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Category Archives: Candle lighting

Errata: candle-lighting time corrections

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We’ve made changes to candle-lighting times for Shabbat and holidays that corrects an error we introduced a few months ago. Please accept our sincere apologies for this error.

Candle-lighting times have been adjusted 1-2 minutes earlier and now correctly reflect the correct time to light candles (40 minutes before sundown in Jerusalem, 18 minutes before sundown anywhere else).

Users who subscribe to Hebcal.com calendars via iPhone/iPad, Google Calendar, or Outlook.com should get the corrected candle-lighting times automatically when these applications perform their next refresh. The typical refresh cycle is approximately once a week.

If you downloaded or printed a calendar in the past, you may wish to return to the Hebcal.com website to download and/or print an updated calendar.

The error was caused when Hebcal.com moved to a new sunset calculation engine in the summer of 2013. The new sunset engine allows support for thousands of global cities and fixed long-standing issues with our handling of Daylight Saving Time outside of the USA. Sunset times are estimated from latitude and longitude, and generally have an accuracy of +/- 2 minutes except at extreme north or south latitudes.

Unfortunately, an arithmetic error in determining sunset for a given latitude/longitude was inadvertently introduced, which added an additional 1-2 minutes of error. This error was recently discovered and corrected.

Candle-lighting times for 200+ world cities

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We’re pleased to share that we’ve made some changes to the hebcal website to better accommodate world cities. If you visit our Shabbat Times page, you’ll see hundreds of new cities available for candle-lighting times.

Screen Shot 2013-07-16 at 10.20.55 PM

 

You may notice that candle-lighting times have changed by 1-3 minutes as well. This is due to a change in the sunset calculation algorithm we’ve introduced as well. Sunset times are estimated from latitude and longitude, and generally have an accuracy of +/- 2 minutes except at extreme north or south latitudes. This new algorithm is more accurate than the previous one.

If you’ve been using Hebcal.com to calculate candle-lighting times via latitude and longitude, you might find your city listed in our database. If it’s not there, feel free to drop us a line. If you’d like to continue to specify your location by latitude and longitude, please note that we are now using standard timezone names (such as “America/Chicago” or “Asia/Jerusalem”) instead of GMT offsets + daylight-saving-time rules.

 

When does Shabbat begin?

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Shabbat begins 18 minutes before sundown on Friday night. In Jerusalem, Shabbat begins 40 minutes before sundown.

According to the United States Naval Observatory,

Sunrise or sunset is defined to occur when the geometric zenith distance of center of the Sun is 90.8333 degrees. That is, the center of the Sun is geometrically 50 arcminutes below a horizontal plane. For an observer at sea level with a level, unobstructed horizon, under average atmospheric conditions, the upper limb of the Sun will then appear to be tangent to the horizon. The 50-arcminute geometric depression of the Sun’s center used for the computations is obtained by adding the average apparent radius of the Sun (16 arcminutes) to the average amount of atmospheric refraction at the horizon (34 arcminutes). [USNO]

What is Havdalah (or, When does Shabbat end)?

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Shabbat ends after sundown on Saturday night when there are three stars visible. Depending on latitude and longitude, this is usually between 42 and 72 minutes after sundown.

According to Wikipedia,

There are three widely observed practices, all of which have support in the halachic literature:

  • Appearance of three medium-sized stars in the sky (sun 7°5′ below the horizon, or 42 minutes after sundown), as in the Talmud. This is normative practice in Conservative Judaism. In Orthodox Judaism, this position is used widely for the end of rabbinical fasts, but less frequently for the end of Shabbat or biblical festivals.
  • Appearance of three small stars widely spaced in the sky (sun 8.5°-8.75° below the horizon): common practice in much of Orthodox Judaism [10]
    • “50 minutes after sundown” is actually a variant of this position. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein ruled this way because most people cannot easily calculate when “8.5° after sundown” will occur, and 8.5° takes 50 minutes at its longest, near the summer solstice, at the latitude of much of the United States.[2]
  • 72 minutes after sundown (“opinion of Rabbeinu Tam“): equivalent to other definitions of nightfall, and safe according to all opinions. Common practice in Chasidic and other Charedi communities

If I use 72 minutes for Havdalah, why are Havdalah times ~90 minutes later than the previous day’s candle-lighting time?

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Shabbat begins 18 minutes before sundown on Friday night.

Havdalah is 72 minutes after sundown on Saturday night.

So in a given week, Havdalah time is typically 90 minutes after the previous day’s candle-lighting time (18 + 72 = 90). Sometimes there’s an extra minute or two difference, and that’s due to sunset actually differing by a minute or two between Friday and Saturday nights.