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There are actually two different calculations used in Jewish literature for the tekufos. (They are described in Rambam's Hilchos Kiddush Hachodesh, chs. 9 and 10.) The one that DoubleAA described is …

"Mar" also means "a drop" (as in Isaiah 40:15, כמר מדלי, "like a drop from a bucket"), so "Marcheshvan" also means "rainy Cheshvan" - it's the usual beginning of the rainy season in the Land of Israel …

The Lubavitcher Rebbe zt"l, in his notes to the Chabad machzor, quotes the following explanation (printed in Ginzei Nistaros in the name of the Baal Shem Tov): מה שקורין למחרת יוהכ״פ גאטש נאמען. ה …

I was thinking of Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur - 10 days: Bereishis - two days of Rosh Hashanah (21:1-34 on the first day, 22:1-24 on the second) Shemos - Tzom Gedaliah (32:11-14 and 34:1-10) Va …

What is the shortest interval during which we read publicly from each of the five Chumashim? There is actually a practical issue involved here as well. The halachah is that if a community has a Sefer …

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 i …

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). …

I wonder if maybe they misinterpreted the source from which they got the times. Suppose that the original said "ליל שני" or the like; that would properly mean "the night leading into Monday" (i.e., Su …

We add the additional month in order to keep Pesach in the spring, as the Torah mandates (Deut. 16:1). So it is added as close to Nissan as possible, in order to make explicit the link between the ext …

On 2 Teves 5700, R' Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, was rescued from Nazi-occupied Warsaw (and eventually, a few months later, reached the United States).

On 5 Teves 3339, the Jewish community in Babylonia received the news of the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash (Ezek. 33:21). According to R' Shimon (Rosh Hashanah 18b), the fast of Teves (called צום …

The murder of R' Yehosef Hanagid, the son and successor of R' Shmuel Hanagid, along with several thousand other Jews of Granada. This was in the year 4827 (1066).

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 … All told, if you consider the full Hebrew calendar cycle of 689472 years, with five fasts in each one, then you'll have that a fast occurs on Monday or Thursday 37.45% of the time. …

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 Ch …

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 (Nimuk …