HEBCAL(1)

NAME
hebcal - a Jewish calendar generator

SYNOPSIS
hebcal [ -8acdDEeFgHhiMoOrSstTWwXxyZ ]
    [ -b minutes ]
    [ --chag-only ]
    [ -C city ]
    [ --geo latitude,longitude ]
    [ -G degrees ]
    [ --help ]
    [ -I input_file ]
    [ --lang language ]
    [ -l latitude -L longitude ]
    [ -m minutes ]
    [ --mevarchim ]
    [ --mishna-yomi ]
    [ --nach-yomi ]
    [ --no-mf ]
    [ --no-modern ]
    [ --no-special ]
    [ --no-julian ]
    [ --daily-learning name ]
    [ --schottenstein ]
    [ --verbose ]
    [ --version ]
    [ -Y yahrtzeit_file ]
    [ --years N ]
    [ --yerushalmi ]
    [ --ykk ]
    [ -z timezone ]
    [[ month [ day ] year | YYYY-MM-DD ]
hebcal help
hebcal info
hebcal cities
hebcal copying
hebcal warranty

DESCRIPTION
With no arguments, hebcal will print to stdout the dates of the Jewish holidays in the current secular year. Each line is prefixed with a Gregorian date of the form mm/dd/yyyy.

By specifying month, day, or year, output can be limited to a particular month or date in a particular year. Note that year is usually a four-digit integer, so 92 is during the Roman period, not the late twentieth century. If the Hebrew dates option (-H) is turned on, this number represents the Jewish calendar year. month is a number from 1..12, or the name of a Jewish calendar month. day is a number from 1..31.

A single day may also be specified as YYYY-MM-DD (ISO 8601 date format).

For example, the command

	hebcal 10 1992

will print out the holidays occurring in October of 1992 C.E., while the command

	hebcal Tish 5752

will print dates of interest in the month of Tishrei in Jewish calendar year 5752.

Note: hebcal 92 is not the same as hebcal 1992. The year is assumed to be complete, so the former calendar precedes the latter by nineteen centuries.

A few other bells and whistles include the weekly sedra as well as the day of the week, the count of the omer, and the Hebrew date.

Output from hebcal can be used to drive calendar(1). Day-to-day use for hebcal is provided for in the -T and -t switches, which print out Jewish calendar entries for the current date.

To get a quick-reference online help, run

	hebcal help

at the command prompt.

OPTIONS

-8  Use UTF-8 Hebrew (alias for --lang=he).

-a  Use Ashkenazi Hebrew transliterations.

-b mins
    Set candle-lighting to occur mins minutes before sundown. Default 18 if unspecified (default 40 for Jerusalem, 30 for Haifa, 30 for Zichron Ya'akov).

-c  Add approximate candle-lighting times. See below.

--chag-only
    Output only Chag and Erev Chag events (when melakha/labor is prohibited)

-C city
    Set latitude, longitude, and timezone according to city. This option implies the -c option.

-d  Print the Hebrew date for the entire date range.

-D  Print the Hebrew date for dates with some events

-e  Change the output format to European-style dates: dd.mm.yyyy

-E  Output 24-hour times (e.g., 18:37 instead of 6:37)

-g  Emit ISO-8601 dates, i.e. YYYY-MM-DD

-G degrees
    Set Havdalah to occur this many degrees below the horizon. Use 8.5 for three small stars or 7.0833 for three medium-sized stars.

--geo latitude,longitude
    Set location for solar calculations to decimal values latitude and longitude. Requires -z timzeone switch. This switch is preferred over the legacy -l and -L switches as it offers more precision and follows the standard of negative longitudes being west of the Prime Meridian.

-h  Suppress holidays in output. User-defined calendar events are unaffected by this switch.

-H  When the -H switch is used, all dates specified on the command line are assumed to be Hebrew dates. So for instance,

        example% hebcal -H 5754

    will print data for 5754, starting in Tishrei, and ending in Elul. Hebcal is smart enough to detect a Hebrew month and infer that you want a Hebrew date range, so you could type

        example% hebcal tish 5754

    The -H switch would be superfluous in this case. Invoking hebcal with just the -H switch by itself will print data for the current Hebrew year, starting in Tishrei.

-i  Use Israeli holiday and sedra schedule. Defaults to Diaspora if unspecified.

-I file
    Read extra events from file. These events are printed regardless of the -h suppress holidays switch.

    There is one holiday per line in file, each with the format

        MMMM DD description

    where MMMM is a string identifying the Jewish month in question DD is a number from 1 to 30, and description is a newline-terminated string describing the holiday. An example might be

        Adar 1 Start cleaning kitchen for Passover

-l deg,min
    Set the latitude for solar calculations to deg degrees and min minutes. Negative values are south. Deprecated: use --geo instead.

-L deg,min
    Set the longitude for solar calculations to deg degrees and min minutes. Note: Negative values are east. The -l and -L switches must both be used, or not at all, and override the -C (localize to city) switch. Deprecated: use --geo instead.

--lang lang
    Display calendar in the lang language, which must be specified as one of “en”, “ashkenazi”, “he”, “he-x-NoNikud”, “ashkenazi_komatz”, “ashkenazi_litvish”, “ashkenazi_poylish”, “ashkenazi_romanian”, “ashkenazi_standard”, “de”, “es”, “fi”, “fr”, “hu”, “nl”, “pl”, “pt”, “ro”, “ru”, “uk”, “yi”

-m mins
    Set havdalah to occur mins minutes after sundown (default 72).

--mevarchim
    Include Shabbat Mevarchim HaChodesh.

-M  Print the molad on shabbat mevorchim

--no-mf
    Suppress minor fast days.

--no-modern
    Suppress modern Israeli holidays.

--no-special
    Suppress Special Shabbatot.

--no-julian
    Disable the Julian calendar for dates before September 14, 1752, and use the proleptic Gregorian calendar instead.

-o  Add the count of the omer to the output.

-O  Output sunrise and sunset times every day.

-r  Use a tab-delineated format, and somewhat terser strings. Instead of saying “ 13th day of the omer ” hebcal will say “ Omer: 13 ”

-s  Add the weekly sedra to the output on Saturdays. See -i.

-S  Add the weekly sedra to the output every day. When this option is invoked, every time a day is printed, the torah reading for the Saturday on or immediately following that date is printed. If there is no reading for the next Saturday, then nothing is printed. See -i.

-t  Print calendar information for today's date only. -d and -o are asserted with this option.

-T  Same as -t, only without the Gregorian date. This option is useful in login scripts, just to see what's happening today in the Jewish calendar.

-w  Add the day of the week to the output.

-W  Weekly view. Omer, dafyomi, and non-date-specific zemanim are shown once a week, on the day which corresponds to the first day in the range.

-x  Suppress Rosh Chodesh

-X  Exit silently with non-zero status if today is Shabbat or Chag; exit with 0 status if today is chol.

--verbose
    Verbose mode, currently used only for --exit-if-chag (-X). Print the reason today is considered Shabbat or Chag.

-y  Print only the last two digits of the year.

--years  n
    Generate events for n years (default 1)

--ykk
    Include Yom Kippur Katan, a minor day of atonement occurring monthly on the day preceding each Rosh Chodesh.

-Y file
    Read a table of yahrtzeit dates from file. These events are printed regardless of the -h suppress holidays switch.

    There is one death-date per line in file, each with the format

    MM DD YYYY description

    where MM, DD and YYYY form the Gregorian date of death. description is a newline-terminated string to be printed on the yahrtzeit. An example might be

        12 29 1957 Menachem Mendel's yahrtzeit.
        5 15 1930 Benjamin's yahrtzeit.

-z timezone
    Use the specified timezone, overriding the -C (localize to city) switch. For correct DST rules, use a full timezone name (such as “America/New_York”) instead of a timezone abbreviation (such as “EST”).

