Jewish Calendar

The Jewish Calendar—A Mix of Astronomy and Theology
Author(s): Solomon Gartenhaus and Arnold Tubis

Source: Shofar , Winter 2007, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Winter 2007), pp. 104-124
Published by: Purdue University Press
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1 04 ♦ Solomon Gartenhaus and Arnold Tubis
The Jewish Calendar- A Mix of

Astronomy and Theology
Solomon Gartenhaus and Arnold Tubis
Purdue University
The lunisolar Jewish calendar is an example par excellence of "time engineering."

It is based on the relation between the mean period of the lunar motion about
the earth and the mean period of the earth about the sun (the tropical year). This
relation is that, to six places of decimals, the number of days in 19 tropical years
is equal to the number of days in 235 lunar cycles and is known as the metonic
cycle. Moreover, the Jewish calendar, unlike our civil calendar, for example, is
intertwined with the days of the week by virtue of the first day of Tishri (Rosh
Hashanah) being allowed - for religious reasons - only to occur on Monday,
Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Because the metonic-cycle relation is not ex-
act, there will eventually be a significant seasonal drift in holidays such as Pass-
over unless the calendar construction is modified appropriately.
I. Introduction
The Jewish calendar plays a central role in the lives of Jews of various afflia-
tions and degrees of commitment. However, other than being vaguely aware
of the seasons of the year in which the different holidays and festivals occur,
many Jews have only a limited acquaintance with the astronomical and his-
torical/ theological roots of this calendar. This lack of knowledge is certainly
not due to a dearth of authoritative calendrical references. Indeed, there are
many easily available sources of information on the Jewish calendar, including
monographs, book chapters, lengthy encyclopedia and journal articles, trans-
lations of traditional sources with commentaries, and a recent spate of internet
websites. For a list of these sources, see Appendix A.
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The Jewish Calendar- A Mix of Astronomy and Theology ♦ 1 05
This paper is intended to give a reasonably concise presentation of how

astronomy and theology are intertwined in the Jewish calendar. We feel that
its mix and depth of discussion of essential elements of the Jewish calendar
covered in a short paper is fairly unique. It is mainly intended for readers who
would like an initial overview of the subject as a prelude to more in-depth
studies of the Jewish calendar.
The dates of all important holidays - Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Yom
Kippur, etc. - are fixed by this calendar. The first day of Rosh Hashanah, for
example, occurs on the first day of the month of Tishri, and Passover begins
on the 15th day of the month of Nisan. Of particular interest here is the fact
that the eight days of Passover always occur in the Spring - late March/early
April - and Rosh Hashanah invariably begins a half year later in the fall -
September/October. In this respect the Jewish calendar mirrors our civil cal-
endar, which is a solar calendar in which the four seasons - spring, summer,
fall, winter - recur annually on the same dates.
By contrast to our civil calendar, however, the Jewish calendar is not only
a solar calendar but in addition it is also a lunar calendar, in that it closely
follows the cycles of the moon. Thus not only does the first night of Passover,
on the 15th of Nisan, always occur in the early spring, but what is not as well
known nor often as appreciated is that, on that night of the first seder, the
moon is invariably full! Similarly, there is always a full moon on the first night
of Succoth on the 15th of Tishri and invariably a new (crescent) moon two
weeks earlier on the first night of Rosh Hashanah on the first day of Tishri.
To more fully appreciate this important aspect of the Jewish calendar, of
its being synchronized with both the solar and the lunar cycles, let us briefly
review some features of our civil calendar. Recall that the 21st of March1 al-
ways marks the first day of spring (in the northern hemisphere, of course),
that the 21st of June marks the first day of summer, and so on for the 21st of
September and the 21st of December marking the first days of fall and winter,
respectively. Thus, as designed, our civil calendar correlates fully with the four
seasons. By contrast, there is no correlation whatsoever between any particu-
1 Although we often think of the first day of the four seasons as occurring on the 21st of
March, June, September, and December, respectively, since the number of days in the year
is not an integer the actual dates can deviate slightly from these. It should be emphasized
that the first days of the seasons are determined not by humans but via astronomical mea-
surements by the instants when the sun, in its annual journey around the celestial sphere,
crosses the four fixed points in the sky known as: the vernal equinox, the summer solstice,
the autumnal equinox, and the winter solstice.
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1 064 Solomon Gartenhaus and Arnold Tubis
lar date on our civil calendar and the phases of the moon* On any particular
date it is possible for the moon to be in any one of its phases, from new moon
through first quarter, to full moon, to third quarter, and back to new moon*
This complete lack of correlation between our civil calendar and the lunar
cycle is illustrated in Table I, which shows the number of days to the next full
moon for three arbitrarily chosen dates: January 1, July 4, and September 21
for the five years 2000-2004*
Tabid
The number of days to full moon
for selected dates for the years 2000-2004
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004
January 1 7 25 12 3 22
July 4 28 16 5 25 15
September 21 9 27 20 6 24
Since there are very slightly more than 29*5 days in

entry "7" for the 1st of January 2000, for example
appeared 7 days afterward on the 8th of January 20
for July 4, 2003 means that the moon was full ab
lier on the 30th of June, 2003 and will be full again o
there is no correlation whatsoever between dates o
lunar cycle* Given any particular date and any pr
phase will eventually occur on that date* Note, how
our civil calendar of the 12 months January, Februa
evidence to the lunar origins of this calendar*
The problem facing the designer of the Jewish ca
onciling the capriciousness, as shown in Table I, of
solar cycle, and to create a calendar that is simulta
with both the seasons and the lunar cycle*
Before turning to the Jewish calendar itself, let
our civil calendar somewhat more closely* Our pre
as the Gregorian calendar,2 or sometimes as the "G
2See, for example, G. Moyer, "The Gregorian Calendar,"

