The Hebrew calendar

The Hebrew calendar follows the Moon and the Sun at once: the months begin with the new moon, and the festivals stay in their season. The day begins in the evening, at sunset.

Hebrew date and Hebrew birthday

From a Hebrew date to the civil date

Jewish holidays to 2031

Diaspora Israel

Holidays begin the evening before, at sunset. In Israel Pesach and Sukkot are one day shorter, and Shavuot lasts one day.

The months of the year 5787

The months of the year 5788

The molad is the calendar's mean new moon, in hours, minutes and chalakim (1/18 minute) of Jerusalem local time, as it is announced on the Shabbat before the month. Kiddush Levana, the blessing over the Moon, is said from three days after the molad by Ashkenazi custom, from seven by Sephardi and kabbalistic custom, until the middle of the month (14 days, 18 hours and 22 minutes after the molad), usually at the end of Shabbat under the open sky.

How the calendar works

A month has 29 or 30 days; twelve months are about eleven days shorter than a solar year. To keep Pesach in spring, seven years out of nineteen get a thirteenth month, Adar I (years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17 and 19 of the cycle). In ancient times the court in Jerusalem declared a new month once witnesses had seen the first crescent; since the fourth century the calendar has been calculated, by the rules attributed to Hillel II. Its basis is the molad, which returns every 29 days, 12 hours and 793 chalakim; a chelek is a 1080th of an hour. Four rules (dechiyot) move Rosh Hashanah by one or two days, among other things so that Yom Kippur never falls on a Friday or a Sunday and Hoshana Raba never on Shabbat. So a year has 353 to 355 days, a leap year 383 to 385. Years are counted from the creation of the world according to tradition; the year 5787 began in the autumn of 2026.

More: Shabbat times for your city · the mazalot, the Hebrew zodiac · the weekly Torah portion

All dates are our own calculation (Dershowitz and Reingold, Calendrical Calculations), compared with Hebcal: holidays and Torah portions 5761 to 5799, dates 1900 to 2099, the molad, without a difference.