Help – Page 14

Older posts

Newer posts

Shana Tova 5776

Posted on 13 September 2015 - 10:07 am by mradwin

We wish you a happy and healthy New Year!

Rosh Hashana 5776 begins at sundown on Sun, 13 September 2015.

Don’t forget to print out your Candle lighting times Year at a Glance page.

Shabbat times REST API

Posted on 15 June 2015 - 8:47 am by mradwin

We offer a simple API for looking up this week’s Shabbat times and Torah Portion. This API generates results for a given location on a rolling weekly time window. Weekly calculations change every Sunday at midnight in the city’s local time zone.

This API uses 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.

The basic URL format is as follows:

https://www.hebcal.com/shabbat?cfg=json&geonameid=3448439&M=on

Note the following customizable parameters and their meanings:

cfg=json – output format is JSON (cfg=json) or RSS (cfg=r)
b=18 – Candle-lighting time minutes before sunset (the default is 18). For Jerusalem, the default is b=40
M=on – Havdalah at nightfall – tzeit hakochavim, the point when 3 small stars are observable in the night sky with the naked eye (sun 8.5° below the horizon). This option is an excellent default for most places on the planet)
m=50 – Havdalah 50 minutes after sundown. This option is available for those whose minhag is to end Shabbat a fixed number of minutes after sundown. Typically one would enter 42 min for three medium-sized stars, 50 min for three small stars, 72 min for Rabbeinu Tam, or 0 to suppress Havdalah times. Set to m=0 (zero) to disable Havdalah times
a=off – use Sephardic (a=off) or Ashkenazis transliterations (a=on)
leyning=off – include Torah and Haftarah for regular Shabbat (default on)

You must specify a location for candle-lighting times:

geo=geoname – location specified by GeoNames.org numeric ID
- requires additional parameter geonameid=3448439
- Hebcal.com supports over 100,000 different GeoNames IDs. These are world cities with a population of 1,000 or more. See cities1000.zip from https://download.geonames.org/export/dump/.
geo=zip – location specified by United States ZIP code
- requires additional parameter zip=90210
geo=pos – location specified by latitude, longitude, and timezone. Requires additional 3 parameters:
- latitude=[-90.0 to 90.0] – latitude in decimal format (e.g. 31.76904 or -23.5475)
- longitude=[-180.0 to 180.0] – longitude decimal format (e.g. 35.21633 or -46.63611)
- tzid=TimezoneIdentifier. See List of tz database time zones. Be sure to use the “TZ database name” such as America/New_York or Europe/Paris, not a UTC offset
geo=city – location specified by one of ~400 legacy city identifiers
- requires additional parameter city=GB-London
- deprecated: geo=geoname is preferred

Elevation for location

ue=on – use elevation for location (default off). If on, use elevation to affect the calculation of all sunrise/sunset based zmanim. Note: there are some zmanim such as degree-based zmanim that are driven by the amount of light in the sky and are not impacted by elevation. These zmanim intentionally do not support elevation adjustment

By default, event titles use a Sephardic transliteration. Append &lg=LANG to the URL to render the events titles using an alternate event language.

You can optionally specify an exact date, for example 13 February 2021. If unspecified, defaults to today.

gy=2021&gm=2&gd=13

You may optionally add &hdp=1 to include heDateParts field on untimed (all-day) items in the response.

As with all Hebcal.com REST APIs:

Both HTTP and HTTPS (HTTP/2) are supported. Although most of the Web has moved to HTTPS, if you wish to reduce CPU overhead on your client you may continue to use plain (port 80) HTTP for API requests
We encourage HTTP caching proxies. Proper Cache-Control and Expires are generated in the response
We support both gzip and br (brotli) compression; set the appropriate Accept-Encoding header in your request to enable
We support HTTP Keep-Alive for multiple requests

Example output

JSON (cfg=json)

{
  "title": "Hebcal São Paulo February 2015",
  "date": "2022-05-30T17:42:57.551Z",
  "location": {
    "title": "São Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil",
    "city": "São Paulo",
    "tzid": "America/Sao_Paulo",
    "latitude": -23.5475,
    "longitude": -46.63611,
    "cc": "BR",
    "country": "Brazil",
    "admin1": "Sao Paulo",
    "asciiname": "Sao Paulo",
    "geo": "geoname",
    "geonameid": 3448439
  },
  "range": {
    "start": "2015-02-20",
    "end": "2015-02-21"
  },
  "items": [
    {
      "title": "Rosh Chodesh Adar",
      "date": "2015-02-20",
      "hdate": "1 Adar 5775",
      "category": "roshchodesh",
      "hebrew": "ראש חודש אדר",
      "leyning": {
        "1": "Numbers 28:1-28:3",
        "2": "Numbers 28:3-28:5",
        "3": "Numbers 28:6-28:10",
        "4": "Numbers 28:11-28:15",
        "torah": "Numbers 28:1-15"
      },
      "link": "https://hebcal.com/h/rosh-chodesh-adar-2015?us=js&um=api",
      "memo": "Start of month of Adar on the Hebrew calendar. Adar (אַדָר) is the 12th month of the Hebrew year, has 29 days, and corresponds to February or March on the Gregorian calendar.  רֹאשׁ חוֹדֶשׁ, transliterated Rosh Chodesh or Rosh Hodesh, is a minor holiday that occurs at the beginning of every month in the Hebrew calendar. It is marked by the birth of a new moon"
    },
    {
      "title": "Candle lighting: 7:25pm",
      "date": "2015-02-20T19:25:00-02:00",
      "category": "candles",
      "title_orig": "Candle lighting",
      "hebrew": "הדלקת נרות",
      "memo": "Parashat Terumah"
    },
    {
      "title": "Parashat Terumah",
      "date": "2015-02-21",
      "hdate": "2 Adar 5775",
      "category": "parashat",
      "hebrew": "פרשת תרומה",
      "leyning": {
        "1": "Exodus 25:1-25:16",
        "2": "Exodus 25:17-25:30",
        "3": "Exodus 25:31-26:14",
        "4": "Exodus 26:15-26:30",
        "5": "Exodus 26:31-26:37",
        "6": "Exodus 27:1-27:8",
        "7": "Exodus 27:9-27:19",
        "torah": "Exodus 25:1-27:19",
        "haftarah": "I Kings 5:26-6:13",
        "maftir": "Exodus 27:17-27:19",
        "triennial": {
          "1": "Exodus 26:1-26:3",
          "2": "Exodus 26:4-26:6",
          "3": "Exodus 26:7-26:11",
          "4": "Exodus 26:12-26:14",
          "5": "Exodus 26:15-26:21",
          "6": "Exodus 26:22-26:25",
          "7": "Exodus 26:26-26:30",
          "maftir": "Exodus 26:26-26:30"
        }
      },
      "link": "https://hebcal.com/s/terumah-20150221?us=js&um=api"
    },
    {
      "title": "Havdalah: 8:17pm",
      "date": "2015-02-21T20:17:00-02:00",
      "category": "havdalah",
      "title_orig": "Havdalah",
      "hebrew": "הבדלה"
    }
  ]
}

RSS (cfg=r)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
  xmlns:geo="http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#"
  xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
  <channel>
    <title>Shabbat Times for São Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil</title>
    <link>https://www.hebcal.com/shabbat?geonameid=3448439&amp;M=on&amp;lg=s&amp;utm_source=shabbat1c&amp;utm_medium=rss</link>
    <atom:link href="https://www.hebcal.com/shabbat?cfg=r&amp;geonameid=3448439&amp;M=on&amp;lg=s&amp;pubDate=0" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
    <description>Weekly Shabbat candle lighting times for São Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil</description>
    <language>en</language>
    <copyright>Copyright (c) 2022 Michael J. Radwin. All rights reserved.</copyright>
    <lastBuildDate>Mon, 30 May 2022 17:47:38 GMT</lastBuildDate>
    <item>
      <title>Rosh Chodesh Adar</title>
      <link>https://hebcal.com/h/rosh-chodesh-adar-2015?us=shabbat1c&amp;um=rss</link>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.hebcal.com/holidays/rosh-chodesh-adar-2015#20150220-rosh-chodesh-adar</guid>
      <description>Start of month of Adar on the Hebrew calendar. Adar (אַדָר) is the 12th month of the Hebrew year, has 29 days, and corresponds to February or March on the Gregorian calendar.  רֹאשׁ חוֹדֶשׁ, transliterated Rosh Chodesh or Rosh Hodesh, is a minor holiday that occurs at the beginning of every month in the Hebrew calendar. It is marked by the birth of a new moon</description>
      <category>roshchodesh</category>
      <pubDate>Mon, 30 May 2022 17:47:38 GMT</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Candle lighting: 7:25pm</title>
      <link>https://www.hebcal.com/shabbat?geonameid=3448439&amp;M=on&amp;lg=s&amp;dt=2015-02-20&amp;utm_source=shabbat1c&amp;utm_medium=rss#20150220-candle-lighting</link>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.hebcal.com/shabbat?geonameid=3448439&amp;M=on&amp;lg=s&amp;dt=2015-02-20#20150220-candle-lighting</guid>
      <description>Friday, February 20, 2015</description>
      <category>candles</category>
      <pubDate>Mon, 30 May 2022 17:47:38 GMT</pubDate>
      <geo:lat>-23.5475</geo:lat>
      <geo:long>-46.63611</geo:long>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Parashat Terumah</title>
      <link>https://hebcal.com/s/terumah-20150221?us=shabbat1c&amp;um=rss</link>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.hebcal.com/sedrot/terumah-20150221#20150221-parashat-terumah</guid>
      <description>Torah: Exodus 25:1-27:19
Haftarah: I Kings 5:26-6:13</description>
      <category>parashat</category>
      <pubDate>Mon, 30 May 2022 17:47:38 GMT</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Havdalah: 8:17pm</title>
      <link>https://www.hebcal.com/shabbat?geonameid=3448439&amp;M=on&amp;lg=s&amp;dt=2015-02-21&amp;utm_source=shabbat1c&amp;utm_medium=rss#20150221-havdalah</link>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.hebcal.com/shabbat?geonameid=3448439&amp;M=on&amp;lg=s&amp;dt=2015-02-21#20150221-havdalah</guid>
      <description>Saturday, February 21, 2015</description>
      <category>havdalah</category>
      <pubDate>Mon, 30 May 2022 17:47:38 GMT</pubDate>
    </item>
  </channel>
</rss>

Jewish calendar REST API

Posted on 15 June 2015 - 8:05 am by mradwin

Hebcal.com offers a REST API for fetching Jewish calendar data. The output format is in JSON.

The basic URL format is as follows:

https://www.hebcal.com/hebcal?v=1&cfg=json&maj=on&min=on&mod=on&nx=on&year=now&month=x&ss=on&mf=on&c=on&geo=geoname&geonameid=3448439&M=on&s=on

As with all Hebcal.com REST APIs:

Both HTTP and HTTPS (HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2) are supported.
- You may continue to use plain (port 80) HTTP for API requests if you wish to reduce CPU overhead on your client
To encourage HTTP caching proxies, proper Cache-Control and Expires are generated in the response
Compression is supported and encouraged; set the Accept-Encoding: br request header for brotli (best option) or Accept-Encoding: gzip (also very good)
HTTP Keep-Alive is supported for multiple subsequent requests without the overhead of TCP handshaking

Parameters and their meanings

v=1 – version. Required.
cfg=json – output JSON instead of HTML
- cfg=json for JSON format (described in more detail below)
- cfg=fc for fullcalendar.io integration
- cfg=rss for RSS (Atom 1.0)
- cfg=ics for iCalendar RFC 5545
- cfg=csv for Comma Separated Values

Date

Date range may be specified either using year or both start and end:

year=now – “now” for current year, or 4-digit YYYY such as 2003
- yt=G – Interpret year as Gregorian year (common era) – default
- yt=H – Interpret year as Hebrew year (e.g. 5782)
- month=x – default “x” for entire Gregorian year, or use a numeric month (1=January, 6=June, etc.)
- ny=1 – number of years override (default 1)
start=2021-12-29 – Gregorian start date in YYYY-MM-DD format
end=2022-01-04 – Gregorian end date in YYYY-MM-DD format

Event options

All booleans, default off. To enable, specify either on (case-sensitive) or 1.

maj=on – Major holidays
- yto=on – Yom Tov only; suppresses all other event options
min=on – Minor holidays (Tu BiShvat, Lag B’Omer, …)
nx=on – Rosh Chodesh
mf=on – Minor fasts (Ta’anit Esther, Tzom Gedaliah, …)
ss=on – Special Shabbatot (Shabbat Shekalim, Zachor, …)
mod=on – Modern holidays (Yom HaShoah, Yom HaAtzma’ut, …)
s=on – Parashat ha-Shavuah on Saturday
- leyning=off – reduce size of JSON by disabling the full kriyah/triennial Torah reading and aliyot details (default leyning=on when s=on)
D=on – Hebrew date for dates with some event
d=on – Hebrew date for entire date range
o=on – Days of the Omer
ykk=on – Yom Kippur Katan

Daily Learning options

All booleans, default off. To enable, specify either on (case-sensitive) or 1.

F=on – Daf Yomi
myomi=on – Mishna Yomi
nyomi=on – Nach Yomi
dty=on – Tanakh Yomi
dps=on – Daily Tehillim (Psalms)
dcc=on – Sefer Chofetz Chaim
dshl=on – Shemirat HaLashon
dr1=on – Daily Rambam
yyomi=on – Yerushalmi Yomi
dw=on – Daf-a-Week

Diaspora vs. Israel schedule for holidays and Torah Readings

Mutually exclusive options:

i=off – Diaspora holidays and Torah readings (default if unspecified)
i=on – Israel holidays and Torah readings

For more information What is the differerence between the Diaspora and Israeli sedra schemes?

Candle-lighting and fast start/end times

c=on – Candle lighting times. Requires location, see below.
b=18 – Candle-lighting time minutes before sunset (the default is 18). For Jerusalem, the default is b=40
M=on – calculate Havdalah at nightfall – tzeit hakochavim, the point when 3 small stars are observable in the night sky with the naked eye (sun 8.5° below the horizon). This is the default, and this option is an excellent default for most places on the planet.
m=50 – calculate Havdalah as fixed 50 minutes after sundown. This option is used by those whose minhag is to end Shabbat a fixed number of minutes after sundown. Typically one would enter 42 min for three medium-sized stars, 50 min for three small stars, 72 min for Rabbeinu Tam, or 0 to suppress Havdalah times. Set to m=0 (zero) to disable Havdalah times.

Location

Mutually exclusive location for candle-lighting times:

geo=none – no candle-lighting location (default if unspecified)
geo=geoname – location specified by GeoNames.org numeric ID
- requires additional parameter geonameid=3448439
- Hebcal.com supports over 100,000 different GeoNames IDs. These are world cities with a population of 1,000 or more. See cities1000.zip from https://download.geonames.org/export/dump/.
geo=zip – location specified by United States ZIP code
- requires additional parameter zip=90210
geo=pos – location specified by latitude, longitude, and timezone. Requires additional 3 parameters:
- latitude=[-90.0 to 90.0] – latitude in decimal format (e.g. 31.76904 or -23.5475)
- longitude=[-180.0 to 180.0] – longitude decimal format (e.g. 35.21633 or -46.63611)
- elev=[1-9000] – elevation in meters (also requires ue=on, see below)
- tzid=TimezoneIdentifier. See List of tz database time zones. Be sure to use the “TZ database name” such as America/New_York or Europe/Paris, not a UTC offset
geo=city – location specified by one of ~400 legacy city identifiers
- requires additional parameter city=GB-London
- deprecated: geo=geoname is preferred

Elevation for sunset calculation

ue=on – use elevation for location (default off). If on, use elevation to affect the calculation of all sunrise/sunset based zmanim. Note: there are some zmanim such as degree-based zmanim that are driven by the amount of light in the sky and are not impacted by elevation. These zmanim intentionally do not support elevation adjustment

Language

By default, event titles use a Sephardic transliteration. Append &lg=LANG to the URL to render the events titles using an alternate event language.

Miscellaneous

Add &hdp=1 to include heDateParts field on untimed (all-day) items in the response.

Callback

Optional callback parameter:

callback=function – wraps the JSON output text in parentheses and a function name of your choosing. Callback function names may only use upper and lowercase alphabetic characters (A-Z, a-z), numbers (0-9), the period (.), the underscore (_).

Example output

{
  "title": "Hebcal São Paulo May 2015",
  "date": "2022-05-30T17:38:40.629Z",
  "location": {
    "title": "São Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil",
    "city": "São Paulo",
    "tzid": "America/Sao_Paulo",
    "latitude": -23.5475,
    "longitude": -46.63611,
    "cc": "BR",
    "country": "Brazil",
    "admin1": "Sao Paulo",
    "asciiname": "Sao Paulo",
    "geo": "geoname",
    "geonameid": 3448439
  },
  "range": {
    "start": "2015-05-22",
    "end": "2015-05-25"
  },
  "items": [
    {
      "title": "Candle lighting: 5:11pm",
      "date": "2015-05-22T17:11:00-03:00",
      "category": "candles",
      "title_orig": "Candle lighting",
      "hebrew": "הדלקת נרות",
      "memo": "Parashat Bamidbar"
    },
    {
      "title": "Erev Shavuot",
      "date": "2015-05-23",
      "hdate": "5 Sivan 5775",
      "category": "holiday",
      "subcat": "major",
      "hebrew": "ערב שבועות",
      "link": "https://hebcal.com/h/shavuot-2015?us=js&um=api",
      "memo": "Festival of Weeks. Commemorates the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai"
    },
    {
      "title": "Parashat Bamidbar",
      "date": "2015-05-23",
      "hdate": "5 Sivan 5775",
      "category": "parashat",
      "hebrew": "פרשת במדבר",
      "leyning": {
        "1": "Numbers 1:1-1:19",
        "2": "Numbers 1:20-1:54",
        "3": "Numbers 2:1-2:34",
        "4": "Numbers 3:1-3:13",
        "5": "Numbers 3:14-3:39",
        "6": "Numbers 3:40-3:51",
        "7": "Numbers 4:1-4:20",
        "torah": "Numbers 1:1-4:20",
        "haftarah": "Hosea 2:1-22",
        "maftir": "Numbers 4:17-4:20",
        "triennial": {
          "1": "Numbers 2:1-2:9",
          "2": "Numbers 2:10-2:16",
          "3": "Numbers 2:17-2:24",
          "4": "Numbers 2:25-2:31",
          "5": "Numbers 2:32-2:34",
          "6": "Numbers 3:1-3:4",
          "7": "Numbers 3:5-3:13",
          "maftir": "Numbers 3:11-3:13"
        }
      },
      "link": "https://hebcal.com/s/bamidbar-20150523?us=js&um=api"
    },
    {
      "title": "Candle lighting: 6:05pm",
      "date": "2015-05-23T18:05:00-03:00",
      "category": "candles",
      "title_orig": "Candle lighting",
      "hebrew": "הדלקת נרות",
      "memo": "Erev Shavuot"
    },
    {
      "title": "Shavuot I",
      "date": "2015-05-24",
      "hdate": "6 Sivan 5775",
      "category": "holiday",
      "subcat": "major",
      "yomtov": true,
      "hebrew": "שבועות א׳",
      "leyning": {
        "1": "Exodus 19:1-19:6",
        "2": "Exodus 19:7-19:13",
        "3": "Exodus 19:14-19:19",
        "4": "Exodus 19:20-20:14",
        "5": "Exodus 20:15-20:23",
        "torah": "Exodus 19:1-20:23; Numbers 28:26-31",
        "haftarah": "Ezekiel 1:1-28, 3:12",
        "maftir": "Numbers 28:26-28:31"
      },
      "link": "https://hebcal.com/h/shavuot-2015?us=js&um=api",
      "memo": "Festival of Weeks. Commemorates the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai"
    },
    {
      "title": "Candle lighting: 6:05pm",
      "date": "2015-05-24T18:05:00-03:00",
      "category": "candles",
      "title_orig": "Candle lighting",
      "hebrew": "הדלקת נרות",
      "memo": "Shavuot I"
    },
    {
      "title": "Shavuot II",
      "date": "2015-05-25",
      "hdate": "7 Sivan 5775",
      "category": "holiday",
      "subcat": "major",
      "yomtov": true,
      "hebrew": "שבועות ב׳",
      "leyning": {
        "1": "Deuteronomy 15:19-15:23",
        "2": "Deuteronomy 16:1-16:3",
        "3": "Deuteronomy 16:4-16:8",
        "4": "Deuteronomy 16:9-16:12",
        "5": "Deuteronomy 16:13-16:17",
        "torah": "Deuteronomy 15:19-16:17; Numbers 28:26-31",
        "haftarah": "Habakkuk 3:1-19",
        "maftir": "Numbers 28:26-28:31"
      },
      "link": "https://hebcal.com/h/shavuot-2015?us=js&um=api",
      "memo": "Festival of Weeks. Commemorates the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai"
    },
    {
      "title": "Havdalah: 6:05pm",
      "date": "2015-05-25T18:05:00-03:00",
      "category": "havdalah",
      "title_orig": "Havdalah",
      "hebrew": "הבדלה",
      "memo": "Shavuot II"
    }
  ]
}

