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Author Archives: mradwin

Why are fixed fast days sometimes observed on a different day?

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For example, Tzom Tammuz is always on the 17th of Tammuz, but in the year 5772 (2012 C.E.) it is on the 18th of Tammuz. The answer has to do with Shabbat:

“The Hebrew year contains several fast days that, though specified by particular Hebrew calendar dates, are shifted when those days occur on Saturday. The fast days are Tzom Gedaliah (Tishri 3), Tzom Tevet (Tevet 10), and Tishah be-Av (Av 9). When Purim is on Sunday, Ta’anit Esther occurs on the preceding Thursday… Each of the other fast days, as well as Shushan Purim (the day after Purim, celebrated in Jerusalem), is postponed to the following day (Sunday) when it occurs on Saturday.”

Reference: Calendrical Calculations, Edward M. Reingold, Nachum Dershowitz, Cambridge University Press, 2001, page 109.

Displaying Shabbat candle-lighting times on your website

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Hebcal.com’s Add Shabbat Times to your Website tool lets you create custom HTML tags to which display weekly candle-lighting times directly on your web page. The result looks something like this:

Shabbat times for Chicago, IL

Candle lighting: 4:08pm on Friday, 02 January 2004
This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Vayigash
Havdalah (72 min): 5:39pm on Saturday, 03 January 2004

1-Click Shabbat Copyright © 2004 Michael J. Radwin. All rights reserved.

Microsoft Outlook CSV – delete Hebcal Jewish calendar from Outlook 97, 98, 2000, 2002, 2003

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When hebcal exports to CSV format, it puts the text “Jewish Holidays” in the Location field. That is there to make it easy to remove entries from your calendar if you got the wrong settings. For example, if you were using candle-lighting times but entered the wrong zip code, you could follow these instructions to remove all of the incorrect entries:

  1. Open your Calendar and on the View menu point to Current View and click Events
  2. Click the Location column heading to sort the list of holidays by Location (you should see “Jewish Holidays” in the location field for the holidays that you imported from CSV)
  3. Click to select the first holiday you want to delete
  4. Hold down SHIFT and click the last holiday you want to delete
  5. Press DELETE to remove all the selected holidays from your Calendar

To delete candle-lighting times, use these instructions:

  1. Open your Calendar and on the View menu point to Current View and click Active Appointments
  2. Do steps 2-5 above