The Jewish Calendar
TORAH FOR CHRISTIANS
SEASON THREE EPISODE THREE
THE JEWISH CALENDAR
We always say that the Jewish High Holidays are either early or late – but that they are never on time. Why is that? Let’s talk about the Jewish calendar. I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr and this is Torah for Christians.
INTRO
Welcome to Torah for Christians. I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr.
The most complicated idea in Judaism is not the laws of Shabbat. It’s not the vagaries of kashrut. It’s the Jewish calendar. Frankly, most Jews just do not understand how the Jewish calendar works. And as we get into it, you’ll understand why.
The first thing to know is that Jewish holidays do not begin on the day listed on a calendar you might have bought at your local office supply store; they begin on the night before. For example, if Rosh HaShanah is listed as being on a Monday, it really begins on Sunday night. Why is this? In the first chapter of Genesis, we read, “It was evening, it was morning. One day.” Since the Torah states evening came first, Jews start our day at sundown, not at midnight.
Pope Gregory XII introduced our common, secular, calendar, which replaced the older Julian calendar, in 1582. It established our 365 day, 12-month calendar of 28-31 days each as well as adding an extra day at the end of February every four years to keep the months in their right places. This means that Christmas will always occur in the winter; July 4th will always be in the summer and your birthday will always be when it is supposed to be.
The earliest Hebrew calendar is found in the Torah. The Torah instructs us to observe the New Moon and then, on the seventh month, on the first day of the month, is the day to sound the Shofar. We know this day today to be Rosh HaShanah, which we celebrate in the fall.
During Rabbinic times, witnesses would appear before the Rabbinic Court in Jerusalem to testify that they had seen the initial crescent of the new moon. After the rabbis verified that the new moon had been seen, they would light a bonfire on Mount Scopus, just north of Jerusalem, to signal the new moon. Within a matter of hours, bonfires would be lit on mountain tops all the way to Babylon; by the dawn of the new day, the Babylonian Jews would know that the new moon had been declared. There is a lot more to the story, but we’ll save it for next week, when we discuss Rosh Chodesh, the Jewish New Moon holiday.
Times change of course, and eventually the calendar was set mathematically. In the 4th Century CE, Rabbi Hillel II created the modern Hebrew calendar in the Land of Israel. Unlike our solar-based Gregorian calendar, this calendar is lunar and solar-based. According to both the Talmud and NASA, the average length of the moon’s rotation around the earth is roughly 29.5 days. So, a Hebrew month is either 29 or 30 days.
The Hebrew year is also 12 months long. However, you might have noticed that the average Hebrew month is a few days less than our common calendar by about 11 days. While one solar cycle is 365 days, 12 lunar rotations around the earth is only 354 days.
So how do we keep the Jewish holidays in their right places? It is very important that, for example, Passover fall in the spring since the Torah tells us that Pesach is to be celebrated in the month of Aviv. Aviv in Hebrew means spring. We just cannot celebrate Passover in the fall, for example.
The method of synchronizing the calendar is called intercalation, when we add either a day in the Gregorian calendar or a month in the Hebrew calendar. Yes, we add an extra month to keep everything in its place.
Before we talk about how Jews do that, let’s look at an example of a calendar that is not intercalated, the Muslim calendar. The Muslim calendar is not solar, like the Gregorian, common calendar. Nor is it luni-solar, like the Hebrew calendar. Instead, the months float through the year. The Muslim calendar is 100% lunar. To put this in perspective, the major festival of Islam, Ramadan, a month-long season of fasting and purification, rotates through the seasons. It may fall in the spring one year summer the next, when fasting is particularly difficult.
In the Hebrew calendar, we add an extra month 7 out of every 19 years. This keeps everything in line. Why these weird numbers? Simply put, it’s based upon mathematical calculations, too complex to detail on this podcast, mainly because I don’t understand the math! I just go with the flow.
So, when during the year do we add this extra month? In the Bible, the month in which we celebrate Pesach is, as I mentioned, in the month of Aviv, later called Nisan. The month prior to Nisan is the month of Adar. This is when we add the extra month, creating an Adar I and an Adar II. Adar II is a 30-day month.
