The date displayed uses the web browser’s local timezone to determine today’s date. Any time after 20:00 (8:00pm in the evening) is considered “after sunset” so the Hebrew date displayed corresponds to the next day.
Torah reading of the week. Feeds are in the format https://www.hebcal.com/sedrot/index-en.xml or https://www.hebcal.com/sedrot/israel-en.xml and available for multiple languages.
If you’re having difficulty using the default importing Hebcal to Google Calendar instructions, here is an alternative technique to try that replaces the “subscribe” step with downloading and uploading.
Note that this technique requires a laptop/desktop computer (macOS, Windows, Linux), and generally will not work on a tablet or a phone.
Please import events into a separate calendar inside of Google Calendar! Note carefully step 10 and step 15 below. These steps create a new, separate calendar to upload your Hebcal events. A separate calendar allows you to assign a different color and notifications to events. If you skip these steps you may inadvertently merge Hebcal events with your own calendar events, and this will make it difficult to remove Hebcal events in the future should you choose to do so.
9. Click the large + (Plus) button next to the “Other calendars” list on the left-hand side of the page
10. Select “Create new calendar”. A separate calendar allows you to assign a different color and notifications to events.
11. On the “Create new calendar page”, type the name “Hebcal” or “Jewish holidays” or whatever you’d like to call it, and click the blue Create calendar button
12. Back on the mail Google Calendar page, once again click the large + (Plus) button next to the “Other calendars” list on the left-hand side of the page
13. Select Import from the pop-up menu
14. Click on the grey Select file from your computer box, browse to your Downloads folder, choose the hebcal_YYYY.ics file that contains your events, then click Open
15. Change the calendar option from the default (e.g. “Events”) calendar to your new, separate “Jewish holidays” calendar that you created earlier in Step 10.
Please don’t skip this step! If you don’t select the correct “Jewish holidays” calendar, you will merge Hebcal events with your own calendar events. This will make it difficult to remove merged Hebcal events in the future should you choose to change your calendar settings.
Select “Jewish holidays” instead of “Events”
16. Confirm that the “Add to calendar” box says “Jewish holidays”, then click the import button
17. Wait a minute or two for your web browser to upload the .ics file to Google and for Google Calendar to finish processing the events.
18. Google will report that the calendar successfully imported some number of events, then click the blue OK button.
To unsubscribe from a perpetual Hebcal calendar feed in Google Calendar, you can follow the steps in Google’s Delete or unsubscribe from a calendar help article. Here is a brief summary:
2. On the left-hand side of the page, find the Hebcal calendar you wish to remove under the Other calendars section
3. Click the vertical ellipsis (three dots) next to the calendar to bring up the context menu
4. When the context menu pops up, click Settings
5. On the left-hand side, click Remove calendar
6. Click the Unsubscribe button
7. Click Remove calendar when prompted “Are you sure you want to remove Jewish Holidays ✡️? You’ll no longer have access to this calendar and its events.”
Hebcal uses the anniversary algorithm defined in Calendrical Calculations by Edward M. Reingold and Nachum Dershowitz, which accords with Ashkenazic practice.
Birthday
Reingold and Dershowitz write:
The birthday of someone born in Adar of an ordinary year or Adar II of a leap year is also always in the last month of the year, be that Adar or Adar II. The birthday in an ordinary year of someone born during the first 29 days of Adar I in a leap year is on the corresponding day of Adar; in a leap year, the birthday occurs in Adar I, as expected. Someone born on the thirtieth day of Marcheshvan, Kislev, or Adar I has his birthday postponed until the first of the following month in years where that day does not occur. [Calendrical Calculations p. 111]
Yahrzeit
Yahrzeit refers to the anniversary, according to the Hebrew calendar, of the day of death of a loved one. Alternative spellings include yahrtzeit, yortsayt, yartzeit. Yahrzeit is written יאָרצײַט in Yiddish, which translates to “time of year”; the Hebrew equivalent is נַחֲלָה, transliterated as nachala (“legacy,” or “inheritance”).
The rules for a Yahrzeit are a little different than for a birthday:
The customary anniversary date of a death is more complicated and depends also on the character of the year in which the first anniversary occurs. There are several cases:
If the date of death is Marcheshvan 30, the anniversary in general depends on the first anniversary; if that first anniversary was not Marcheshvan 30, use the day before Kislev 1.
If the date of death is Kislev 30, the anniversary in general again depends on the first anniversary — if that was not Kislev 30, use the day before Tevet 1.
If the date of death is Adar II, the anniversary is the same day in the last month of the Hebrew year (Adar or Adar II).
If the date of death is Adar I 30, the anniversary in a Hebrew year that is not a leap year (in which Adar only has 29 days) is the last day in Shevat.
In all other cases, use the normal (that is, same month number) anniversary of the date of death.
[Calendrical Calculations p. 113]
Yahrzeit Example
For example, suppose Ploni ben Ploni passed away on 14 March 2001. That date corresponds to the 19th of Adar, 5761. Since 5761 was not a leap year, there was only one Adar that year (i.e. the date of death occurred in 12th month of the Hebrew year).
Suppose one wishes to observe the yahrzeit in Hebrew year 5765. Since 5765 is a leap year and none of the other rules applies, we use the same month number as the date of death. In a leap year the 12th month is Adar I, so the yahrzeit is observed on 19th of Adar I, 5765 (28 February 2005).
Variations
On page 114, Reingold and Dershowitz write:
There are minor variations in custom regarding the anniversary date in some of these cases. For example, Spanish and Portuguese Jews never observe the anniversary of a common-year date in Adar I.
There are undoubtedly many differing opinions regarding when to observe an Adar yahrzeit.
Here are two articles which offer differing opinions from our implementation:
Talmudic Encyclopedia: A Digest of Halachic Literature and Jewish Law From The Tannaitic Period to the Present Time Alphabetically Arranged, vol I (1951), p. 93; vol. XXIII (1997), cols 153-154
Updates
9 Feb 2005: added errata at Nachum Dershowitz’s request. 9 Mar 2005: Added Ploni ben Ploni example. 9 Mar 2014: Added links to opinions by Rabbis Golinkin and Schachter 28 Dec 2016: Corrected misspellings 3 Feb 2021: Added “Sources” section
