parsha widget
Is there a widget for displaying only the weekly parsha on my website? I have used the Shabbat times widget which includes the parsha, but we really only need the parsha itself.
Thanks for your question. We don't offer a dedicated parsha widget, but you can do something like this using our API
https://gist.github.com/mjradwin/8a89a1fc54fbc65651639ab0a8f82973
Inquiry regarding Shabbat times update frequency and Timezone alignment
Hi, I fetch Shabbat times from your site every 90 seconds for a system in Israel.
- When exactly are the start/end times updated in your database?
- Is the update synced to Israel time? I need to ensure the data doesn't refresh according to US time, which would be half a day too late for us.
Thanks!
Nach Yomi and Kitzur Yomi
Hi
Does anyone know if there is a way to customize daily limudim calendars.
I'd like Kitzur to read kitzur not kust the siman/sk.
Also, My nach yomi schedule is one day different than the schedule showing here, can I customize?
Hi, thank you for your thoughtful question!
This is a fascinating topic in Jewish history, but it's beyond the scope of what Hebcal.com covers — we focus on providing Jewish calendar dates, holiday times, and Torah readings rather than historical analysis.
Here are some great places to dig deeper:
• Wikipedia's "Tisha B'Av" article has a good overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tisha_B%27Av
• TheTorah.com has an excellent scholarly article called "Tisha B'Av: On What Day Were the Jerusalem Temples Destroyed?" that directly addresses your question: https://www.thetorah.com/article/tisha-b-av-on-what-day-were-the-jerusalem-temples-destroyed
• The Talmud itself (Ta'anit 29a) discusses this — you can find it on Sefaria.org
Hope that helps point you in the right direction!
question
I quote, "We’re not Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, Renewal, Liberal, or Humanist." end quote. What are you then, Christian?
Hebcal doesn’t have a denominational bias. The authors are Jewish and we embrace every movement and denomination of Judaism: Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Chabad, Reconstructionist, Renewal, Liberal, and Humanist. We are observant of the mitzvot, and we offer this website because we want to help other Jews with their observance. This website also serves as a reference and resource for non-Jews who wish to avoid scheduling secular events in a way that would interfere with observance of Jewish holidays.
You could call us “Conservadox” if you must use a label, but we don’t really participate in any one movement of Judaism more than others.
turn off automatic Out of Office on Outlook
I love the HebCal (especially with the emojis) but I don't like it it automatically sets days as Out of Office on my Outlook calendar. Is there a way to change that but still have the calendar?
Hi Hilary,
Thanks for reaching out, and glad you're enjoying the Hebcal calendar (emojis and all!).
Great news — this is easy to fix! If you subscribe to the calendar using Outlook's "Internet Calendar Subscription" feature, the holidays will appear on a separate calendar layer rather than being added directly to your primary calendar. That means they won't affect your availability or set you as Out of Office.
You can find step-by-step instructions here:
https://www.hebcal.com/home/8/outlook-ics-jewish-holidays
Once you set it up this way, you'll still see all the holidays on your calendar — they just won't interfere with your free/busy status.
If you downloaded a copy of the Hebcal events and merged them into your own calendar, then yes, the major holidays are set as Out of Office (although minor holidays are not). To remove those merged events, follow these instructions:
https://www.hebcal.com/home/58/outlook-csv-delete-hebcal-jewish-calendar
Let me know if you have any further questions!
Color of Torah Portion Box
I have been using HebCal.com for some time. I use the calendar direction on the HebCal web page.
For some reason the color of the box and text that has the Torah Portions on Shabbat has change color to white which I cannot read. The box is there. When I click it the page with the Torah portions comes up. How can I change the color of the box on the calendar/
Thank you for the bug report! We found the cause of the error (an incorrectly CSS which was setting the background color to white and the text to white) and we have fixed it. If you refresh the page it should appear correctly again.
Outlook download - I don't want 5786 to be included again!
I would like to download HebCal on Outlook for 5787. I already have 5786 downloaded but it seems that the only option is to download 5786 again. What can i do?
Hi Adam,
Thank you for reaching out! Great news -- you have two options to get just 5787 into Outlook.
Option 1 (Recommended): Internet Calendar Subscription
The easiest approach is to use Outlook's "Internet Calendar Subscription" feature, which sets up a perpetual calendar feed that stays up to date automatically. It appears as a separate calendar overlay alongside your main calendar and can be managed independently. You can find setup instructions here: https://www.hebcal.com/home/8/outlook-ics-jewish-holidays
Option 2: Download 5787 only
If you'd prefer to manually import just the 5787 events and merge them into your existing calendar:
- Go to the custom calendar creator at https://www.hebcal.com/hebcal
- Enter the Hebrew year 5787
- Click Download, then Outlook
- Look for the grey "Download 5787 only" button -- this will give you just that single year to import, without re-importing 5786.
Hope that helps! Let us know if you have any other questions.
yahrzeit not showing in google calendar, in the ics
Hi, created a personal calendar and subscribed as addition to my google calendar. Birthdays show correctly. Then I added Yarhzeit entries which are in the ics download, but don't show in the calendar whether integrated or standalone using the url.
I have tried unsubscribing and resubscribing.
Help/Suggestions appreciated.
How to Assign an Outlook Category to all HebCal events (to add desirred color to events)?
How can I assign a Category in Outlook 2019 to all HebCal events? This would allow me to to specify a desired color to the HebCal events on the Outlook calendar.
Unfortunately, Outlook 2019 does not respect or import the CATEGORIES property from iCalendar/ICS feeds.
When Outlook 2019 imports or subscribes to an ICS feed, it essentially ignores the RFC 2445 CATEGORIES field entirely. It does not map those values to Outlook's own Categories system. This is a long-standing limitation — Outlook's category system is proprietary and not wired up to the standard iCalendar CATEGORIES property on import.
So even though Hebcal is doing the right thing by tagging each event with a proper RFC 2445 CATEGORIES value like HOLIDAY or PARSHA, Outlook just drops that metadata on the floor.
Recommended workarounds to get separate colors:
1. Use Outlook on the Web or Microsoft 365 — newer versions have better category support for synced calendars. Outlook's category system requires that category names in the ICS file match pre-existing entries in your Master Category List (MCL). So even if OWA reads the CATEGORIES field from Hebcal's ICS (e.g., HOLIDAY or PARSHA), those values won't map to colored categories unless you have identically named entries already set up in your Outlook category list. If there's no match, the categories are silently dropped.
2. Use separate calendar feeds, each with their own color. For example 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).
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