Hi Justin,

Short answer: no, I can't offer an "or later" / AGPLv3 option here, and it's not really my call to make even if I wanted to.

@hebcal/core is a descendant of a chain of GPL work I didn't originate — the original Emacs Lisp calendar code by Dershowitz and Reingold, Danny Sadinoff's C port, and Eyal Schachter's JS port, all released under GPL. Each of those was licensed strictly as GPL (not "GPL-2.0-or-later"), so I don't hold the rights to relicense the derived work under AGPLv3 or anything else — I'd need sign-off from the original authors, and I'm not in a position to get that.

A couple of options that might get you where you want to go without needing a relicense:

1. Keep @hebcal/core's GPL scope contained. If it only needs to compute dates/holidays server-side, you can put it behind a small internal service or API boundary rather than linking it directly into the codebase you want to license permissively. That's a common pattern for isolating a GPL dependency from the rest of an application (network-service separation avoids creating a single combined/derivative work), though I'd suggest getting a second opinion from someone with real legal expertise if the boundary matters for your project's compliance.

2. Use the hosted Hebcal.com REST API instead of the library. Content from the API is CC BY 4.0, not GPL — free for any use, including commercial, with attribution to Hebcal.com. If you just need holiday/date data rather than the library's code, that sidesteps the GPL question entirely.

Sorry I can't be more flexible on the license itself — it's inherited, not a choice I get to revisit. Happy to answer follow-up questions if useful.

Best,

Michael

If you already receive annual reminder emails for yahrzeits, Hebrew birthdays, or anniversaries, and would like to receive reminders at an additional email address, follow these steps:

1. Open your email program and find a message from Hebcal about one of your yahrzeit, birthday, or anniversary reminders.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the email and look for the Edit Yahrzeit, Edit Hebrew Birthday, or Edit Hebrew Anniversary link.
3. Click that link to go to hebcal.com.
4. Scroll up a bit and push the grey Email reminders button.
   
5. Enter an additional email address in the dialog box and push the blue Subscribe button to submit the form.
   
6. Check your new email address for a confirmation message from Hebcal.
7. Click the activation link inside that confirmation email.
8. Your anniversary calendar reminders will now be sent to the new address in addition to the original email address.

Hi Izzy,

Thanks so much for your patience, and sorry for the frustration this has caused — especially since we know you’ve genuinely tried everything on your end (the davening included, which we appreciate!).

Since Amazon released Alexa+, the older Alexa skills infrastructure that Hebcal relied on has largely stopped functioning correctly, and unfortunately this is outside of our control. We’ve spent considerable time trying to debug and fix the integration, but at this point we don’t believe it’s fixable on our end.

We’re sorry to say the Hebcal Alexa skill may need to be retired. We know this is disappointing news, especially for something you relied on regularly.

In the meantime, you can still get Hebcal info via:

• The Hebcal website/app directly
• Google Calendar or other calendar sync with Hebcal’s Jewish holiday feeds
• The Hebcal API, if you or someone you know wants to build a workaround

We’ll update this thread if anything changes with Amazon’s platform that makes the skill viable again. Thanks again for your patience and for flagging this.

Before exporting to Outlook, you want to check the "Show Hebrew date every day of the year" option

Thanks for writing in. Sunday 27 September 2026 is 16 Tishrei 5787 — the second day of Sukkot. (Sukkot begins at sundown on the 25th, with the first day falling on Saturday the 26th.)

The reason it's marked is that Hebcal defaults to the Diaspora calendar, where the second day of a festival is observed as Yom Tov Sheni shel Galuyot. This is a rabbinic practice rather than a Torah one, and it originated in the era when the new month was declared by witnesses in Jerusalem and communities far from the Land couldn't be certain which day had been fixed — so they kept two. It was retained by rabbinic decree even after the calendar became mathematically fixed.

In the Land of Israel, 16 Tishrei is not a festival day at all — it's Chol HaMoed, an intermediate day of Sukkot. If you'd prefer a calendar that reflects that, you can switch to the Israel schedule on our custom calendar page, and 27 September will show as Chol HaMoed rather than a festival day.

To be clear about what Hebcal is: we're a calendar that reflects how the Jewish calendar is observed in practice, and we don't take a position on questions of scriptural interpretation. The Israel/Diaspora setting is there precisely because observance differs, and we'd rather give you the option than decide for you.