No* 5 (May 1982): 144-152.
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The Jewish Calendar- A Mix of Astronomy and Theology ♦ 1 07
lian calendan" It is based on the fact that the solar (tropical) year3 consists of
365.2422 days,4 or slightly less than 365 Vi days. So, for example, in order for
the first day of spring to occur on the same date (March 21) each year over
the course of many years, it is clear that the calendar should, in some sense,
consist of exactly 365.2422 days. Since the length of the day and of the year
are determined, respectively, by the period of rotation of the earth about its
axis and the period of revolution of the earth about the sun - neither of which
is in humankinds power to influence - and since for calendrical purposes we
require a year to consist of an integral number of days, a compromise has to
be made.
Some 2000 years ago, it was believed, incorrectly, that there were exactly
365V4 days in the year. At the behest of Julius Caesar in 45 BCE the Roman
senate set up the "Julian" calendar, which was destined to be widely used for
over 1600 years until late in the 16th century. This calendar collated years into
groups of four, with three successive years of 365 days followed by a fourth
year, known as a leap year and consisting of 366 days. In this way, on the aver-
age, each year consisted of 365 lA days. At some point it was decided that years
of ordinal number divisible by 4, such as 1936, 2004, etc., would be leap years
each of 366 days, with the remaining years with ordinal numbers not divisible
by 4, such as 1938, 2001, etc., to consist of 365 days. In this way it was be-
lieved the Julian calendar of average length 365.25 days would be able to keep
in step with the seasons for ever. But this was not to be!
The difference between the actual number of days in the year of 365.2422
and the average number of days in the year according to the Julian calendar,
365.2500, is quite small; it corresponds to a difference of 0.0078 days per
3The "tropical" year is defined as the time interval between successive passages of the
sun through the vernal equinox. It has the value of 365.2422 days. The "day" in turn, is
defined as the minimum time interval it takes the sun to appear at the highest point in the
sky on two successive days. This is to be contrasted with the sideral day which is about 4
minutes shorter and is the time it takes the earth to rotate completely about its axis.
4This is the modern value of the tropical year. In the ancient world, observers were
limited to an accuracy of about six hours in their estimates of the true solstice and equinoc-
tial times. However, by measuring solstice times separated by many years, surprisingly good
estimates were obtained. For example, Hipparchus (c. 140 BC) obtained an estimate of
365.2467 days for the tropical year, based on an observation of the sun at summer solstice
in 280 BC (by Aristarchus) and his own observation in 135 BC. This value was generally
accepted up to the middle ages, and differs from the modern value by only six minutes and
26 seconds!
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1 084 Solomon Gartenhaus and Arnold Tubls
year or 0.78 days per century! This difference, albeit negligible compared to
a human lifetime, over longer periods corresponds to an extra day every 128
(=l/.0078) years* And over the course of a thousand years or so this calendar
is not stable relative to the seasons since, for example, the first day of spring
would occur a day earlier every 128 years* Thus after about 1300 years the
first day of spring - as determined by astronomical observations - on the Ju-
lian calendar occurred not on the 21st of March but on or about the 10th
of March. And it was this slippage of the first day of spring from the 21st of
March into the "winter" months that the Gregorian calendar was designed to
rectify
The Gregorian calendar, which is essentially in universal use today, was
promulgated by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 CE and gradually adopted/ recog-
nized by most countries - some only very recently; for example by the Soviet
Union in 1917. It is a relatively small modification of the Julian calendar, and
as introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 the Gregorian reform of the
Julian calendar mandated:
(1) The elimination of 10 days from the Julian calendar by relabeling 5

October 1582 as 15 October 1582; and
(2) Continued use of this relabeled Julian calendar with the added provi-
sion that the only century years that would be leap years of 366 days
would be those divisible by 400.
The latter implies that the century years 1700, 1800, 1900, which are divis-
ible by 4 and which would have been leap years on the Julian calendar, would
not be leap years of 366 days on the reformed calendar, since they are not also
divisible both by 4 and 400. On the other hand, the century year 2000, which
is divisible by 400, would be retained as a leap year. Thus, in every 400-year
cycle of the new calendar there would be 97 leap years of 366 days and 303
regular years of 365 days.
The effect of this change, then, is that on the average the Gregorian year
has 365.2425 = ((303 x 365 + 97 x 366)/400) days and not 365.2500 as did
the Julian year. The difference between the Gregorian 365.2425 days and the
actual year of 365.2422 days is .003 days per year, corresponding to an extra
day only every 3333 years! Thus by means of this relatively minor change,
the slippage of 1 day every 128 years of the Julian calendar was reduced to a
slippage of 1 day every 3333 years in the Gregorian calendar! Evidentially it
will not be necessary for humankind to revisit this matter for the next ten or
so millennia.
It is also of interest to contrast the Gregorian solar calendar with the Is-
lamic calendar, which is a purely lunar calendar. The latter consists of a year of

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The Jewish Calendar- A Mix of Astronomy and Theology 4109
12 months of alternately 30 and 29 days just as does the Jewish calendan A full
year on this calendar thus consists of 354 (=12 x 29.5) days. Since the period
of the lunar cycle is actually 29.530595 days and not 29.5 days, it is necessary
from time to time to add an extra day to the year in order to keep the months
in step with the phases of the moon. This is achieved by operating on a 30-year
cycle, with the twelfth month of Dha al-Miljah having 30 days instead of the
normal complement of 29 during the eleven years numbered 2, 5, 7, 10, 13, 16,
18, 21, 24, 26, and 29 of the cycle. In this way the average length of the month,
as can be easily calculated, is 29.53056 days and compares very favorably with
the actual 29.53059 days. In a given year, if the sun is at the vernal equinox on
the first day of the first month of the year, Muharram, for example, then since
the sun will return to this point approximately 365 lA days later, the following
year the sun will be at the vernal equinox on the 11th day of Muharram; the
year following on the 22nd day of Muharram and the one following that on
the 4th day of Safar, etc. It follows that there is no simple correlation between
this calendar and the seasons. The first day of spring, for example, moves pro-
gressively through the months of the Islamic year. After about 321/£ such years,
early in the month of Muharram the sun will again be at the vernal equinox.
Returning to our earlier theme, let us note here that the introduction of
the Gregorian calendar in no way affects the total lack of synchronization be-
tween our civil calendar and the lunar cycle.
II. Origins of the Jewish Calendar: The Metonic Cycle
The problem of designing a calendar which would faithfully follow both the
solar and the lunar cycles seems at first glance to be a very formidable - if not
impossible - task. Included among the externally imposed constraints that
the Jewish calendar designer must address are the following:
1. The solar (tropical) year consists of 365.2422 days;
2. The lunar cycle consists of 29.53059 days;
3. The calendar year must consist of an integral number of days;
5This is the modern value and (perhaps surprisingly) also the value determined by
the Babylonians during the last three centuries BCE. They achieved this by counting the
number of days between two widely spaced lunar eclipses and dividing by the total number
of full (or new) moons that occur between the eclipses. This value for the average luna-
tion cycle was the one used by Maimonides in his detailed presentation of Jewish calendar
calculations.
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1 1 ()♦ Solomon Gartenhaus and Arnold Tubis
4. There is a calendar unit of the month, whose length on the average