If you don’t want candle lighting times, just use c=off and omit the zip and m parameters.

Example 2: Daf Yomi only

To get only the Daf Yomi for a given day (and not holidays) you can construct a URL that looks like this:

https://www.hebcal.com/hebcal?cfg=json&v=1&F=on&start=2022-06-07&end=2022-06-07

Example output:

{
  "title": "Hebcal Diaspora June 2022",
  "date": "2022-06-03T15:52:37.011Z",
  "location": {
    "geo": "none"
  },
  "range": {
    "start": "2022-06-06",
    "end": "2022-06-06"
  },
  "items": [
    {
      "title": "Yevamot 91",
      "date": "2022-06-06",
      "hdate": "7 Sivan 5782",
      "category": "dafyomi",
      "hebrew": "יבמות 91",
      "link": "https://www.sefaria.org/Yevamot.91a?lang=bi&utm_source=hebcal.com&utm_medium=api"
    }
  ]
}

New holidays: Tu B’Av and Sigd

Posted on 17 May 2015 - 2:59 pm by mradwin

At the request of several users, we’ve added support for Tu B’Av and Sigd.

Tu B’Av is a minor Jewish holiday of love. It occurs on the 15th of Hebrew month of Av, corresponding to July or August on the Gregorian calendar. This year, Tu B’Av begins on Thursday, 30 July 2015 at sundown.

Sigd is a modern holiday celebrated by the Ethiopian Jewish community on the 29th of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan, corresponding to late October or November on the Gregorian calendar. Sigd became a national holiday in Israel in 2008. This year, Sigd begins on Tuesday, 10 November 2015 at sundown.

Colophon

Posted on 20 February 2015 - 11:27 am by mradwin

Hebcal.com was primarily authored using hand-coded HTML5, PHP and Perl in Sublime Text 3 and Aquamacs.

Our minimalist, responsive design is provided by the Bootstrap framework.

The website runs on Apache HTTP Server on Ubuntu Linux. We use the Varnish HTTP accelerator and Pound for HTTPS (TSL/SSL) termination. We primarily use DigitalOcean and Netkine for hosting, with occasional use of Amazon Web Services (primarily SES for weekly emails and S3 for backups). Static pages are generated with GNU make and scheduled by Vixie Cron.

Our Help pages and news archives are powered by WordPress.

We use MySQL to store our email subscriber database, and SQLite for latitude/longitude location databases (GeoNames and USA ZIP codes).

Typefaces

Hebcal.com primarily uses Helvetica Neue for body and headers. Helvetica Neue is the default font for Bootstrap

Hebrew body and headline text is Alef Hebrew.

The Hebcal logo uses SBL Hebrew and Merriweather.

Older posts

Newer posts