-Z  Add zemanim (Alot HaShachar; Misheyakir; Kriat Shema, sof zeman; Tefilah, sof zeman; Chatzot hayom; Mincha Gedolah; Mincha Ketanah; Plag HaMincha; Tzait HaKochavim)

--help
    Show help text

--version
    Show version number

  Learning Schedules
Hebcal can interleave a variety of daily and weekly Torah and Talmud learning schedules into the calendar. The schedules below have dedicated options; in addition, any schedule may be requested by name with the repeatable --daily-learning option.

-F ,  --daf-yomi
    Output the Daf Yomi (Bavli) for the entire date range.

--mishna-yomi
    Output the Mishna Yomi for the entire date range.

--nach-yomi
    Output the Nach Yomi for the entire date range.

--yerushalmi
    Output the Yerushalmi Yomi for the entire date range.

--schottenstein
    Use the Schottenstein edition of Yerushalmi Yomi (default Vilna page numbers). This option implies the --yerushalmi option.

--daily-learning name
    Output the named learning schedule for the entire date range. May be repeated. Valid names are: dafYomi (Daf Yomi, Babylonian Talmud), mishnaYomi (Mishna Yomi, two Mishnayot per day), nachYomi (Nach Yomi, a chapter of Nevi'im and Ketuvim), yerushalmi-vilna and yerushalmi-schottenstein (Yerushalmi Yomi, Jerusalem Talmud), 929 (929, a daily chapter of the Hebrew Bible, Sun–Thu), rambam1 and rambam3 (Daily Rambam, one or three chapters a day), dafWeekly and dafWeeklySunday (Daf-a-Week), perekYomi (one chapter of the Mishnah per day), psalms (Daily Psalms / Tehillim, 30-day cycle), pirkeiAvotSummer (Pirkei Avot, summer Shabbatot), and tanakhYomi (Tanakh Yomi, annual Masoretic seder cycle).

CANDLE-LIGHTING TIMES
Hebcal's candlelighting times are only approximations. If you ever have any doubts about its times, consult your local halachic authority. If you enter geographic coordinates above the arctic circle or below the antarctic circle, the times are guaranteed to be wrong.

In addition to candle-lighting on Erev Shabbat and Chag, the -c switch also generates Havdalah and fast start/end times.

By default, candle-lighting times are 18 minutes before sunset (see -b option above for exceptions).

Chanukah candle-lighting times are at civil dusk (solar depression of 6 degrees) on weekdays. Chanukah candles are lit just before Shabbat candles on Friday, and immediately after Havdalah on Saturday night.

Havdalah time defaults to 72 minutes after sunset (Rabbeinu Tam). Adjust with the -m (minutes) option or with -G (havdalah degrees below horizon).

Minor fasts begin in the morning at alot haShachar (solar depression 16.1 degrees) and conclude at tzeit for 3 medium sized stars (solar depression 7.083 degrees). Major fasts (Yom Kippur and Tish'a B'Av ) begin just before sunset (at regular candle-lighting time) and conclude at Havdalah time.

Hebcal contains a small database of cities with their associated geographic information and time-zone information. The geographic and time information necessary to calculate sundown times can come to hebcal any of three ways:

)   The default: the system manager sets a default city when the program is compiled.

)   Hebcal looks in the environment variable HEBCAL_CITY for the name of a city in hebcal's database, and if it finds one, hebcal will make that the new default city.

)   1 and 2 may be overridden by command line arguments, including those specified in the HEBCAL_OPTS environment variable. The most natural way to do this is to use the -c city command. This will localize hebcal to city. A list of the cities hebcal knows about can be obtained by typing

    	hebcal cities

    at the command prompt. If the city you want isn't on that list, you can directly control hebcal's geographic information with the --geo and -z switches.

For a status report on customizations, type type

	hebcal info

at the command prompt.