must be the same as that of a lunar cycle and which at the same time
must consist of an integral number of days;
5. The calendar year must consist of an integral number of months;
6. There is the calendar unit of the week consisting of exactly seven days,
Sunday . ♦ ♦ Saturday» There is no requirement for a year or a month
having an integral number of weeks;
7. The first day of Rosh Hashanah, the first of Tishri, cannot be on a

Sunday, Wednesday, or Friday. (This singular requirement is to sat-
isfy the religious constraints that Hashanah Rabah on the 21st of
Tishri cannot fall on the Sabbath, and that Yom Kippur on the 10th
of Tishri not fall on a Friday or Sunday. As an aside, it is a conse-
quence of the first of these requirements that Yom Kippur can never
fall on a Tuesday).
8. A month can only have 29 or 30 days. In particular, months of length

31 days are not permitted.
To satisfy any one or two of these eight conditions would be straightfor-

ward. For example, to satisfy #1 and #3 alone we could simply introduce the
leap years mandated by the Gregorian calendar. Similarly to satisfy #2 and
#4 alone, we could introduce the year as a sequence of twelve months which
alternately consisted of 29 and 30 days with an occasional "leap" month to ac-
count for the "0.03059" in #2. Such a twelve-month year would have only 354
days - 11 short of 365 - and thus would require a 13th month about every
three years. Brief reflection shows that to satisfy all eight of the above require-
ments simultaneously would seem to be virtually impossible! However, there
is a curious relationship between the number of days in a solar year and those
in a lunar cycle as given in #1 and #2, respectively, that nevertheless makes a
lunar-solar (or lunisolar) calendar possible; this relationship is known as the
Metonic cycle.
In the 5 th century BCE, the Athenian astronomer Me ton first pointed
out that the number of days in 19 solar years is almost exactly the same as
the number of days in 235 lunar cycles (or lunations). This period of time is
now known as the Metonic cycle and served as the basis for the Babylonian
calendar from which the Jewish calendar was originally derived. According to
#1, we find 19 solar years have, to 7 decimal places, 19 x 365.2422 = 6939.602
days. Similarly according to #2, we find that 235 lunations consist of 235 x
29.53059 = 6939.689 days. Surprisingly, these agree to five places of decimals!
To put the matter in an alternate form, the ratio of the number of days in 235

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The Jewish Calendar- A Mix of Astronomy and Theology ♦ 1 1 1
lunations to the number of days in 19 solar years is given by (235 x 29.53059)

/ (19 x 365.2422) = 6939.689 / 6939.602 = 1.000013 and is unity to five
places of decimals. Disregarding the small decimal at the end of this ratio,
to a high degree of accuracy there are almost precisely 235 lunar cycles in 19
solar years. It is perhaps interesting to note that this relationship would be
"exact" if there were 365.2468 days6 in a year instead of the actual number of
365.2422.
With the Metonic cycle as background the basic structure of the Jewish
calendar can be easily described qualitatively. For this purpose it is convenient
to suppose, in the following, that the length of the lunar cycle is precisely 29.5
days and not the actual 29.53059 days and to fine-tune the result later by
including the effects of the small decimal .03059.
Just as the Gregorian calendar groups years into 400-year cycles, so the
Jewish calendar is concerned with years grouped into 19-year cycles. To satisfy
the condition that there must be 235 months or lunar cycles in each 19 year
solar cycle, the individual years in each such cycle are divided into one of two
types: 12 ordinary years each of 12 months and the remainder of 7 leap years
each consisting of 13 months. A brief calculation shows this to add up to 235
= (12 x 12 + 7 x 13) months for the full 19-year cycle. Table II lists the names
of the months for both ordinary years and leap years and the number of days,
29 or 30, in each month. Note that for ordinary years the numbers of days
alternate between 30 and 29 so that on the average there would be 29.5 days
in each month. Thus, Tishri, Kislev, Shevat, Nisan, Sivan, and Ab each consist
of 30 days and the remaining six months consist of 29 days for a total of 354
days for a regular year. For a leap year of 13 months, the line-up in Table II is
the same except that the 29-day month of Adar becomes two months: Adar I
and Adar II with 30 and 29 days respectively. Thus there are 384 days in a leap
year. Note that the extra month has 30 days - thus upsetting the balance of
the 30-29 day alternation. But this is in the right direction and brings the aver-
age number of days per month in a leap year from 29.5 to 29.53846, which is
also slightly greater than the actual value in #2 of 29.53059. For the entire 19-
year cycle, including both ordinary and leap years, the average number of days
6The value of 365.2468 days, which makes the Metonic-cycle relationship exact, is as-
sociated with Rav Adda in the Jewish rabbinic literature, and was adopted by Maimonides.
As will be discussed later in this paper, the discrepancy between this value and the modern
one leads over time to significant seasonal drifts in the occurrence of some of the Jewish
holidays.
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1124 Solomon Gartenhaus and Arnold Tubis
in a month is 29*5149, which is slightly greater than the regular year average of
29*5 days but goes in the direction of the required 29*53059 days of #2*
Table II
The months and the number of days in each for ordinary years
and for the leap years
Ordinary Year Leap Year
Month
Tishri 30 Tishri 30
Marcheshvan
Kislev 30 Kislev 30
Tebeth 29 Tebeth 29
Shevat 30 Shevat * 30
Adar 29 Adar I 30
- - Adar II 29
Nisan 30 Nisan 30
Iyar 29 Iyar 29
Siván 30 Sivan 30
Tammuz 29 Tammuz 29
Ab 30 Ab 30
Elul
Total 354 Total 384
Which years in a given 19

