Thanks for the feedback. We see how this was confusing.

The page was giving the date and linking to the Vayakhel (single parsha) for 2025. We have corrected it so it now more clearly displays the following:

Parashat Vayakhel-Pekudei is the 22nd and 23rd weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading. Next read on14 Mar 2026 / 25 Adar 5786.

Thanks for using Hebcal. Hebrew year 5785 is not a leap year.

Vayakhel and Pekudei are read separately in 5785

• Vayakhel 5785 (22 Mar 2025)
• Pekudei 5785 (29 Mar 2025)

To see when the parshiyot are read separately or together in the Diaspora, consult the List of Dates section of 

https://www.hebcal.com/sedrot/vayakhel

Thank you for using Hebcal and thanks for contacting us about this error in the weekday leyning spreadsheets.

Another user reported this error and we fixed the spreadsheets on Friday right before Shabbat. If you check again, you will see the following corrected readings, which concur with the conservative Luach Hashana 5785 published by Rabbi Miles Cohen

That's great! Thank you for sharing!

Thanks again. We have corrected the verses on Hebcal.com so they now align with Sefaria.org.

Hi, thanks for using the Hebcal APIs!

The date range in the example you posted is from 2025-01-24 to 2025-01-25. Rosh Chodesh Sh’vat occurs on Thursday, 30 January 2025.

The Shabbat times REST API a similar URL and response format as our full Jewish calendar REST API, but offers less control over the dates and times. If you find you want more fine-grained control over the date ranges, or what kinds of events are included and which are excluded, we recommend using the full Jewish calendar REST API instead.

Thank you for the feedback!

It's easy in most calendar applications to set a recurrence rule every Saturday to block off your calendar as busy the entire day. Hebcal.com doesn't have that feature because it's built into standard Gregorian calendars, and our users will have more control and more familiarity if they do so using their native calendar app.

I personally block off Friday afternoons in the winter with a "do not schedule" starting at about 3:30pm so I can get home in time for Shabbos and so my coworkers won't try to schedule anything late. 

It would be a handy feature to automatically block Friday afternoons using a user specified number of minutes before candle lighting time (e.g. 90 minutes or 60 minutes or whatever you choose). Alas, we are unlikely to have time to implement it anytime soon. 

We're confused, too. Unless Google changed something, the free/busy status of a subscribed iCalendar should not block the availability of your main calendar. That would be a big departure from how Google Calendar has worked for 10+ years.

You're correct, work is forbidden on every Shabbos, and Hebcal does not use the "out of office" / busy setting for events that occur on Saturdays. Shabbos is always on Shabbos, and it's not part of the workweek in the western world or in Israel, so there's not much need to mark it as a "busy" day.

The major holidays can fall on different days during the week, including the typical western Monday-Friday workweek. We're sorry if this seems inconsistent to you.

Hi, thanks for using Hebcal.

If you're using the default "subscribe" feature for most calendar applications (Apple, Google, or Microsoft Outlook), then your calendar will never be blocked. The Hebcal holidays will be displayed and managed as separate calendar from your main calendar without affecting your main calendar's free/busy time.

If, in fact you imported Hebcal events and merged with your calendar (using our .ics download + import, or the .csv download + import), then yes, holidays that are yom tov such as Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, the beginning days of Sukkot, Simchat Torah, the beginning and ending days of Pesach and Shavuot, will indeed be blocked all day (typically using the "out of office" type, but in some cases "busy"). This is a feature, not a bug, because work is forbidden on those major holidays.

We're sorry, but we don't have the ability to offer customizations for these major holidays. If you choose to download/import/merge, then you'll need to adjust any holidays from busy/oof to "free" on your own.

If you set &yt=H (which it appears you are doing) but you don't want to specify a Hebrew year explicitly, you should consider using &year=now for the current Hebrew year.

If you don't specify year= (or start= and end=), I believe the API will default to the current Hebrew year from 1 Tishrei - 15 Av, and the following Hebrew year starting on the 16th of Av.