Occasionally people ask us about automating appliances or smart home using Hebcal.
For your reference, here are two 3rd-party apps that offer some automation based on the Jewish calendar. Both are designed to run on Rasbperry Pi
Home Assistant – Jewish Calendar
Also:
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Our Hebrew Date Converter displays dates in Hebrew. Each letter of the Hebrew alef-bet (alphabet) has a numerical value, specified in the chart below.
When specifying years of the Hebrew calendar in the present millennium, we omit the thousands (which is presently 5, ה). For example, the Hebrew year 5782 is written as 782 (תשפ״ב) rather than 5782 (ה׳תשפ״ב).
| Value | Name | Letter |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | aleph | א |
| 2 | bet | ב |
| 3 | gimel | ג |
| 4 | dalet | ד |
| 5 | hay | ה |
| 6 | vav | ו |
| 7 | zayin | ז |
| 8 | khet | ח |
| 9 | tet | ט |
| 10 | yud | י |
| 20 | kaf | כ |
| 30 | lamed | ל |
| 40 | mem | מ |
| 50 | nun | נ |
| 60 | samech | ס |
| 70 | ayin | ע |
| 80 | pay | פ |
| 90 | tzadi | צ |
| 100 | kuf | ק |
| 200 | reish | ר |
| 300 | shin | ש |
| 400 | tav | ת |
Note that the numbers 15 and 16 are treated specially, which if rendered as 10+5 or 10+6 would be a name of God, so they are normally written ט״ו (tet-vav, 9+6) and ט״ז (tet-zayin, 9+7).
For more information, see the Judaism 101 article on the Hebrew Alphabet, the Wikipedia article on Gematria, or JewishGen’s Reading Hebrew Tombstones page.
It’s easy to create a calendar in Hebrew instead of transliterations.
First, go to our custom calendar page at https://www.hebcal.com/hebcal
Next, change the Event titles option from the default (Sephardic transliterations) to Hebrew – עברית.
Then, set up the rest of your options as you desire, and click Create Calendar.
After that, you’ll see the calendar of Jewish holidays, and you will presented with an option to print, download, or subscribe to the calendar.
Calendars exported from Hebcal via our subscription feeds (using iCalendar format) are typically “perpetual”. That is, they contain events for the current year (Gregorian or Hebrew) plus some number of years into the future. Most downloads (including Apple, Google Calendar, and Microsoft Outlook) support these perpetual calendar subscription feeds.
Using the default options on the Hebcal Custom Calendar page, our calendars will contain exactly 5 years of events (current year plus 4 years into the future). This is true whether you select the Gregorian year or the Hebrew year.
Size limitations imposed by Google and other calendar clients starting in 2016 require that Hebcal limit the number of events per calendar feed. If the options you select generate many events, the feed may need to be shortened.
| Option | Feed duration (years) | Number of calendar events per year (approx) |
| Major holidays only | 5 | 40 |
| Major & minor holidays, Rosh Chodesh, Minor Fasts, Special Shabbatot, Modern Holidays | 5 | 95 |
| Weekly Torah portion on Saturdays | 5 | 50 |
| Candle lighting times | 4 | 120 |
| Days of the Omer | 4 | 49 |
| Show Hebrew date for dates with some event | 3 | variable |
| Show Hebrew date every day of the year | 2 | 365 |
| Daf Yomi | 2 | 365 |
| Daf Yomi and Hebrew date every day of the year | 1 | 730 |
Note that if you’d like to include the Hebrew date for every day of the year, you can subscribe to that calendar via a separate calendar feed at our Jewish Holiday downloads page. Look for Hebrew calendar dates (English) or Hebrew calendar dates (Hebrew). Daf Yomi and other large single-purpose iCalendar feeds are also available on that page for Apple, Google, and any iCalendar application.
An added advantage of the multi-subscription approach is that you can choose separate colors in Google Calendar or iOS/iCloud calendar for each calendar event feed.
All that said, if you’d like to download future events to Google Calendar or another program that supports iCalendar (.ics) files such as macOS Calendar or Outlook, you may utilize Hebcal’s alternative download instructions below. This technique requires a laptop/desktop computer and generally does not work well on a smartphone or tablet. Note that once downloaded, these .ics files are no longer managed by Hebcal and will not refresh.
Please note that these instructions are recommended only for advanced users. If you don’t take great care to create a separate calendar and import Hebcal events into that new, separate calendar, you may unintentionally add hundreds of events to your personal calendar.