Thanks for the screenshots — that makes the difference clear.

What you're seeing on hebcal.com is our fully Hebrew calendar view, which we added in December 2025. It uses Hebrew months as the primary structure and shows Gregorian dates as secondary annotations. That layout only exists in our web view and in the printable PDF output, because it requires a calendar grid built around Hebrew months.

ICS (iCalendar) feeds can't reproduce that. The iCalendar standard is Gregorian-only — every event has a Gregorian start date, and there's no way to express "this month is Tammuz" to a calendar app. Outlook (and Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, etc.) only render a Gregorian grid, so a subscribed feed can never invert into Hebrew months. That's a limitation of the format and the calendar apps, not of the feed itself.

The closest equivalent in Outlook is to have every day carry its Hebrew date as an event. On the custom calendar page, switch back to the Gregorian layout and check "Hebrew date every day of the year" (rather than "for dates with some event", which is what your current feed appears to use — that's why only holidays show a Hebrew date). Regenerate the feed and re-subscribe, and you'll get a Hebrew date entry on all 365 days alongside the holidays.

If your goal is a fully Hebrew month layout you can actually look at, the printable PDF from the web view is the way to get that today.

Hope that helps — let us know if the regenerated feed doesn't come through correctly.

Exploring Judaism links have been fixed.

Shabbat shalom!

Hi Hillel,

Thanks for reaching out, and sorry for the frustration! Unfortunately, we don't currently offer a built-in way to customize or edit event titles (such as removing the word "Parsha") in the calendars we generate.

That said, there is a manual workaround if you're comfortable editing files on a computer:

1. Download your calendar as an .ics file by following steps 1–7 of our Google Calendar alternative instructions. This will save an .ics file to your computer instead of subscribing to a live feed.
2. Edit the .ics file in a plain text editor. Each event has a SUMMARY: line — you can edit that line to change how the title appears (for example, changing "Parsha Bereshit" to just "Bereshit").
3. Import the edited file into your calendar program by following steps 8–19 of the same instructions (creating a separate calendar in Google Calendar and importing the file).

One important thing to note: if you download, edit, and import the file this way, you'll be working with a static copy of the calendar rather than a live, perpetual feed. That means:

• You won't automatically get future years' events added
• Any updates or corrections we make on our end won't reach your calendar
• You'd need to repeat this process periodically if you want future dates

If you'd rather keep the live, auto-updating subscription, you'll need to keep the default event titles as they are.

Let us know if you have any questions along the way!

Shabbat shalom!

Hi Hillel,

Thanks for reaching out, and sorry for the frustration! Unfortunately, we don't currently offer a built-in way to customize or edit event titles (such as removing the word "Parsha") in the calendars we generate.

That said, there is a manual workaround if you're comfortable editing files on a computer:

1. Download your calendar as an .ics file by following steps 1–7 of our Google Calendar alternative instructions. This will save an .ics file to your computer instead of subscribing to a live feed.
2. Edit the .ics file in a plain text editor. Each event has a SUMMARY: line — you can edit that line to change how the title appears (for example, changing "Parsha Bereshit" to just "Bereshit").
3. Import the edited file into your calendar program by following steps 8–19 of the same instructions (creating a separate calendar in Google Calendar and importing the file).

One important thing to note: if you download, edit, and import the file this way, you'll be working with a static copy of the calendar rather than a live, perpetual feed. That means:

• You won't automatically get future years' events added
• Any updates or corrections we make on our end won't reach your calendar
• You'd need to repeat this process periodically if you want future dates

If you'd rather keep the live, auto-updating subscription, you'll need to keep the default event titles as they are.

Let us know if you have any questions along the way!

Shabbat shalom,

Michael

This article describes how to make changes to a Yahrzeit + Anniversary calendar that you downloaded, exported or subscribed to in a calendar app like Outlook, Google Calendar / Android, or Apple (iOS, iPhone, iPad or Mac). These instructions apply to personal events such as yahrzeits, Hebrew Birthdays, and Hebrew Anniversaries.

https://www.hebcal.com/home/632/how-to-make-changes-to-a-yahrzeit-anniversary-calendar