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New holidays: Tu B’Av and Sigd

At the request of several users, we’ve added support for Tu B’Av and Sigd.

Tu B’Av is a minor Jewish holiday of love. It occurs on the 15th of Hebrew month of Av, corresponding to July or August on the Gregorian calendar. This year, Tu B’Av begins on Thursday, 30 July 2015 at sundown.

Sigd is a modern holiday celebrated by the Ethiopian Jewish community on the 29th of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan, corresponding to late October or November on the Gregorian calendar. Sigd became a national holiday in Israel in 2008. This year, Sigd begins on Tuesday, 10 November 2015 at sundown.

Errata: candle-lighting time corrections

We’ve made changes to candle-lighting times for Shabbat and holidays that corrects an error we introduced a few months ago. Please accept our sincere apologies for this error.

Candle-lighting times have been adjusted 1-2 minutes earlier and now correctly reflect the correct time to light candles (40 minutes before sundown in Jerusalem, 18 minutes before sundown anywhere else).

Users who subscribe to Hebcal.com calendars via iPhone/iPad, Google Calendar, or Outlook.com should get the corrected candle-lighting times automatically when these applications perform their next refresh. The typical refresh cycle is approximately once a week.

If you downloaded or printed a calendar in the past, you may wish to return to the Hebcal.com website to download and/or print an updated calendar.

The error was caused when Hebcal.com moved to a new sunset calculation engine in the summer of 2013. The new sunset engine allows support for thousands of global cities and fixed long-standing issues with our handling of Daylight Saving Time outside of the USA. Sunset times are estimated from latitude and longitude, and generally have an accuracy of +/- 2 minutes except at extreme north or south latitudes.

Unfortunately, an arithmetic error in determining sunset for a given latitude/longitude was inadvertently introduced, which added an additional 1-2 minutes of error. This error was recently discovered and corrected.

Daf Yomi

We are pleased to announce that Hebcal.com now supports Daf Yomi. Now you can use Hebcal to help follow your daily regimen of learning the Talmud!

For example, today’s Daf Yomi is Yoma 52.

Just check the new “Daf Yomi” checkbox on the “Include Events” section of our Custom Calendar. We’ve also posted a simple iCalendar feed for those of you who want to subscribe in Google Calendar or Apple Calendar and track the events with a separate color.

Many thanks to Aaron Peromsik for doing the work to add this feature.