Category Archives: News

Beginning with Hebcal for Unix 3.9, Asara B’Tevet is allowed to fall on a Friday. This is a significant bugfix.

According to http://www.ou.org/chagim/roshchodesh/tevet/fast.htm

If a public fast occurs on Erev Shabbat, we fast the entire day till the conclusion of the fast, even though it means entering Shabbat while fasting. Neither “Avinu Malkeinu” nor “Tachanun” are recited at Mincha.  The fast continues until after the completion of Maariv for Shabbat (after the appearance of the stars).  One should not eat or drink anything until after Kiddush.

Nowadays our calendar calculation is such that the only public fast which can fall on Erev Shabbat is the tenth of Tevet.

Older versions of hebcal incorrectly moved a Friday Asara b’Tevet fast to Thursday. We apologize for the inconvenience.

After 8 years, we’ve finally redesigned the Hebcal.com website to be a little more modern-looking and easier to navigate with a menu on every page. We’re also using the WordPress content management system to manage our help pages and other content.

We hope you like the new look. If you see anything broken, let us know.

Developers: the hebcal for Unix source code is now stored in a Mercurial repository, hosted by sourceforget.net. You can browse the hebcal hg repository.

(Previously the source code had been stored in a CVS repository, also on sf.net.)

We’ve fixed a timezone issue for Arizona that was affecting Apple iCal, Google Calendar, and other iCalendar users. Hebcal.com now uses the “America/Phoenix” timezone instead of “US/Mountain” for all candle-lighting and havdalah times in the state of Arizona. Our apologies if you were getting times that were fine on the hebcal.com website but one hour off when you exported. Try again and let us know if you’re still seeing the problem.
Shana Tova u’Metukah.

By popular demand, we are pleased to announce a Hebrew-only calendar. Previously users had to see both Hebrew and transliterations, but we’ve added more flexibility in how the results get displayed.

On the Hebcal Custom Calendar page, there is a new Event titles user interface section which offers the “Hebrew only” option. There are actually 5 options:

• Sephardic transliterations
• Sephardic translit. + Hebrew
• Ashkenazis transliterations
• Ashkenazis translit. + Hebrew
• Hebrew only

These options are available both for display on the page and download to iCal, Google Calendar, etc.

Here’s an example of what a Hebrew-only calendar looks like: