Rabbi Rebecca Dubowe’s lecture on “Guess which holidays are important?” was very beneficial.

She explained that the Jewish calendar is based on the lunar cycle (the moon). A Jewish month has 29 or 30 days. When a month has 30 days, the 30th day is the first of the new month called, “Rosh Chodesh”. Some months always have 29 days, some are sometimes 29 or 30 depending on the type of year it is in the Jewish cycle, and some always have 30 days. The solar calendar (or the civil) calendar is also important to follow, as it lets us know when the holidays are supposed to be. A regular lunar year has approximately 354 days while a solar year has 365 days with an extra day added every four years.

In the Jewish calendar, there are seven leap years in 19 years which we add an extra month called, “Adar Sheni” or the “Second Adar” which make up the difference of the two calendars. This year, 5755 is a leap year.

The Jewish day begins at night fall and lasts for approximately 24 hours. The Civil day begins at midnight. This is why the Jewish Shabbat and holidays begin 18 minutes before sunset so that we are already prepared for them. The Shabbat and holidays end when there are three stars in the sky.

Biblical holidays are those mentioned directly in the Torah such as Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Simchat Torah, Passover, and Shavuot.

Purim and Chanukah were proclaimed to be holidays by the Rabbis in commemoration of miracles that happened to the Jews and hinted at in the Torah in various places.

Rosh Hashana is the head of the year even though it is in the Seventh month. Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the year. Shabbat is important in that it affirms the fact that G-d created the world in six days and rested on the seventh.

Between Passover and Shavuot, there are seven weeks in which we count the Omer. During the time of the Romans in Israel, there was a big plague that killed thousands of Rabbi Akiva’s students because they were not treating each other properly. On the thirty-third day of the Omer, they stopped dying. Hence, the holiday of Lag B’omer. Lag is the acronym for thirty-third in Hebrew. On this day, a great Tzaddik, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai also died. He asked that the day of his death be treated as a holiday in which some practice the custom of cutting young boys’ hair for the first time when they become three years old during this seven week period of semi-mourning.

Here are the days that the Rabbis proclaimed as ‘fast days” commemoration of tragedies that occurred to the Jewish people. These are days like the Fast of Gedaliah” which occurs on the day after Rosh Hashana, “The Tenth of Tevet,. The Seventeenth of Tammuz. which is mentioned in the Prophets as well as “The Ninth of Av. which is the saddest day of the year. On the Seventeenth of Tammuz, Moses came down from Mt. Sinai and broke the Tablets when he saw the Jewish people worshipping the “Golden Calf.” This day marks the beginning of a period called “The Three Weeks” in which the Rabbis-proclaimed as a period of semi-mourning. The “Ninth of Avis is the end of this period. It is the day in which both Temples were destroyed.

The Orthodox community observes more holidays that what the average person is aware of such as fasting the day before Purim, eating special fruits on Tu B’Shevat (the new year for trees), and the custom of eating dairy on Shavuot.

Rabbi Rebecca explains that all holidays are important in their own way, and that we should try to celebrate all of them. We can observe them in various ways such as going to Temple, having family and friends over, or going over to them.