The complication is that Purim falls on the 15th of Adar, exactly one month prior to Pesach. Knowing that Pesach is exactly one month from Purim alerts Jews to begin the extensive preparations needed for this major holiday. When we add our extra Adar, we push Purim back a month, into Adar II so that we keep that one-month interlude between the holidays.
If you are doing the math in your head, you will realize that we are still 3 days short. What do we do about this? Well, we add those extra 3 days at the end of each 19-year cycle during the fall months of Cheshvan and Kislev, when Hanukkah falls. Even with that, the Hebrew calendar still falls behind by a day every 216 years.
Confusing enough? Wait until you hear how we determine what year it is. We’ll do that after the break. I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr and this is Torah for Christians.
BREAK
Welcome back to Torah for Christians. I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr. Before we return to our discussion of T’u B’Shevat and the four new years, I want to thank you for listening to this podcast. Please remember to review and rate this episode on Apple, Spotify, Facebook, or whatever service you are using. Also, please go back and listen to previous episodes if you have not done so already. And if you would like to read my weekly Torah Study, please go to Bible Stories They (Never) Taught You in Religious School, available for free on Substack.com.
We have talked about the days and the months in the Hebrew calendar. Now, what about the year? Let’s start with an example.
On the Monday night of Labor Day weekend, 2021, we began the Holy Day of Rosh HaShanah, when we declared the new Jewish Year of 5782. Obviously, there is a difference in how we count the years.
In the Gregorian, common calendar, Year One is the year of Jesus’ birth. It’s known as 1 AD. AD stands for Anna Domino, the Year of Our Lord, Lord being of course Jesus. Anything that happened before Jesus’ birth happened BC, before Christ. So when, for example, the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BC, this means that this conquest happened 722 years before the birth of Jesus.
Jews, however, have trouble with this concept of BC and AD, for obvious reasons. Instead, we use the terms CE and BCE. CE means Common Era. The year 2022 AD is, in Jewish terms, called 2022 CE. 722 BC would be 722 BCE, Before the Common Era.
But what about 5782? Why this random number?
According to the calendar of Hillel II, created in the mid-4th Century, CE, Year One is the year that God created the world. By his calculation, the world was created 5782 years ago.
How did we arrive at this number? Hillel II started by tracking the ages of the antediluvian humans, those mentioned in Genesis who lived from the time of Adam and Eve until Noah. Interestingly, the year of the Flood is not included in this calculation. Then, he continued counting from Noah until the descent into Egypt. Then, by adding the 430 years of slavery, the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness and doing some creative calculation and extrapolation concerning Joshua, Judges and Kings, we arrive at our year 5782.
To make matters even more confusing, when Hillel II introduced his calendar, it competed with other Jewish calendars. For example, Jews in the Land of Israel – where Hillel II lived – followed a different calendar than the Jews of Egypt. Naturally, this caused great confusion. It was not until 992 – 994 CE that virtually all Jews worldwide began to follow this calendar. This was due to an edict of R. Hai Gaon, whose authority extended over all the Jews under Muslim rule, from Spain to Persia. Today, the Jewish calendar is one of the most important unifying features of both our faith and our peoplehood.
In summary, the Hebrew calendar has evolved and changed over the centuries. It varies significantly from the common Gregorian calendar in that it is a solar-lunar calendar. And to go back to our original question, Jewish holidays are never early or late if we live according to Jewish time. For when we live according to the Hebrew calendar, Christmas and the Fourth of July are floating holidays.
I want to thank you for listening to Torah for Christians. Please remember to rate and review this, and previous episodes on Apple, Spotify, or other streaming services. You can also like and hear us on Facebook.
Next week, we will discuss our monthly celebration of the New Moon, called Rosh Chodesh. This will complete this little 3-part series on the Jewish calendar. I hope that you can join us.
Finally, I have begun to publish a weekly Torah Study, called Bible Stories They Never Taught You in Religious School. It’s available for free on www.substack.com. You can also sign up on Substack for the newsletter to appear every Friday in your Inbox.
Have a wonderful week and remember; Hinei Mah Tov … L’hitra’ot, till we meet again. I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr and this is Torah for Christians.
