Jewish Calendar Resources

What are other good Jewish calendar sites on the web?

Judaism 101's Jewish Calendar is an excellent overview. Also, you might see Yahoo!'s Judaism Resources: Calendars page.

The Orthodox Union also lists Shabbat and Holiday Candle Lighting Times for both American and international cities, as well as a Jewish Holidays website.

If you're looking for more than just candle-lighting times, check out Kashrut.com's Zemanim (prayer time) Service. They can compute Alos HaShachar, Sunrise, Sunset, Sof Zeman K'rea Sh'ma, Plag HaMincha, Tzait hakochavim, etc.

For links to other Jewish Holidays sites, see Yahoo! Jewish Holidays.

Can you recommend any books on the Hebrew Calendar or Jewish Holidays?

For a good reference book on the major Jewish Holidays, I'd suggest Michael Strassfeld's The Jewish Holidays: A Guide & Commentary.

Rabbi Nathan Bushwick's Understanding the Jewish Calendar explains some of the mathematical and scientific underpinnings of the calendar.

For a comprehensive look at 25 different calendar systems (including Hebrew, Gregorian, Julian, Mayan and Hindu), and corresponding sample code in Lisp and Java, Reingold & Dershowitz's Calendrical Calculations is an unparalleled resource.

Can I download a copy of the hebcal.com program for my computer?

Hebcal for UNIX and DOS/Windows is a free program and is available for download at http://sourceforge.net/projects/hebcal/. This is the same engine that powers the hebcal.com website. The downloadable program has a text (command-line) interface, not a fancy graphical one.

Kaluach is an unrelated program available at http://www.kaluach.org/Kaluach3/. The author requests donations, but does not have a set price.

Calendar Maven's Hebrew Calendar is a commercial program ($29) available at http://www.calendarmaven.com/