Your comments
Yes, this is expected. The website for the Hebcal Yahrzeit + Anniversary Calendar is located at https://www.hebcal.com/yahrzeit
and as such, any embedded links back to the website will always contain the world Yahrzeit as part of the URL, regardless of whether the event is a birthday, anniversary, or Yahrzeit.
Hebcal's Torah reading and holiday web pages link to Sefaria. Sefaria is an online open source, free content, digital library of Jewish texts available to read online in Hebrew and English including Torah, Tanakh, Talmud, Mishnah, Midrash, commentaries and more.
Sefaria offers many different translations of the Torah. The default English translations currently is the 2006 JPS translation.
Thank you, this was very helpful. We've fixed the issue on the hebcal website. Our apologies for the inaccuracy.
Hi, thank you for using the Hebcal APIs.
You are correct that if you specify a location in Israel such as Jerusalem, the API automatically assumes only one day of yom tov. There is no way to disable the Israel holiday schedule if you specify a city for candle-lighting and fast times.
You can work around this by making two separate calls to the API, and then merge the results together in your application.
The first would be for Diaspora holidays and Torah readings only, like the following:
The second could be for Jerusalem candle-lighting times only, with no holidays or Torah reading:
Note carefully the URL differences. The first URL uses c=off s=on maj=on. The second URL uses c=on s=off maj=off
We hope this helps!
Thank you for your message. We are sorry to hear about any inaccuracy in our time zone database. Could you send us the exact ZIP code or city in Arizona where you believe Hebcal is in error so we can investigate further? We use two different data sources for time zones and cities, and we need a bit of help pinpointing the error.
Hi, thanks for your message. We are sorry to hear that the word "Yahrzeit" appearing in the feed URL is upsetting.
You can change the end of the feed URL to anything you like and the calendar feed will continue to work correctly.
For example if the URL is currently
https://download.hebcal.com/v3/01j45hp8v8mx6n3gkc35crdz43/yahrzeit.ics then you can simply change the feed URL to be https://download.hebcal.com/v3/01j45hp8v8mx6n3gkc35crdz43/personal.ics
Let us know if this works for you?
Thanks for your message. The rendering of calendar events for Yahrzeit, Hebrew Birthday, and Hebrew Anniversary depends on the optional name specified in the event name.
If the name contains at least one Hebrew letter (א through ת) then the anniversary title will be rendered in Hebrew.
If the name only contains Latin characters (e.g. English), then the anniversary title will be rendered in English. If you named the event "Itzhak ben Avraham" in English only characters, this is what you would expect to see.
Or did you specify both Hebrew letters and also English transliteration? We hadn't accounted for that case.
For more detail, please read this thread:
https://hebcal.userecho.com/communities/1/topics/1422-hebrew-title-for-a-recurring-birthday-event
Thanks for your message!
The Hebrew Date Converter page for Sat, 30 November 2024 correctly lists the Torah portion as Parashat Toldot
If you look at the Parashat Toldot detail page, you will see that indeed it already lists the special Machar Chodesh Haftarah
Hi, thanks for your message. This is pretty easy to calculate using the Hebcal command-line interface. Here's the general idea:
$ hebcal --chag-only -w | egrep -v "(Erev|CH''M|Hoshana)"
4/23/2024 Tue, Pesach I
4/24/2024 Wed, Pesach II
4/29/2024 Mon, Pesach VII
4/30/2024 Tue, Pesach VIII
6/12/2024 Wed, Shavuot I
6/13/2024 Thu, Shavuot II
10/3/2024 Thu, Rosh Hashana 5785
10/4/2024 Fri, Rosh Hashana II
10/12/2024 Sat, Yom Kippur
10/17/2024 Thu, Sukkot I
10/18/2024 Fri, Sukkot II
10/24/2024 Thu, Shmini Atzeret
10/25/2024 Fri, Simchat Torah
Now we need to just count how many times each holiday occurs on Sat or Sun versus another day
$ hebcal --chag-only -w --years 100 2000 | egrep -v "(Erev|CH''M|Hoshana)" | grep "Yom Kippur" | egrep "(Sat|Sun)," | wc -l
32
Here is a summary:
- Rosh Hashana: 58 / 200 chag days on Saturday or Sunday
- Yom Kippur: 32 / 100 days on Saturday or Sunday
- Sukkot: 58 / 200 chag days on Saturday or Sunday
- Pesach: 117 / 400 chag days on Saturday or Sunday
- Shavuot: 56 / 200 chag days on Saturday or Sunday
Note that we used a 100 year window to approximate. Note that has little to do with the 19-year cycle and more to do with the interaction between the Hebrew and Gregorian calendars. See the Jewish-Gregorian calendar correspondence cycle for more details on that. A calculation can be done with 1000 years, yielding similar results.
A similar calculation could be done for Israel if you add the -i flag, and adjust for the Israeli weekend (Friday + Saturday).
Customer support service by UserEcho
You can customize your Google Calendar feed at https://www.hebcal.com/hebcal
To disable Rosh Hashana LaBehemot, uncheck the "Minor Holidays" checkbox.
After you select your options, click Create Calendar. Then you'll be able to click the Download button to connect Hebcal to Google Calendar.