uniquely specified to be the
seven years in total The rem
ordinary years. For those fa
which gives the leap years as
(7N+l)Modl9<7
where N is presumed to be one of the numbers 1,2, . . .,19 and is the ordinal
number of the year in the cycle. So for a given cycle, years 1 and 2 are regular
years while year number 3 is a leap year, etc.
To determine the ordinal number of a year on the Jewish calendar given
the year of the Gregorian calendar (or vice versa), we can see that such a year
is equal to the Gregorian year plus 3760 before 1 Tishri, and the Gregorian
year plus 3761 after 1 Tishri. Recall that the first day of Rosh Hashanah oc-
curs on the first day of Tishri. Accordingly, during the spring of 2000, for
example, the Jewish year was 2000 + 3760 = 5760 (recall, Tishri is in the
fall), while after the 30th of September - or Tishri 1 - of 2000 it is 5761 (=
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2000 + 3761). Similarly, before Rosh Hashanah of the Jewish year 5783 (26
September 2022), the year of the Gregorian calendar will be 5783 - 3760 =
2023, and so forth.
To determine whether any given year is a leap year or not, let us proceed
using as an example the year 5761 above. Since 5761 can be written as 19 x
303 + 4, it follows that during the winter months of 2000 (November, say)
we were in the fourth year of the 303rd 19-year cycle since the "beginning of
time." Since the fourth year of a 19-year cycle is not a leap year, it follows that
the year 5761 was a regular year. Correspondingly, the Jewish year 5689 will
be a leap year since 5689 = 19 x 299 + 8 and the eighth year of a cycle is a leap
year, according to the list above.
In Table III we present actual data for the 19 years of the current, 303rd,
19-year cycle of the Jewish calendar. The third column shows the civil date
of the first of Tishri which, as we shall see, is almost always within a day or
so of the new moon (Molad). Note that according to the fourth column, and
consistent with #7 on page 6, the first day of Tishri never occurs on a Sunday,
Wednesday, or Friday. The last column presents the actual number of days in
the given year. We see that, as will be explained below, a regular (non-leap)
year can have 353, 354, or 355 days corresponding to what is known as a de-
fective, ordinary, or full year, respectively. Correspondingly, for leap years there
can be 383, 384, or 385 days, corresponding to a defective, ordinary, or full
leap year, respectively. This matter will be discussed in more detail below. If
we add up the number of days in each year for all 19 years of the 303rd cycle,
we find in Table III that the total number of days in this 19-year cycle is 6941,
just slightly over the exact 6939.689 days required for 235 lunar cycles. If we
consider other 19-year cycles, we find that on the average the number of days
in each cycle is closer to 6939.689. For example the 301st and 302nd 19-year
cycles have 6939 and 6940 days, respectivèly, so the average number of days
in these three 19-year cycles is 6940! It should be emphasized that Table III
represents actual data and not the data on the calendar that would result from
direct application of the lengths of the months as presented in Table II.
III. The Calendar Council
To provide some perspective on the evolution of the Jewish calendar, in this

section we consider some historical aspects of this calendar. As presented here,
this is not a definitive historical account but rather is a more simplified or
idealized discussion. For more scholarly discussions, the interested reader is
referred to the work of M. Friedlander and C. Roth (see Appendix).
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1144 Solomon Gartenhaus and Arnold Tubis
Table III
The current 303rd 19-Year cycle
Ordinal No. Year Civil Date of First day of No. of days

of year first of Tishri RoshHashana in the year
1 5758 Oct. 2, 1997 Hi 354

2 5759 Sept. 21, 1998 Mon 355
3 5760* Sept. 11, 1999 Sat 385
4 5761 Sept. 30, 2000 Sat 353
5 5762 Sept. 18, 2001 Tues 354
6 5763* Sept. 7, 2002 Sat 385
7 5764 Sept. 27, 2003 Sat 355
8 5765* Sept. 16, 2004 Th 383
9 5766 Oct. 4, 2005 Tues 354
10 5767 Sept. 23, 2006 Sat 355
11 5768* Sept. 13, 2007 Hi 383
12 5769 Sept. 30, 2008 Tues 354
13 5770 Sept. 19, 2009 Sat 355
14 5771* Sept. 9, 2010 Ih 385
15 5772 Sept. 29, 2011 Hi 354
16 5773 Sept. 17, 2012 Mon 353
17 5774* Sept. 5, 2013 Hi 385
18 5775 Sept. 25, 2014 Hi 354
19 5776* Sept. 14, 2015 Mon 385
TOTAL» 6941
*Leap Year
During the approximately 800 years beginning in the 5th century BCE,
the period of the second temple, until almost 300 years after its destruction,
there was no fixed Jewish calendar. Originally, the basics of the Jewish calen-
dar, as we know it, were adapted from the Babylonians during the Babylo-
nian captivity. As a reminder of this we note that the names of the months
of the Jewish calendar in Table II have their counterparts in the names of the
corresponding Babylonian months: Tashritu, Arakhasamna, Kislim, Tebetu,
Shabatu, Adaru, Nisanu, Ayaru, Simanu, Diuzu, Abu, Ululu which also al-
ternated between 30 and 29 days with a thirteenth month added periodically
to keep the Babylonian calendar lunisolar. The Jewish calendar, during this
800-year period, was determined on a month-to-month basis by a group of
Jewish leaders, originally the high priests but later consisting of a three mem-
ber council called the Calendar Council (Sod Hadibbur). Its members were the

81.196.215.90 on Wed, 03 May 2023 07:57:13 +00:00
president ( Hanasi ) plus two other members of the Sanhédrin, who we may
presume were generally skilled in astronomy and mathematics» On occasion,
the membership of the Council was increased to five and sometimes even to
seven»
One of the main purposes of the Council was to have the first
month coincide with the new moon (Molad). It achieved this by s
number of days in each month, to be 29 or 30« Also by taking advan
Metonic cycle it continuously set the calendar by intercalating an
into the year as necessary to keep it synchronized with the solar c
ad hoc way, it was possible for the months of the year to remain
faithful to the lunar cycle while at the same time satisfying the sec
ment, of consistency with the seasons» Thus the first day of Pas
always occur in the spring on the 15th of Nisan, and the first day o
festival, Succoth, would invariably occur in the fall on the 15th d
Specifically, the Calendar Council was empowered to:
(1) determine and set the first day of each month by direct obse
lunar phases and;
(2) declare a leap year by intercalating an additional leap month

essary to maintain the balance between the lunar and solar
The institution of the Calendar Council was obviously a very rat
keep the seasons fixed to a lunar calendar over long periods of tim
tally, the names of the months for a regular year as listed in Table
necessarily the number of days in each month - were those used
this 800-year period.
While it was in session, the Calendar Council used to sit in J
and on the 30th day of any given month await the arrival of wi
could testify to having 'seen" the new moon» The Council would
these witnesses, and if it were confirmed that they had indeed se
crescent moon, for example, and not a waning one and so forth,
of the given month would then become the first day of the new
witnesses appeared, the next day, the 31st day of the previous m
automatically become the first day of the new month» In this way,
consisted of either 29 or 30 days» If on the day of the new moon it
that month would automatically have 30 days» If three successive
cloudy skies there would be a serious problem. The Calendar
given some leeway but operated under the constraint that even t
dinary year had 354 days, they could change this only by ±1 day, s
no circumstances could an ordinary year have less than 353 day
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1 1 64 Solomon Gartenhaus and Arnold Tubis
than 355 days» This practice continues to be maintained in todays Jewish cal-
endar, and is reflected in Table III.
, In making certain that the calendar followed the solar cycle, the Coun-
cil was guided by the principle that the first day of spring - the day the sun
crosses the equator in a northerly direction at the vernal equinox - must pre-
cede the first day of Passover on the 15th of Nisan. If the Calendar Council
determined that the sun would traverse the vernal equinox after the 16th of
Nisan, it would declare a leap year by the addition of an extra month, thereby
postponing Nisan by 30 days. Thus the Calendar Council had the ability and
the authority to adjust the calendar at will in its responsibility to maintain the
balance between a lunar and a solar year.
Curiously enough, both the king and the high priest were singled out and
specifically excluded from membership on the Council, the former, presum-
ably, because he might be tempted to vote in favor of a leap year to lessen the
strain on the treasury in making annual disbursements for the civil service and
the army. Similarly, we may suppose that the high priest was excluded since he
might be tempted to vote against a leap year to increase the chances of Yom
Kippur - when he had to immerse his body in spring water five times - falling
during a warmer time of the year!
This ad hoc process of setting the calendar served the Jews for about 800
years, through the middle of the 4th century C.E. It was at this latter time,
with the Diaspora escalating, that Hillel II promulgated our present system of
calendar calculation, which up to then may have been known to the Calendar
Council and used by them, perhaps, to check the accuracy of witnesses and to
determine the precise time of the suns passage through the vernal equinox.
Hillel s algorithm, which also utilizes the Metonic cycle, is consistent with the
8 requirements on page 6 and is in the form of a complex formula that fixes the
lengths of the months and the occurrence of leap years. The resultant calendar
has been used for the last 1600 years and has remained substantially synchro-
nized with both the motion of the sun and of the moon.
IV. Fine Tuning the Jewish Calendar
Consider again the entries in Table III for the 303rd 19-year cycle of the Jewish
calendar, 5758-5776, corresponding to the civil calendar years 1997-2015.
Imagine starting a calendar with the first day of Tishri of the year 5758 on
Thursday, 2 October 1997 and assigning to the succeeding days the dates in
accordance with the lengths of the months in Table II. Thus each of the 235
months of the cycle would alternate between 29 and 30 days as shown in the
Table. The 19 years of the cycle would then consist of 12 ordinary years, each
of 354 days, plus 7 leap years each of 384 days. In this way we would not come

