Skip to main content

Pesach on 15th of Nissan vs. the 14th

Why does Pesach begin on the 15th of Nisan when Numbers 28:16 says “And in the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, is the LORD’S passover”?

Special thanks to Rabbi George Schlesinger for this guest post.

First of all, it’s helpful to know and understand the Hebrew and to know that in ancient days there were two sacrifices i.e. two holidays that were conjoined into one in later days. There was the Pascal sacrifice/Pascal holiday which was known as the “Pesach” or “passover.” This was an agricultural holiday celebrating springtime and the new lambs of the flock and it apparently preceded the Exodus from Egypt by many, many years. That sacrifice/holiday was on the 14th of Nisan. And it’s the term that in later days came to be used in Judaism for what was in ancient times a separate sacrifice/holiday celebrated a day later…the 15th of Nisan and the start of a 7 day festival during which matza was eaten. The holiday celebrating the Exodus is (in the Bible) usually called Chag HaMatzot or Festival of Matzah. So a more precise translation of verses 16 and 17 would read:

וּבַחֹ֣דֶשׁ הָרִאשׁ֗וֹן בְּאַרְבָּעָ֥ה עָשָׂ֛ר י֖וֹם לַחֹ֑דֶשׁ פֶּ֖סַח לַיהוָֽה׃

16) In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, there shall be a passover (pesach) sacrifice to the Lord

וּבַחֲמִשָּׁ֨ה עָשָׂ֥ר י֛וֹם לַחֹ֥דֶשׁ הַזֶּ֖ה חָ֑ג שִׁבְעַ֣ת יָמִ֔ים מַצּ֖וֹת יֵאָכֵֽל׃

17) and on the fifteenth day of that month a festival (chag). Unleavened bread shall be eaten for seven days.

To add just a little, I quote from the Jewish Publication Society’s commentary on the Book of Numbers on page 243:

“The day of the paschal offering and the seven-day Festival of Unleavened Bread are discrete holidays. Yet the fact that the paschal offering is mentioned even though it is a private sacrifice (see Exodus 12:1-11) –– and hence no description is given –– indicates that the two festivals are already fused.”

In later centuries, the two sacrifices were both made on the 14th of Nisan. The “pesach”/paschal offering earlier in the day than the offering for the Chag HaMatzot since that was the lamb that was to be eaten at the Seder commemorating the Exodus and it had to be slaughtered and roasted prior to sundown of the 15th so that it could be consumed during the Seder.

 

When do the Holidays begin?

In general, Jewish Holidays begin the evening before the date specified. This is because the Jewish day actually begins at sundown on the previous night. Sometimes, for clarity, the Erev holiday is also included to indicate that the holiday begins the evening before.

For example, in the April 2015 calendar below, Erev Pesach is listed as April 3rd and the first day of Pesach is listed as April 4th. This means that the holiday of Pesach begins on the evening on April 3rd.

And, Rosh Chodesh Iyyar is listed on April 19. This means that Rosh Chodesh begins on the evening of April 18, even though the Erev is not explicitly mentioned on the calendar.

April 2015

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12 13 14 15 16

17 18
19

20

21 22

23

24 25
26 27 28 29 30

Minor fasts (Tzom GedaliahAsara B’TevetTa’anit EstherTa’anit Bechorot, and Tzom Tammuz) begin at dawn. Major fasts (Yom Kippur and Tish’a B’Av) begin the evening before.

Display a Jewish Calendar on your website with Hebcal + FullCalendar.io

To display a Jewish calendar on your website, you can use event data from Hebcal.com and the open source JavaScript event calendar from fullcalendar.io.

Here’s a quick template to give you an idea of how to edit the HTML on your site.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en"><head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>Jewish Calendar</title>
<link href="hebcal-styles.css" rel="stylesheet">
</head>
<body>
<div id="calendar"></div>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/fullcalendar@6.1.9/index.global.min.js" integrity="sha384-wv6yRjQC0TqzEnAjFQVXM2V0JrF6Nk0dh6QAGf1RwzTqPArdwU3luBZjVCi2YSVH" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script>
document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function() {
  var calendarEl = document.getElementById('calendar');
  var calendar = new FullCalendar.Calendar(calendarEl, {
      initialView: 'dayGridMonth',
      headerToolbar: {
        left: 'title',
        right: 'prev,next today',
      },
      eventDisplay: 'block',
      events: {
          // add &c=on&geonameid=[locationID] for candle-lighting times
          url: "https://www.hebcal.com/hebcal?cfg=fc&v=1&i=off&maj=on&min=on&nx=on&mf=on&ss=on&mod=on&lg=s&s=on",
          cache: true
      }
  });
  calendar.render();
  // optional: bind keyboard left/right arrow keys
  // to move calendar forward/backward by a month
  document.addEventListener('keydown', function(e) {
    if (e.key === 'ArrowLeft' && !e.metaKey) {
      calendar.prev();
    } else if (e.key === 'ArrowRight' && !e.metaKey) {
      calendar.next();
    }
  });
});
</script>
</body>
</html>

Note on line 9 we use the CDN-hosted FullCalendar JavaScript. If you want to self-host the FullCalendar, you can do so following the FullCalendar Basic Usage instructions.

Note lines 18-22 where we specify the FullCalendar events configuration. We use a url on line 20 that fetches events from Hebcal. You can make other changes such as enabling candle-lighting times, Daf Yomi, etc and changing the event display language (default Sephardic transliterations). See the Jewish calendar REST API documentation for full details on what each parameter means. Remember to use cfg=fc for the FullCalendar format.

You won’t need to specify a year=YYYY parameter, as the fullcalendar.io script automatically sends start=YYYY-MM-DD and end=YYYY-MM-DD parameters for you.

For best performance, be sure to use cache: true (line 21).

If you’d like to include candle-lighting times for Shabbat and holidays, be sure to adjust the url parameter to include c=on and one of the location fields (such as geonameid=3448439 for São Paulo, Brazil).

We recommend some specific styles to make the page look prettier:

/*! normalize.css v8.0.1 | MIT License | github.com/necolas/normalize.css */
html, body {
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
  font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;
  font-size: 14px;
}
#calendar {
  max-width: 1000px;
  margin: 40px auto;
}
a:hover .fc-event-title {
  text-decoration: underline;
}
a:not([href]):hover .fc-event-title {
  text-decoration: none;
}
.fc-event {
    display: block; /* make the <a> tag block */
    font-size: .85em;
    line-height: 1.3;
    border-radius: 3px;
    color: #fff;
    border: 1px solid #3a87ad; /* default BORDER color */
    background-color: #3a87ad; /* default BACKGROUND color */
    margin: 1px 2px 0; /* spacing between events and edges */
    padding: 0 1px;
}
.fc-time {
  font-weight: bold;
}
.fc-event a {
    color: #fff;
}
.fc-event a:hover,
.fc-event a:focus {
    color: #fff;
}
.fc-event.hebdate, .fc-event.hebdate .fc-event-title,
.fc-event.omer, .fc-event.omer .fc-event-title {
  background-color:#FFF;
  border: 1px solid #FFF;
  color:#999;
}
.fc-event.dafyomi,
.fc-event.dafyomi a,
.fc-event.dafyomi .fc-event-title {
  background-color:#FFF;
  border: 1px solid #FFF;
  color:#08c;
}
.fc-event.dafyomi a:hover,
.fc-event.dafyomi a:focus {
    color: #005580;
}
.fc-event.mishnayomi,
.fc-event.mishnayomi a,
.fc-event.mishnayomi .fc-event-title {
  background-color:#FFF;
  border: 1px solid #FFF;
  color:#257e4a;
}
.fc-event.mishnayomi a:hover,
.fc-event.mishnayomi a:focus {
    color: #15713b;
}

.fc-event.holiday,
.fc-event.holiday .fc-event-title,
.fc-event.holiday.timed,
.fc-event.holiday.timed .fc-event-title {
  background-color:#3a87ad;
  border: 1px solid #3a87ad;
  color:#FFF;
}
.fc-event.fast {
  background-color:#fd7e14;
  border: 1px solid #fd7e14;
  color:#FFF;
}
.fc-event.timed,
.fc-event.timed .fc-event-title,
.fc-event.holiday.timed.fast,
.fc-event.holiday.timed.fast .fc-event-title {
  background-color:#FFF;
  border: 1px solid #FFF;
  color:#333;
}
.fc-event.holiday.yomtov,
.fc-event.holiday.yomtov a,
.fc-event.holiday.yomtov .fc-event-title {
  background-color:#ffd446;
  border: 1px solid #ffd446;
  color:#333;
}
.fc-event.parashat,
.fc-event.parashat .fc-event-title {
  background-color:#257e4a;
  border: 1px solid #257e4a;
  color:#FFF;
}
.fc-event.roshchodesh {
  background-color:#6f42c1;
  border: 1px solid #6f42c1;
  color:#FFF;
}
.fc-event.hebrew .fc-title {
  font-family:'SBL Hebrew',David;
  font-size:115%;
  font-weight:normal;
  direction:rtl;
}
.fc-event.hebrew .fc-time {
  direction:ltr;
  unicode-bidi: bidi-override;
}
.fc-event-time, .fc-event-title {
 padding: 0 1px;
 white-space: normal;
}
.fc .fc-event.fc-event-today .fc-event-title {
  background-color: rgba(255,220,40,0.15);
}

How can I look up candle-lighting times for any city in the world?

Hebcal offers a way to specify candle-lighting times location by latitude and longitude for remote or less-populated areas.

Hebcal supports already over 45,000 world cities. Just search for the name of any world city with population 5,000+. However, if you can’t find what you’re looking for in our location database, here’s how you could find candle-lighting times for a specific location.

Example: Ixiamas, Bolivia.

  1. Go to the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names at http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/tgn/
  2. Type “Ixiamas” in the Find box and click “Search” button
  3. Click on the link that says “Ixiamas… inhabited place”
  4. Note the latitude/longitude represented in “degrees minutes direction” (in the example of Ixiamas, La Paz, Bolivia it is Lat: 13 45 S and Long: 068 10 W) and write this information down on a sheet of paper
  5. Visit the Hebcal Custom Calendar latitude/longitude page at https://www.hebcal.com/hebcal?c=on;geo=pos
  6. Type the latitude and longitude into the form (13 degrees, 45 minutes South Latitude, 68 degrees 10 minutes West Longitude)
  7. Select the Time zone option specific to your location (see Wikipedia’s List of tz database time zones)
  8. Click “Get Calendar” button at the bottom of the form