By Lorne Rozovsky
 | All about the Jewish calendar and how it works
11 Comments Posted
Very good article. Thank you.
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I was wondering, if we are using the Gregorian calendar in the US, is our sabbath the same as on the Jewish calendar.
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Long before the Gregorian calendar, the Christian Church at the Council of Laodicea in 364 CE attempted to distance itself from its Jewish roots. They did this by forbidding Christians from resting on the Sabbath (canon XXIX) and requiring them to work on that day which we know as Saturday. They designated the next day, Sunday, as The Lord's Day, when religious observances were to be held. When the Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1582, while the year numbers were changed, the number of weeks in the year, and the length of each month, the number of days in the week that is seven, remained the same. For this reason what Jews call "the sabbath" did not change, nor did the Christian "Lord's Day". It is interesting to note however, that a number of Christian denominations retained Saturday as their sabbath, most notably the Seventh Day Adventists. The Jewish practice of celebrating the sabbath on Saturday continued to be followed in various parts of the Christian world. As late as 1435 the Catholic Church suppressed the practice in 1435. In 1560 Francis Xavier called for an Inquisition to stamp out what he referred to as "Jewish wickedness" regarding the day of sabbath worship in Goa, India.
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AD is properly used before the numerical year; e.g., AD 2008 -- In the Year of Our Lord, 2008. It's a common mistake to put it after the year.
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Right on! Thanks for picking this and for contributing to the discussion. The article has been amended accordingly.
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I think the 1st Adar is usually considered the "Leap month"
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The question of whether Adar I or Adar II is the "leap month", that is the month which is added, in a leap year, seems to be a disputed issue with contradictory opinions. Rabbi Eliezer Posner in his article on the subject, In a Jewish leap year, during which Adar do I observe Yahrtzeit?, states that different communities have different customs. While he was addressing the problem of when to observe Yahrzeit that fell during Adar, the article does outline this issue.
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Thanks for the insight. Your article was concise and to the point. I have been enriched because of your effort.
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From 1929-1931 the U.S.S.R. mandated a 5-day week rathern than a 7-day week. this means that the sabbath was not always on a Saturday -- so how did Jews keep the 7th day holy? they also went to a 6-day and 10-day week. Again, how did Jews adjust their sabbath observances?
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I have not been able to find a published discussion of this issue, though some of our readers may know of one. My understanding and those of rabbinical and Judaic studies experts seems to be that, Jews who wished to observe Shabbat did so every seventh day regardless of the secular calendar. To do so however, they often were self-employed and earned their living by "piece work" which they worked on in their homes at their convenience. However, there would be many who were not in a position to do this. Quite apart from the experiments with changing the secular calendar, the enormous anti-religious political, social and cultural pressures over time eroded the observance of Shabbat by many people.
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not true,
not everyone uses the gregorian callendar.
there are parts of the world that still do not count gregorian.
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