that I'd put money on this one, but I heard that the original name was warach-sheman (an aramaic version of yerech shmini) and that the dialect allowed for an interchange between the w (our vav) and the m sound, corrupting it further to marach-shewan.
After a search, I found a "What's the truth about..." on this subject which also talks more to ...
13
We do not determine the date of the Sabbath by looking at the calendar and seeing which day is Saturday (or Friday night). Rather (much like my answer to the Samoa" question) the Sabbath is seven days from the previous Sabbath. We have a living mesorah, tradition, on which day is the Sabbath, which happens to coincide with what it commonly known as Friday ...
12
I'm sure that there are modules already written for this purpose (since, after all, there are lots of existing sites and applications that show the parshah of the week, and I doubt each of them reinvented the wheel). I don't know of any that are freely available, though.
One way of doing this would be to use lookup tables for each of the 14 possible year ...
12
There are definitely some specially celebratory ones other than age 13, such as when one surpasses the deadline for kares, as Rav Yosef did when he turned 60 and threw himself a party (Mo'ed Katan 28). The Kaf Hachayim, cited in this article by Rav Ari Enkin, also quotes sources for age 70 being an appropriate birthday to recite birkas shehechiyanu ...
12
In Tanach there are only four:
Aviv = first month = Nissan (Ex. 13:4, et al)
Ziv = second month = Iyar (I Kings 6:1)
Eisanim = seventh month = Tishrei (ibid. 8:2)
Bul = eighth month = (Mar)cheshvan (ibid. 6:38)
In a letter from the era of the first Beis Hamikdash found in Arad, there is mention (according to some reconstructions) of ירח צח, "the month ...
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Minchas Chinuch argues that indeed, when the Sanhedrin was functioning and we used an observation-based calendar, Chanukah in outlying places would have had to have been celebrated for nine days. "When the Beis Hamikdash is rebuilt, speedily in our days," he says, "and we go back to sanctifying the months based on observation - then faraway places (for Eretz ...
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Seder Olam Rabbah, by R. Yosei ben Chalafta (2nd century), gives a unified chronology from Creation until his own times (although the last part of it, covering the Second Temple era and its aftermath, is given pretty short shrift).
The Gemara (Avodah Zarah 9b) quotes a baraisa (also from, at the latest, the 2nd or early 3rd century) that makes a prediction ...
11
Considering Monica's point about year distributions, here's a refinement of Gershon's data (using the frequency table on Remy Landau's Hebrew Calendar page, here):
Tzom Gedaliah falls on Monday or Thursday in the year types גכה, זחא, זשג, גכז, זחג, זשה. This is 40.08% of all years.
Asarah B'Teves can't occur on Monday, but it can be on Thursday, only in ...
11
The discrepancy has been raised repeatedly over the centuries, by scholars Jew and non-Jew, Orthodox or not, alike.
Rabbi Shimon Schwab penned an essay on it whereby he very much raised the possibility that the non-Seder-Olam chronology may be correct, though later referring to it as a "thought experiment."
In his taped lectures on the history of the ...
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Yovel is not practiced nowadays, because it applies only when most of the Jewish People live in the Land of Israel, each in their designated tribal territories (Rambam, Hil. Shemittah Veyovel 10:8).
When it is in effect, there is a halachic dispute as to whether it breaks up the cycles of shemittah years (i.e., you have 7 shemittah cycles totaling 49 years, ...
10
I had to implement this in Javascript and was successful. So here's the simple programming logic I used:
Create an array (or list) of Parshas. Obviously you want to either use transliteration or such.
Then used a complex set of if statements to offset based on type of year. To figure the type of year use something like this:
function ytype(year){
var ...
10
Chasam Sofer says that it has little or no practical application, and indeed he says that this is why Rambam and Shulchan Aruch don't cite it as practical halachah.
However, the Minchas Elazar (Nimukei Orach Chaim 686:1) raises several objections against the Chasam Sofer's position. He writes (quoting his own statement in another of his sefarim):
אבל ...
