We’re pleased to offer support for French transliterations of holidays and other event titles, courtesy Marc Neiger.
To use the new feature, go to https://www.hebcal.com/hebcal and select French – français from the Event titles drop-down menu, then click on Create Calendar.
We’re pleased to offer support for Finnish transliterations of holidays and other event titles, courtesy Petteri Hjort.
To use the new feature, go to https://www.hebcal.com/hebcal and select Finnish – Soumalainen from the Event titles drop-down menu, then click on Create Calendar.
As many have noted, the first day of Chanukah coincided with Christmas this year (December 25, 2016).
This happens approximately three times each century. Prior to this year, the most recent occurrence was in 1978, and the next time this will happen will be in 2027.
For completeness, here are the co-occurrences of the first day of Chanukah and Christmas during the past 400 years:
And here are the next two hundred years:
Users of hebcal for UNIX can verify this for themselves using a command like the following:
./hebcal --years 600 1617 | \ grep 'Chanukah: 1 Candle' | \ grep '^12/24' | \ cut -c 7-10
We’ve added a new modern holiday, Yom HaAliyah (יום העלייה). Yom HaAliyah recognizes Aliyah, immigration to the Jewish State of Israel.
More info from Wikipedia:
Yom HaAliyah (Aliyah Day) (Hebrew: יום העליה) is an Israeli national holiday celebrated annually on the seventh of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan, to commemorate the historic events which happened on the tenth of the Hebrew month of Nisan (Hebrew: י’ ניסן). The holiday was established to acknowledge Aliyah, immigration to the Jewish state, as a core value of the State of Israel, and honor the ongoing contributions of Olim to Israeli society.
The holiday was first observed on 7 Cheshvan 5777 (November 8, 2016).
Calendars exported from Hebcal via our subscription feeds (using iCalendar format) are typically “perpetual”. That is, they contain events for the current year (Gregorian or Hebrew) plus some number of years into the future. Most downloads (including Apple, Google Calendar, and Microsoft Outlook) support these perpetual calendar subscription feeds.
Using the default options on the Hebcal Custom Calendar page, our calendars will contain exactly 5 years of events (current year plus 4 years into the future). This is true whether you select the Gregorian year or the Hebrew year.
Size limitations imposed by Google and other calendar clients starting in 2016 require that Hebcal limit the number of events per calendar feed. If the options you select generate many events, the feed may need to be shortened.
| Option | Feed duration (years) | Number of calendar events per year (approx) |
| Major holidays only | 5 | 40 |
| Major & minor holidays, Rosh Chodesh, Minor Fasts, Special Shabbatot, Modern Holidays | 5 | 95 |
| Weekly Torah portion on Saturdays | 5 | 50 |
| Candle lighting times | 4 | 120 |
| Days of the Omer | 4 | 49 |
| Show Hebrew date for dates with some event | 3 | variable |
| Show Hebrew date every day of the year | 2 | 365 |
| Daf Yomi | 2 | 365 |
| Daf Yomi and Hebrew date every day of the year | 1 | 730 |
Note that if you’d like to include the Hebrew date for every day of the year, you can subscribe to that calendar via a separate calendar feed at our Jewish Holiday downloads page. Look for Hebrew calendar dates (English) or Hebrew calendar dates (Hebrew). Daf Yomi and other large single-purpose iCalendar feeds are also available on that page for Apple, Google, and any iCalendar application.
An added advantage of the multi-subscription approach is that you can choose separate colors in Google Calendar or iOS/iCloud calendar for each calendar event feed.
All that said, if you’d like to download future events to Google Calendar or another program that supports iCalendar (.ics) files such as macOS Calendar or Outlook, you may utilize Hebcal’s alternative download instructions below. This technique requires a laptop/desktop computer and generally does not work well on a smartphone or tablet. Note that once downloaded, these .ics files are no longer managed by Hebcal and will not refresh.
Please note that these instructions are recommended only for advanced users. If you don’t take great care to create a separate calendar and import Hebcal events into that new, separate calendar, you may unintentionally add hundreds of events to your personal calendar.