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Jewish Calendar
From: Cambridge University Press
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Jonathan Magonet |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
 In this feature, Rabbi Professor Jonathan Magonet from Leo Baeck College Centre for Jewish Education in London reviews the Jewish calendar year, showing how it links religious festivals directly with the seasons and changes in the land. He gives an overview of the major festivals, such as Shabbat (the Sabbath) and Yom Kippur. |
 he Jewish calendar is calculated from the creation of the world, a date based on the years recorded in the Hebrew Bible, and traditionally assumed to be 3761 BCE. The Jewish year is luni-solar, the months being calculated according to the phases of the moon but the years according to the sun. This produces an eleven-day discrepancy and so an extra month is added approximately every four years. This ensures that the three major 'pilgrim festivals' always coincide with the three harvests in Israel, thus maintaining a direct link with the land. |
The Jewish festival calendar is built around a number of cycles of feasts, fasts, and solemn days. The three pilgrim festivals, Passover (Pesach), Pentecost (Shavu'ot--the Feast of Weeks), and Tabernacles (Sukkot), biblical harvest festivals, were given additional historical significance by representing three key events in Israel's history: the exodus from Egypt, the revelation at Mount Sinai, and the subsequent wandering in the wilderness. |
Although the Bible speaks of two 'new years', in the spring at the beginning of the month of Nisan and the autumn at the start of the seventh month, Tishri, the latter has become dominant. A second cycle is built around the new year, the great penitential season. In the sixth month, Elul, a daily blast on the shofar, a ram's horn, calls people to repentance. On New Year's Day, Rosh Hashanah, the first day of Tishri, God judges the whole of creation. On the tenth day of the month, Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement, when a solemn 25-hour fast is undertaken, the judgement on the year is sealed. The Ten Days of Penitence in between provide an opportunity to right wrongs and seek reconciliation for acts committed during the year. |
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| Children celebrate during the festival of Purim. The festival dates back to the fifth century BCE and commemorates the survival of the Jews who were condemned to death by the Persians, as recorded in the biblical book of Esther. Today Purim is celebrated by exchanging gifts, making donations to the poor, and dressing up. | |
The most powerful festival in the calendar is the Shabbat, the Sabbath, a day set aside each week for rest, prayer, and study. It begins at sunset on Friday and ends at sunset on Saturday. On this day a section is read from the Torah (the Pentateuch), the entire Five Books of Moses being completed and then begun again at a festival called Simchat Torah (Rejoicing in the Torah) that falls at the end of Sukkot. |
Two minor festivals mark respectively the rescue of the Jews from possible genocide (recorded in the biblical book of Esther), Purim, and the rededication of the Temple by the Maccabees, Chanukkah. Tu bi'Shvat celebrates the 'new year' for trees. A series of minor fasts commemorate the siege of Jerusalem during the biblical period, climaxing with Tisha B'Av, the ninth day of the month of Av, when both Solomon's and Herod's Temples were destroyed. |
The twentieth century saw two significant innovations: Yom Ha-Shoah, commemorating the victims of the Holocaust, and Yom Ha-Atzmaut, a celebration of Israel Independence Day. |
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