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Author Archives: mradwin

Yizkor Memorial Prayer

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Yizkor (Hebrew: יִזְכּוֹר) is an Ashkenazi Jewish memorial prayer service for the dead. Yizkor is recited in synagogue as part of the service during four holidays each year:

  1. Yom Kippur
  2. Shmini Atzeret
  3. The final day of Passover (8th day Pesach in Diaspora, 7th day Pesach in Israel)
  4. Shavuot (2nd day Shavuot in Diaspora)

Select the “Include Yizkor dates” option when you create your personal Hebcal Yahrzeit + Anniversary calendar to be reminded of these dates.

Read more about Yikzor from My Jewish Learning, Chabad, and Wikipedia.

Yahrzeit refers to the anniversary, according to the Hebrew calendar, of the day of death of a loved one.

Tanakh Yomi / תנ״ך יומי

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From ancient biblical times, the Torah has been divided into portions which are read each week on a yearly calendar. In line with this tradition, various calendars have emerged to facilitate groups of learners in collectively studying designated texts.

Tanakh Yomi is a daily learning cycle for completing Tanakh annually. On weekdays, 293 chapters of Prophets (Nevi’im) and Writings (Ketuvim) are recited according to the ancient Masoretic division of sedarim. On Shabbat, each Torah portion is recited.

In addition to Shabbat, the Tanakh Yomi calendar also skips major holidays (Pesach days 1 and 7, Shavuot, Rosh Hashana , Yom Kippur, Sukkot day 1, Shmini Atzeret), Purim, Yom HaAtzma’ut, and Tish’a B’Av.

The Tanakh Yomi cycle completes each year and restarts the day after Shmini Atzeret. The cycle follows the Israeli schedule in the sense that it does not make any special accommodations for yom tov sheini. The Hebcal implementation was created after careful study of the schedule posted at דף הבית | תנ״ך יומי website.

You’ll find Tanakh Yomi on our Daily Learning pages and also on the Downloads page.

Changing timezone causes Outlook all-day events to shift

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We occasionally receive reports from Outlook on Windows users experiencing a problem with Hebcal calendar events spanning two days. For example, rather than a holiday appearing as an “all-day” event with no particular time, each event appears to be a 24-hour long event that starts at 11pm (23:00) on one day, and end at 11pm on the other day.

The root cause of the problem seems to be when the computer changes time zones. For example, the Hebcal calendar feed was generated for Tel Aviv, but then the computer or Outlook timezone was changed to London, England.

We have been able to reproduce this issue on Windows 11, and the fix involves 3 steps:

  1. Adjusting the computer’s timezone to match the calendar feed timezone
  2. Adjusting Outlook’s timezone to match the calendar feed timezone
  3. Restarting Microsoft Outlook

If you are experiencing this problem, here are a few examples of what settings to look for and adjust:

Delete a Yahrzeit / personal anniversary calendar

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To delete a Yahrzeit + Anniversary calendar from Hebcal’s servers, you can edit an existing calendar and remove all of the names.

1. First, navigate to https://www.hebcal.com/yahrzeit

2. Next, click the existing calendar link under the “View or edit an existing personal calendar” section of the page

3. For each name on the list, click the red Delete button with the trash-can icon

Screenshot of how to delete names from Hebcal yahrzeit page

4. To save your changes, click the Create Calendar button

Hebrew month of Tishrei

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תִּשְׁרֵי (transliterated Tishrei or Tishri) is the 7th month of the Hebrew year, is 30 days long, and corresponds to September or October on the Gregorian calendar.

The holiday that occurs on the 1st day of Tishrei is called Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. Rosh Hashanah is a major holiday.

The first day of Tishrei is not considered Rosh Chodesh. Rosh Chodesh is a minor holiday that occurs at the beginning of every month on the Hebrew calendar. In the case of Tishrei, the major holiday of Rosh Hashana takes precedence.

Later in the month we observe Tzom Gedaliah on the 3rd, Yom Kippur on the 10th, Sukkot (from the 15th-21st), and Shmini Atzeret (on the 22nd) and Simchat Torah (on the 23rd in the Diaspora).

For more info, read The Month of Tishri – Judaism 101.