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up with an acceptable Jewish calendar as detailed in Table III! For one thing
the total number of days in this 303rd 19-year cycle would have only 6936 (=
12 X 354 + 7 X 384) days and thus would be 3 or 4 days short of the 6939.689
days the moon requires to circuit the earth 235 times. For another, the first of
Tishri on some of the succeeding years of the cycle would fall on the "forbid-
den" days of Sunday Wednesday, or Friday thus violating constraint #7 on
page 7. The entries in Table III are correct but can obviously not be obtained
by direct application of the lengths of the months as given in Table II. Clearly
something additional is required to construct the Jewish calendar.
One of the difficulties with the above procedure is that it assumed that
the lunar cycle consisted of exactly 29.5 days, when we know for a fact that it
consists of 29.53059 days. For an ordinary year of 12 months this difference
amounts to a little more than a third of a day (12 x 0.03059 = .367) or about
8.8 hours per year, which is equivalent to about 7 days (= 19 x 8.8hrs = 6.97
days) per 19-year cycle. It is for this reason, of course, that the 19-year cycle is
divided into 12 ordinary years and 7 leap years, thereby producing the 7 extra
days required by the "0.03059" in the lunar cycle of 29.53059. By introduc-
ing 7 leap years, then, we have satisfied completely all of the 8 conditions on
pages 6-7 except for #7 which mandates a certain unambiguous connection
between the days of the week and the first of Tishri. This restriction of the day
on which the first of Tishri can occur is perhaps the most unusual aspect of
the Jewish calendar. It ties together various astronomical periods of time - the
day, the year, and the lunar cycle - to the 7- day week, which as we know has a
non-astronomical origin and is based more on ecclesiastical and / or astrologi-
cal considerations.
To see the way the Jewish calendar is structured - so that the first of
Tishri does not fall on a Sunday, Wednesday, or Friday - takes several steps.
The first involves allowing the calendar year to have a (restricted) variable
number of days. Specifically, the ordinary years of the Jewish calendar can as-
sume lengths of 353, 354, or 355 days while the leap years can have lengths of
383, 384, or 385 days. An ordinary year of 353 days is called a defective year,
one of 354 days a regular year, and one of 355 days a full year. And similarly,
for defective, ordinary, and full leap years the numbers of days are 383, 384,
and 385, respectively. For the 303rd 19-year cycle, the number of days in each
year is given by the last column of Table III. We see that for this 19-year cycle,
only the years 5761 and 5774 are ordinary defective years, while there are 6
ordinary regular years and 4 ordinary full years. Correspondingly, for the leap
years, there are 2 defective years, zero regular ones and 5 full years. The total
number of days in this 303rd cycle adds up to 6941, which is slightly larger
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1 1 84 Solomon Gartenhaus and Arnold Tubis
than 235 lunar cycles of 6939.692 days, a matter that will be further discussed
below.
Setting aside for the moment the question of determining which of the
various possibilities of any given year is appropriate, let us first look at the
given mechanics of how this is done. We make use of the assignment of the
number of days in each month given in Table II, except by making a slight ad-
justment for the number of days during the months of Kislev and Marchesh-
van. For an ordinary regular year of 354 days the assignment is precisely that
in Table II. For an ordinary defective year of 353 days, one day is deleted from
the month of Kislev, thus reducing its number of days from 30 to 29. Finally,
for an ordinary full year of 355 days, we add one day to Marcheshvan, thereby
increasing its number of days from 29 to 30. And precisely in the same way
we modify Kislev and Marcheshvan to produce regular, defective, and full leap
years. None of the other months are ever modified in any way. We already
know from the paragraph below Table II which years of a given 19-year cycle
are leap years, so now we need to describe how we determine which years are
defective, regular, or full. In fact, depending on which day of the week of a
given year the first of Tishri falls and on which day it falls in the immediately
following year, there are 7 distinct types of ordinary years and 7 distinct types
of leap years. These 14-year types follow from the requirement that the first
day of Tishri, and thus, of Rosh Hashanah, occur on the day of the new moon
(Molad) except for the following four postponements ( Dehioth )7:
1. When the Molad Tishri occurs on a Sunday , Wednesday , or Friday, the
first day of Rosh Hashanah is postponed to the following day ♦
[As noted previously, if Rosh Hashanah were to occur on a Sunday,
Hoshana Rabah on the 21st day of Tishri would fall on the Sabbath,
and this would interfere with the ceremony connected with the wil-
low branches. If it were to fall on a Sunday or a Wednesday, Yom
Kippur on the tenth day of Tishri would fall next to the Sabbath on
Friday or Sunday and thus cause difficulties in the preparation of
meals.]
7See e.g., Spier, The Comprehensive Jewish Calendar and, as die primary source, Mai-
monides, Sefer Zemanim-Hilhot Kiddush HaHodesh . Note that according to the method of
construction of the Jewish calendar, the term Molad Tishri here refers not to the astronom-
ical new moon time but rather that determined from the time of the Molad Tishri of year
two (or the fictitious Molad Tishri of year one), the number of the lunar conjunction, and
the average lunation period (see note 10 below). This calculated time of the Molad Tishri
may differ from the true astronomical new moon time by as much as several days.

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2. When the Molad Tishri occurs at noon (18h) or later > the first day of
Tishri is postponed to the next day . If this day is a Sunday, Wednesday, or
Friday, the first day ofRosh Hashanah is further postponed to Monday,
Thursday, or the Sabbath, respectively, in accordance with Dehiah 1.
[Most scholars of the Jewish calendar have suggested that this post-
ponement rule is introduced in order to guarantee the visibility of the
New Moon on the first day ofRosh Hashanah, However, Shocken8
has stated (without explanation) and Landau9 has shown mathemat-
ically that it ensures that no month begins before the actual setting
of the New Moon,]
3. Wl)en the Molad Tishri of an ordinary year falls on a Tuesday after

9:11:20 (Le*, 3:11:20 am) Rosh Hashanah is postponed to Wednesday,
and because of Dehiah 1, is further postponed until Thursday ,
[It can be shown that this two-day postponement prevents an ordi-
nary year from having 356 days and, in combination with Dehioth 1
and 2, limits ordinary years to 353, 354, or 355 days.]
4. Wl)en, in an ordinary year that follows a leap year, the Molad Tishri
occurs on a Monday at 15:32:43 (9:32:43 am) or later, Rosh Hashanah
is postponed to Tuesday ,
[This postponement prevents a leap year from having 382 days and,
in combination with Dehioth 1 and 2, limits leap years to 383, 384,
or 385 days,]
(Note that in stating these Dehioth and in the following we use the nota-
tion "a:b:c" to indicate a time, or time interval of a-hours b-minutes and c-
seconds, A civil calendar time will be recognized by the appearance of "am" or
"pm," Also note that by contrast to our civil calendar, where each day begins at
midnight, Le, 12:00:01 am, for the Jewish calendar the day begins at 6:00:01
pm of the preceding day and also runs for 24 hours. Thus, Tuesday 8:00:00
pm of our civil calendar corresponds to Wednesday 2:00:00 of the Jewish cal-
endar. Correspondingly, Wednesday 18:00:00 on the Jewish calendar corre-
sponds to Wednesday noon or 12:00:00 pm of our civil calendar.)
It is not necessary at this point to understand in detail these four rules
for postponements, and we list them mainly for the sake of completeness. The
8Shocken, The Calculated Confusion of Calendars, p. 38.