10
Perhaps because each of the dates commemorate multiple things.
Five Tragedies happened on the 17th of Tammuz:
Moshe broke the Tablets
The Tamid offering was interrupted
A Sefer Torah was burned
An idol was placed in the Beit Hamikdash
The walls of Jerusalem were breached during the second temple
The 9th of Av has always been a day of tragedy, and many ...
10
Let's take a step back: the Hebrew calendar uses lunar months of either 29 or 30 days (for 354 days altogether). Now the Bible says that Passover should be in the spring, and if you keep having years of 354 days you'll keep sliding backwards until Passover won't be in the spring anymore, so every so often they'd add a leap month. Sure, other peoples may have ...
10
He is saying that the year 3724 coincides with the end of a 532-year calendrical cycle. This cycle is when the 19-year machzor katan and the 28-year machzor gadol return to their initial positions (19 x 28 = 532). The year 3724 comes after exactly 7 of those cycles (532 x 7 = 3724). He does not explain why this has any significance.
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The last shemittah year was Jewish year 5768 (13 Sept 2007 - 29 Sept 2008)
The next few are:
5775 (25 Sept 2014 - 13 Sept 2015)
5782 (7 Sept 2021 - 25 Sept 2022)
5789 (21 Sept 2028 - 9 Sept 2029)
Note that some Rishonim (medieval rabbis) held that the shemittah is the year prior to the years mentioned above (See Tur CM 67) but longstanding normative ...
9
We only add an extra day for a D’oraisa like the ‘Sholosh Regalim’. Chanukah is a
D’Rabbanan. (See Taamei Minhagim 864 in the name of the Avudraham)
In addition as Chanuka starts on the 25th day of the Hebrew month we can presume that the Sheluchei Beis Din would have arrived and everyone would know when it actually began.
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To remove any possibility of observances of either Yom Ha'atzmaut or the preceding day's Yom Hazikaron spilling either forward or back into Shabbat and thereby causing public Shabbat desecration, the Israeli Chief Rabbinate determined that Yom Ha'atzmaut should never fall on a Shabbat, Sunday, Monday, or Friday. So, if 5 Iyyar is on a Friday or Shabbat, the ...
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The Mishnah Berurah (OC 581:5) explains: many people have the custom to fast for ten days (including Yom Kippur) as part of seeking repentance (Levush). Starting from Rosh haShannah you lose at least four days: the two days of Rosh haShannah, Shabbat Shuvah (the Shabbat in between Rosh haShannah and Yom Kipppur) and the day before Yom Kippur (when it is ...
9
In Sanhedrin 65b (line 24 and further) Tornosrufus asked same question to R. Akiva.
R. Akiva answered that there are three proofs that the day Jew think is Shabbos is a real Shabbos.
River Sebation is very fast on other days and on Shabbos it streams slowly.
Baal Ov couldn't be applied on Shabbos.
Smoke comes out of the grave of Tornosrufus's father each ...
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I wondered about this fact myself for a while, and so I looked up the sources.
It turns out that this idea is based on only two sources.
The Talmud has an aggadatot which says:
Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin [97a]: “Rav Kattina said: ‘The world will
exist for 6000 years and one (thousand) of destruction’ ... We have a
teaching which is in agreement ...
8
R' Moshe Feinstein zt"l explains (Igros Moshe, vol. 8, Yoreh De'ah 57:11) that the statement in the kinah is referring to tragedies affecting all of the Jewish people. The Crusaders wanted a wholly Christian world, with no Jews ר"ל (and indeed, they attacked and killed the Jews in Jerusalem as well as in Europe); Hitler's ימ"ש aim was similar. Such ...
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Now that we've moved the clocks, I realized that it's possible to do the inverse of @jake's answer from the eastern time zone: shabbat ended this week before 6PM, so if I'd thought of it I could have gotten credit for the day by visiting in that last hour (7PM EST = midnight UTC). Shabbat won't end after 7PM again until March 10, and there are no chagim in ...
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