ICJudaism: A Teacher’s Guide to Judaism

      Hosted by ICTeachers                                                                Formerly: Mike’s Rough Guide to Judaism

Disclaimer:

The contents of these pages represent the author’s personal views, experience and understanding.
There are bound to be some things here that some Jews would disagree with.

 

The Jewish Calendar

Judaism is rich in festivals and other holy days.

All Jewish festivals (like all Jewish days) begin and end at sundown. This is because, at the beginning of the Torah, after reading about each of God’s days of creation, we find the repeated phrase,

It was evening, it was morning the ...th day

The evening on which a festival starts is known as its erev (Hebrew for evening eg. Erev Rosh Hashanah).

The Hebrew Calendar consists of 12 lunar months:

  1. Nisan (Usually begins sometime in September)
  2. Iyar
  3. Sivan
  4. Tammuz
  5. Av
  6. Elul
  7. Tishrei
  8. Cheshvan
  9. Kislev
  10. Tevet
  11. Shevat
  12. Adar

Since 12 lunar months is around 29½ day, 12 lunar months is considerably shorter than a solar year (10-12 days shorter). Several of the Jewish festivals are seasonal (eg. Sukkot, when the annual fruit harvest is celebrated must be in the autumn). To account for this the calendar is adjusted so that the seasons keep in line with reality. To achieve this a 19 year cycle has been established. 7 years during each cycle are leap years when an additional month (rather than a day) called Adar I is added between Shevat and Adar. Adar becomes Adar II (eg. The festival of Purim, which normally occurs on the 14th Adar, will be 14th Adar II in a leap year). A leap year can be between 383 and 385 days long.

Hebrew years are numbered according to a traditional rabbinical calculation of the time since the creation of Adam. The year number changes at the beginning of Tishrei, when Rosh Hashanah is celebrated, eg the Hebrew year which will begin / began (depending on when you are reading this) on Rosh Hashanah in September 2025 is 5786).

There are actually 4 New Years in the Jewish calendar, The first of Nisan is the New year for Kings, (used to calculate the number of years a king had reigned); the first of Elul was the New Year for Cattle (when herds were counted for tithing purposes); 15 Shevat is the New Year for Trees (trees have symbolic significance for Judaism), and the First of Tishrei is the New Year for Years - it is when the religious year begins and when years are counted.

This multiplicity of new years is not so dissimilar from the secular world’s variety of new years eg. the new school year, the new financial year etc.

Most of the weekdays are simply numbered rather than named. Sunday is called Yom Rishon. [Rishon is from rosh meaning head, which is commonly used to mean first of eg, Rosh Hashanah (First day of the year), Rosh Chodesh (First day of the month)]. The exception is Shabbat, which is a name rather than a number. Thus the week is:

First day, second day, ......., sixth day, Shabbat.

For most purposes Jews use the secular Gregorian Calendar that is now used worldwide. Year numbers, however are referred to using the religiously neutral terms CE (Common Era) or BCE (Before the Common Era) rather than the Christian terms AD and BC.

To find out more about the individual festivals follow the link below.

Index of Festivals

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