9R. Landau/' Romancing the old Moon," Mehqere Hag, Vol. 10 (1999): 6-19. See also
Landau, website in Appendix.
Vol. 25, No. 2 ♦ 2007

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fourteen possible years that result from the application of these postpone-
ments are presented in Table IV. This table shows the day of Rosh Hashanah
of a given year, that of the immediately following year as well as the number
of days in the given year. Presented are the first days of Tishri for both regular
and leap years, which, it should be noted, do not necessarily correspond to the
Molads of Tishri.
Table IV
The fourteen possible years of the Jewish calendar
ORDINARY YEARS
Day of Day of # of days Day of Day of # of Days

1 Tishri of 1 Tishri of in year 1 Tishri of 1 Tishri of in year
a given yr* following yn given yr* following yn
Monday Thursday 353 Monday Saturday 383
Monday Saturday 355 Monday Monday 385
Tuesday Saturday 354 Tuesday Monday 384
Thursday Monday 354 Thursday Tuesday 383
Thursday Tuesday 355 Thursday Thursday 385
Saturday Tuesday 353 Saturday Thursday 383
Saturday Thursday 355 Saturday Saturday 385
Let us also consider in a little more detail how the first day of Tishri of a
given year is ascertained. As the four dehioth imply, it is determined in the first
instance by the Molad of Tishri, i.e., the day and time of the first new moon
following the month of Elul (see Table II). In turn this Molad is itself deter-
mined not by direct astronomical observation of the new moon - as in the
time of the Calendar council - but rather, following the procedure laid down
by Hillel II, by calculating the number of lunations or lunar cycles, since the
"beginning of time."10 The astronomical and traditional theological consider-
ations that have been used to characterize the first several Moladot Tishri at
10On the basis of biblical chronology as calculated in the Talmud (see, e. g., Spier, The
Comprehensive Jewish Calendar ) and the Chronology articles in the Jewish Encyclopedia
and Roth, Encyclopedia Judaica, Jewish calendar year 1 corresponds to 3760 BCE. See also
E. Frank, Talmudic and Rabbinical Chronology , I be Systems of Counting Years in Jewish Lit-
erature (New York: Feldheim Publishers, 1956).

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the "beginning of time" are rather complicated»11 According to one of the main
rabbinical traditions, the world was conceived at 3:35:40 am on a Wednesday
(Le*, 9:35:40 on a Wednesday), but the first new moon did not occur until
the moon and the sun had been created six lunation periods later on Molad
Tishri of Jewish calendar year 2 at exactly 8:00:00 am on Friday (i.e., at ex-
actly the start of the 14th hour of Friday, Jewish time)»12 In order to make life
easier for calendar calculators, Maimonides introduced an "imaginary" Molad
Tishri for year 1 of the Jewish calendar that started 12 lunation periods prior
to Molad Tishri for year 2, Le», at 11:11:20 pm on Sunday (or 5:11:20 of
Monday). Calendar calculators can thus conveniently start with the time of
this "fictitious" Molad Tishri of year 1 and proceed to calculate the times of all
subsequent moladot by simply adding the appropriate month number times
29.53059 days. In particular, we can calculate the date and time of the first
Molad following the month of Elul for any given year. The actual day of 1
Tishri, and thus of the first day of Rosh Hashanah then follows by application
of the above Dehioth or postponements. It has been shown mathematically by
use of the latter that the only possible years are those detailed in Table IV. In
particular, no ordinary years of length 352 or 356 days - nor any leap years of
length 382 or 386 days - can ever occur.
Let us illustrate this procedure for determining the length of a calendar
year by considering a few special cases. For this purpose it is simplest to have
nFor a clear and critical analysis of various traditional rabbinic arguments in this
regard, see J. Landa, Torah and Science (Hoboken: KTAV Publishing House, 1991), pp.
297-327.
12At first glance, these times for the Molad Tishri of year 2 and the "creation of the
world" may appear extremely puzzling to the reader. However, as pointed out by Landa (see
note 11), they may be simply obtained via an interesting mix of rabbinic theology and basi
astronomy. Maimonides and many other rabbinic authorities apparently assumed that the
first new moon and the completion of the creation of Adam occurred together on the sixth
day (Friday) of creation. Furthermore, rabbinic accounts of hour-by-hour occurrences on
the day of Adam's creation have his creation completed at the start of the 14th hour. Thes
(purely theological) assumptions thus account for the time of Molad Tishri of Jewish cal-
endar year 2 being determined exactly at the start of hour 14 of Friday. Once this time is
established, the time for the "beginning of time" and the imaginary Molad Tishri of Jewis
calendar year 1 are determined by subtraction of 6 and 12 lunation periods, respectively.
It is interesting to note that the time of Molad Tishri of year 2, a key ingredient in the
construction of the Jewish calendar as it exists even to the present time, is based on purel
theological speculation, in contrast to the other aspects of the calendar that are grounded
in astronomical facts.
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available the total time required for twelve and for thirteen lunation periods,
as follows:
A: 12 average lunation periods = 50 weeks + 4d 8:48:40
B: 13 average lunation periods = 54 weeks + 5 d 21: 32:43 î4

Consider, for example, the case that the Molad of Tishri for an ordinary
year occurs on Monday at 6:00:00 (i.e., at midnight 12:00 am). Then the Mo-
lad of Tishri of the immediately following year would occur, according to A,
four days later in the week on Friday at 6:00:00 + 8:48:40 = 14:48:40* It
follows, according to Debiotb #1, that Rosh Hashanah would have to be post-
poned to Saturday and the year would be full with 355 days. Or consider the
original Molad on Monday at 6:00:00 but for a leap yean This time by B the
Molad for the next Tishri would occur on Saturday 6:00:00 + 21:32:43 1/3
or on a Sunday at 3:32:43 V£. Again by Dehioth #1 Rosh Hashanah would have
to be postponed to Monday and the leap year would have 385 days. Clearly
one can use this procedure to work out all the possibilities and confirm that
the only possible types of years are those listed in Table IV.
Because of the four Dehioth , the lengths, in days, of various Metonic-cycle
periods will vary slightly from one period to another. However, extensive nu-
merical studies of the Jewish calendar, such as the one of Remy Landau (see
Appendix), show that the average length of a year remains essentially the same
as the value of 365.2468 days attributed to Rav Adda. Since this value is larger
than the modern value of 365.2422 days by about six minutes and thirty seven
seconds, there is on average a yearly advance, by this difference, of the time of
occurrence of holidays such as Passover. As a consequence, today we celebrate
Passover and other holidays about four and a half days later, on average, than
our ancestors did 1000 years ago, and the celebration times will advance on
average by about a full month during the next 6500 years. As for all other
calendars that have ever been proposed this slight shortcoming in the Jewish
calendar has been known for a long time, and has not been a priority concern.
The expectation of the sages is that this dilemma of seasonal drifts of holidays
will be resolved by the "coming of the Messiah."
V. Concluding Remarks
Many times during their long and distinguished history, the Jewish people
have adopted the knowledge and practices of other cultures in the pursuit of
their unique concepts and visions. In this relatively brief overview, we have
tried to describe how the Jews adapted the basic lunar-solar astronomical un-

