The Hebrew calendar (Hebrew: הלוח העברי ha'luach ha'ivri ) or Jewish calendar is a lunisolar calendar used by Jews. Today, the calendar is predominantly used for religious observances and by all official institutions in the State of Israel, as well as by Jewish farmers in Israel as an agricultural framework.
The calendar is used to reckon the Jewish New Year and dates for Jewish holidays, and also to determine appropriate public reading of Torah portions, Yahrzeits (dates to commemorate the death of a relative), and daily Psalm reading, among many ceremonial uses. Originally the Hebrew calendar was used by Jews for all daily purposes. Following the conquest of Jerusalem by Pompey in 63 BCE (see also Iudaea province), Jews began additionally following the imperial civil calendar (which was decreed in 45 BCE) for civic matters such as the payment of taxes and dealings with government officials.
The principles of the Hebrew calendar are found in the Torah, which contains several calendar-related commandments, including God's commandment during the Exodus from Egypt to fix the month of Nisan as the first month of the year. The Babylonian exile in the 6th century BCE influenced the calendar, including the adoption of Babylonian names for the months.
During Temple times and through the Tannaitic period, the Hebrew calendar was observational, with the beginning of each month determined by the high court based on the testimony of witnesses who had observed a new crescent moon. Periodically, the court ordered an extra month added to keep Passover in the spring, again based on observation of natural events. Through the Amoraic period and into the Geonic period, the purely empirical calendar was displaced by calendrical rules, which finally became systematically arranged into a computed calendar. The principles and rules of the current calendar are fully described by Maimonides in the Mishneh Torah .
Because of the roughly eleven-day difference between twelve lunar months and one solar year, the year lengths of the Hebrew calendar vary in a repeating 19-year Metonic cycle of 235 lunar months, with an intercalary lunar month added according to defined rules every two or three years, for a total of 7 times per 19 years. Seasonal references in the Hebrew calendar reflect its development in the region east of the Mediterranean Sea and the times and climate of the Northern Hemisphere. The Hebrew calendar's year is longer by about 6 minutes and 25+ / seconds than the present-day mean solar year, so that every 224 years, the Hebrew calendar will fall a full day behind the modern fixed solar year, and about every 231 years it will fall a full day behind the Gregorian calendar year.
Years in the Hebrew calendar are labeled with the era designation Anno Mundi (Latin for "in the year of the world"), abbreviated AM and A.M. , (Hebrew: לבריאת העולם ), and are numbered from the epoch that, by Rabbinical reckoning, is the date of the birth of Adam. 30 September 2008 through 18 September 2009 corresponded to Hebrew year 5769; the Hebrew year 5770 began at sundown on the evening of 18 September 2009 and will end on 8 September 2010.
Structure
The Jewish calendar is a lunisolar calendar, or "fixed lunar year," based on twelve lunar months of twenty-nine or thirty days, with an intercalary lunar month added seven times every nineteen years (once every two to three years) to synchronize the twelve lunar cycles with the slightly longer solar year. Each Jewish lunar month starts with the new moon. Although originally the new lunar crescent had to be observed and certified by witnesses, the timing of the new moon is now determined mathematically.
Concurrently there is a weekly cycle of seven days, mirroring the seven-day period of the Book of Genesis in which the world is created. The names for the days of the week, like those in the Creation story, are simply the day number within the week, with Shabbat being the seventh day. The Jewish day always runs from sunset to the next sunset; the formal adjustments used to specify a standard time and time zones are not relevant to the Jewish calendar.
The twelve regular months are: Nisan (30 days), Iyar (29 days), Sivan (30 days), Tammuz (29 days), Av (30 days), Elul (29 days), Tishrei (30 days), Cheshvan (29 or 30 days), Kislev (29 or 30 days), Tevet (29 days), Shevat (30 days), and Adar (29 days). In the leap years an additional month, Adar I (30 days) is added after Shevat, and the regular Adar is referred to as "Adar II".
The first month of the festival year is Nisan. 15 Nisan is the start of the festival of Pesach, corresponding to the full moon of Nisan. Pesach is a spring festival associated with the barley harvest, so the leap-month mentioned above is intercalated periodically to keep this festival in the northern hemisphere's spring season. Since the adoption of a fixed calendar, intercalations in the Hebrew calendar have been at fixed points in a 19-year cycle. Prior to this, the intercalation was determined empirically:
The year may be intercalated on three grounds: 'aviv , fruits of trees, and the equinox. On two of these grounds it should be intercalated, but not on one of them alone.
The Bible designates Nisan, which it calls Aviv (Exodus 13:4), as the first month of the year (Exodus 12:2). At the same time, the season of the fall Festival of Booths ( Sukkoth ), is called "the end of the year" (Exodus 23:16). The Sabbatical year in which the land was to lie fallow, necessarily began at the time the winter barley and winter wheat would have been sown, in the fall. The Gezer calendar, an Israelite or Canaanite inscription ca. 900 BCE, also begins in the fall.
Modern practice follows the scheme described in the Mishnah: Rosh Hashanah, which means "the head of the year", and is celebrated in the month of Tishrei, is "the new year for years." This is when the numbered year changes, and most Jews today view Tishrei as the de facto beginning of the year.
Sources and history
The Torah contains several commandments related to the keeping of the calendar and the lunar cycle.
Day
The Jewish day is of no fixed length. The Jewish day is modeled on the reference to "...there was evening and there was morning..." in the Creation story. Accordingly, it runs from sunset (start of "the evening") to the next sunset. However, some apply special rules at very high latitudes when the sun remains above or below the horizon for longer than a civil day.
There is no clock in the Jewish scheme, so that a civil clock is used. Though the civil clock incorporates local adoptions of various conventions such as time zones, standard times and daylight saving, these have no place in the Jewish scheme. The civil clock is used only as a reference point - in expressions such as: "Shabbat starts at ...". The steady progression of sunset around the world and seasonal changes results in gradual civil time changes from one day to the next based on observable astronomical phenomena (the sunset) and not on man-made laws and conventions.
Instead of the international date line convention, there are varying opinions as to where the day changes. One opinion uses the antimeridian of Jerusalem. (Jerusalem is 35°13’ east of the prime meridian, so the antimeridian is at 144°47' W, passing through eastern Alaska.) Other opinions exist as well.
Weeks
The Hebrew calendar follows a seven-day weekly cycle, which runs concurrently but independently of the monthly and annual cycles. The names for the days of the week are simply the day number within the week. In Hebrew, these names may be abbreviated using the numerical value of the Hebrew letters, for example יום א׳ ( Day 1 , or Yom Rishon (Hebrew: יום ראשון ):
The names of the days of the week are modeled on the seven days mentioned in the Creation story. For example, Genesis 1:5 "... And there was evening and there was morning, one day". "One day" also translates to "first day" or "day one". Similarly, see Genesis 1:8, 1:13, 1:19, 1:23, 1:31 and 2.2.
The Jewish Shabbat has a special place in the Jewish weekly cycle. There are many special rules which relate to the Shabbat, discussed more fully in the Talmudic tractate "Shabbat".
In Hebrew, the word "Shabbat" (שַׁבָּת) can also mean "(Talmudic) week", so that in ritual liturgy a phrase like "Yom Reviʻi bəShabbat" means "the fourth day in the week".
Importance of lunar months
Num 10:10 stresses the importance of the new moon and consequently lunar months, "... in your new moons, ye shall blow with the trumpets over your burnt-offerings,". Similarly in Num 28:11.
In his work Mishneh Torah , of 1178, Maimonides included a chapter "Sanctification of the New Moon," in which he discusses the calendrical rules and their scriptural basis. He notes,
"By how much does the solar year exceed the lunar year? By approximately 11 days. Therefore, whenever this excess accumulates to about 30 days, or a little more or less, one month is added and the particular year is made to consist of 13 months, and this is the so-called embolismic (intercalated) year. For the y
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