EXAMPLES

To find the days of the omer in 1997, printing the days of the week:

    example% hebcal -how 1997
    4/23/97 Wed, 1st day of the Omer
    4/24/97 Thu, 2nd day of the Omer
    4/25/97 Fri, 3rd day of the Omer
     .
     .
     .
    6/9/97 Mon, 48th day of the Omer
    6/10/97 Tue, 49th day of the Omer

To print only the weekly
sedrot
of Nisan 5770

    example% hebcal -hs Nisan 5770
    3/20/2010 Parashat Vayikra
    3/27/2010 Parashat Tzav
    4/10/2010 Parashat Shmini

To find out what's happening in the Jewish calendar today, use

    example% hebcal -TS
    19 of Nisan, 5752
    Parshat Achrei Mot
    Pesach V (CH"M)
    4th day of the Omer

ENVIRONMENT
Hebcal uses two environment variables:

HEBCAL_CITY
    Hebcal uses this value as the default city for sunset calculations. A list of available cities is available with from hebcal with the command:

        hebcal cities

HEBCAL_OPTS
    The value of this variable is automatically processed as if it were typed at the command line before any other actual command-line arguments.

AUTHORS
Danny Sadinoff
Michael J. Radwin

SEE ALSO
calendar(1), emacs(1), hcal(1), hdate(1), omer(1), remind(1), rise(1)

The latest version of the code is available on the hebcal project homepage (https://github.com/hebcal/hebcal).

The original motivation for the algorithms in this program was the Tur Shulchan Aruch.

A well written treatment of the Jewish calendar for the layman can be found in Understanding the Jewish Calendar by Rabbi Nathan Bushwick. A more complete bibliography on the topic can be found there, as well as in the Encyclopedia Judaica entry on the calendar.

DIAGNOSTICS

hebcal help
    Prints a shorter version of this manpage, with comments on each option.

hebcal info
    Prints the version number and default values of the program.

hebcal cities
    Prints a list of cities which hebcal knows about, suitable as arguments to the -C city option. If your city does not appear on this list, put the necessary defaults in the HEBCAL_OPTS
     environment variable.

hebcal copying
    Prints the GNU license, with information about copying the program. See below.

hebcal warranty
    Tells you how there's NO WARRANTY for hebcal.

DISCLAIMER
This is just a program I wrote during summer school and while avoiding my senior project. It should not be invested with any sort of halachic authority.

HISTORY
hebcal first appeared in comp.sources.misc on November 4, 1992.

For version 3, much of the program was rewritten using Emacs 19's calendar routines by Edward M. Reingold and Nachum Dershowitz. Their program is extremely clear and provides many instructive examples of fine calendar code in emacs LISP.

In version 4.x (released in 2015), the sunrise/sunset engine (used for candle-lighting times and zmanim) was rewritten using Derick Rethans's excellent timelib (https://github.com/derickr/timelib).

Version 5.x (released 2022) was completely rewritten in Go.

BUGS
Hebrew dates are only valid before sundown on that secular date. An option to control this will be added in a later release.

When specifying geographic coordinates with the legacy -l and -L switches, negative longitudes are east of Greenwich.

Some combinations of options produce weird results, e.g.,

    hebcal -dH nisan 5744
    hebcal -dH 5744

This comes into play when you use the HEBCAL_OPTS environment variable.

The sunup/sundown routines aren't accurate enough. If you enter geographic coordinates above the artic circle or below the antarctic circle, the times are guaranteed to be wrong.

Hebcal only translates between the Gregorian calendar and the Jewish calendar. It does not take into account a correction of eleven days that was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII known as the Gregorian Reformation. Wednesday, 2 September 1752 was followed by Thursday, 14 September 1752.

This means that the results will be at least partly useless where and when the Gregorian calendar was not used, e.g., before 1752 in Britain and before circa 1918 in Russia. See the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar#Adoption_by_country for a splendid chart depicting when the changeover from the Julian to the Gregorian calendars occurred in various places.

Hebcal cannot handle date computations before 2 C.E. Sorry.

BUG REPORTS TO
https://github.com/hebcal/hebcal/issues

COPYING
Copyright © 1994-2006 Danny Sadinoff
Portions Copyright © 2022-2026 Michael J. Radwin. All Rights Reserved.

For a full text of the copyright and lack of warranty information, run

    hebcal copying

at the command line.