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derpinnings and month-naming practices of the Babylonian calendar to rab-

binic theology as embodied in the Torah and Talmud«
The Jewish calendar continues to interest many people, especially in the
present computer age when many calculations that could previously be done
only with great difficulty can now be easily implemented. For extensive techni-
cal details and numerical studies of computer-based algorithms for calendrical
calculations and conversions, see, e«g«, Dershowitz and Reingold, and Landau,
cited in the Appendix«13
Appendix
The most important primary source on the technical details of the Jewish
calendar is
Maimonides (Moshe ben Maimon), Mishneh Torah: Sefer Zemanim-HiL

hot Kiddush HaHodesh, 1 177« English translation by S. Gandz (with
commentary by J. Obermann and O. Neugebauer) as Code of Mai-
monides , Book Three, Treatise Eight , Sanctification of the New Moon «
Yale Judaica Series, Vol. XI, (New Haven:Yale University Press,
1956)« Addenda/corrigenda by E« J« Weisenberg are added at the end
of Code of Maimonides , Book Three, The Book of Seasons , translated
by S« Gandz and H. Klein« Yale Judaica Series, Volume XIV (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1961)« Another English translation
of, and commentary on, this source is Maimonides, Mishneh Torah,
Hilchot Shekalim, The Laws of Shekalim and Hilchot HaChodesh, The
Laws of the Sanctification of the New Moon, translated by E, Touger
(New York: Moznaim Publishing Corporation, 1993)«
Useful secondary sources also consulted by the authors in English include:
Burnaby, S. B« Elements of the Jewish and Muhammadan Calendars « Lon-
don: George Bell & Sons, 1901«
Bushwick, N«, Understanding the Jewish Calendar « New York: Moznaim
Publishing Company, 1989«
Encyclopedia Britannica (see, in particular the classic Calendar article by
W. S« B« Woolhouse in eighth through the 11th editions)«
13We wish to thank our many colleagues and friends at Purdue University, Congre-
gation Sons of Abraham in Lafayette, Indiana, and Temple Solel in Cardiff by the Sea,
California for interesting discussions on various aspects of this paper. We also thank Irwin
Rubenstein and an anonymous reviewer for constructive criticism of an earlier version of
this paper.
Vol. 25, No. 2 ♦ 2007

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Feinstein, D. The Jewish Calendar » Its Structure and Laws, Brooklyn: Me-
sorah Publications, Ltd», 2004»
Feldman, W. M Rabbinical Mathematics and Astronomy , 3rd corrected
edition» New York: Sepher-Hermon, 1978*
Friedlander, M» Calendar, lhe Jewish Encyclopedia . New York: Funk and
Wagnalls, 1906 (this classic encyclopedia is now available on the in-
ternet: http://wwwjewishencyclopedia.com/index/jsp).
Gabai, H .Judaismy Mathematics , and the Hebrew Calendar . Northvale, NJ:
Jason Aronson Inc., 2002.
Hastings, J., ed. Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics . New York: Charles
Scribners Sons, 1911.
Roth, C., ed. Encyclopedia Judaica . New York: MacMillan, 1971;
Spier, A. The Comprehensive Jewish Calendar , 3rd ed. New York: Feldheim
Publishers, 1986.
Schamroth, J., A Glimpse of Light A Discussion of the Hebrew Calendar
and Judaic Astronomy (Based on Maimonides Kiddush Hachodesh).
Southfield, MI: Targum Press, 1998.
Shoken, W. A. The Calculated Confusion of Calendars . New York: Vantage
Press, 1976, p. 38.
Zinberg, G.Jewish Calendar Mystery Dispelled . New York: Vantage Press,
1963.
Additional references may be found in the excellent book:

Richards, E. G. Mapping Time . The Calendar and its History . Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1998.
which discusses calendars from around the world, and the extremely detailed
book on the mathematics of calendars in terms of modern numerical algo-
rithms:
Dershowitz, N. and E. M. Reingold. Calendišical Calculations . Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1997, chapter 7.
Finally we mention the magnificent website, Hebrew Calendar Science and
Myths , maintained by Remy Landau, which contains voluminous numerical
detail:
http:/ / www.geocities.com/ Athens/ 1584

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The Jewish Calendar—A Mix of Astronomy and Theology

Author(s): Solomon Gartenhaus and Arnold Tubis

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The Jewish Calendar- A Mix of

The lunisolar Jewish calendar is an example par excellence of "time engineering."

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This paper is intended to give a reasonably concise presentation of how

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2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

Since there are very slightly more than 29*5 days in

2See, for example, G. Moyer, "The Gregorian Calendar,"

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(1) The elimination of 10 days from the Julian calendar by relabeling 5

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II. Origins of the Jewish Calendar: The Metonic Cycle

1. The solar (tropical) year consists of 365.2422 days;

2. The lunar cycle consists of 29.53059 days;

3. The calendar year must consist of an integral number of days;

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4. There is a calendar unit of the month, whose length on the average

5. The calendar year must consist of an integral number of months;

7. The first day of Rosh Hashanah, the first of Tishri, cannot be on a

8. A month can only have 29 or 30 days. In particular, months of length

To satisfy any one or two of these eight conditions would be straightfor-

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lunations to the number of days in 19 solar years is given by (235 x 29.53059)

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Total 354 Total 384

Which years in a given 19

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III. The Calendar Council

To provide some perspective on the evolution of the Jewish calendar, in this

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Ordinal No. Year Civil Date of First day of No. of days

1 5758 Oct. 2, 1997 Hi 354

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(2) declare a leap year by intercalating an additional leap month

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IV. Fine Tuning the Jewish Calendar

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Shofar ♦ An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies