Word of the Day
Nisan (NIH-suhn)
1st month of the Jewish calendar
Common clues: Month after Adar; Jewish calendar month
Crossword puzzle frequency: 2 times a year
News: Happy Birthday Israel
Nisan is the first month of the civil year and the seventh month (eighth, in leap year) of the ecclesiastical year on the Hebrew calendar. The name of the month is Babylonian; in the Torah it is called Aviv, meaning spring. It is a spring month of 30 days.
In some Christian traditions it is believed Jesus' death occurred at 3:00 (i.e., the ninth canonical hour) on the afternoon of 13 Nisan, Preparation Day Passover, and the Last Supper was a pre-Passover Seder held at the start (evening) the 13th of Nisan. In the Hebrew calendar the day begins at sunset, as in the Book of Genesis, "there was evening, and there was morning" in that order.
Elul (EL-uhl)
6th month of the Jewish calendar
Common clues: Twelfth Jewish month; Part of the Jewish calendar; Sixth ecclesiastical Jewish month
Crossword puzzle frequency: 3 times a year
Elul is the twelfth month of the Jewish ecclesiastical year and the sixth month of the civil year on the Hebrew calendar. It is a summer month of 29 days.
The month of Elul is a time of repentance in preparation for the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
In Aramaic (the language spoken by Jews living at the time that the months were given names), the word “Elul” means “search.” Elul is a time to search our hearts.
Adar (uh-DAHR)
12th month of the Jewish calendar
Common clues: Jewish month; Purim's month; Sixth Jewish month
Crossword puzzle frequency: 2 times a year
Adar is the sixth month of the religious year and the twelfth month of the civil year on the Hebrew calendar. It is a winter month of 29 days. In leap years, it is preceded by a 30-day intercalary month named Adar Alef, Adar Rishon or Adar I and it is then itself called Adar Bet, Adar Shenei or Adar II. Occasionally instead of Adar I and Adar II, "Adar" and "Veadar" are used (Ve means 'and' thus: And Adar).
Someone born in a non leap year in Adar would celebrate his birthday in Veadar.
This leads to the famous Jewish riddle: how can two twins born minutes apart have a Bar Mitzvah 29 days apart?
Answer: The first child was born just before sunset on the last day of Adar I, while his twin was born just after sunset on the first of Adar II. In a non leap year both children have their birthday in Adar - the second twin on the first of the month, and the first twin 29 days later on the 30th.
Mosaic
pavement of a 6th century synagogue at Beit Alpha, Israel. Signs
of the zodiac surround the central chariot of the Sun (a Greek
motif), while the corners depict the 4 "turning points"
("tekufot") of the year, solstices and equinoxes, each
named for the month in which it occurs--tekufah of
[Tishrey|Tishrei], (tekufah of Tevet), tekufah of Ni(san), tekufah
of Tamuz.
The Hebrew calendar or Jewish calendar is the annual calendar used in Judaism. It determines the dates of the Jewish holidays, the appropriate Torah portions for public reading, Yahrzeits (the date to commemorate the death of a relative), and the specific daily Psalms which some customarily read. Two major forms of the calendar have been used: an observational form used prior to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, and based on witnesses observing the phase of the moon, and a rule-based form first fully described by Maimonides in 1178 CE, which was adopted over a transition period between 70 and 1178.
The "modern" form is a rule-based lunisolar calendar, akin to the Chinese calendar, measuring months defined in lunar cycles as well as years measured in solar cycles, and distinct from the purely lunar Islamic calendar and the almost entirely solar Gregorian calendar. Because of the roughly 11 day difference between twelve lunar months and one solar year, the calendar repeats in a Metonic 19-year cycle of 235 lunar months, with an extra lunar month added once every two or three years, for a total of seven times every nineteen years. As the Hebrew calendar was developed in the region east of the Mediterranean Sea, references to seasons reflect the times and climate of the Northern Hemisphere.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Hebrew calendar".
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