Why no fixed date for Jewish festivals? Rosh Hashanah festivals keeps changing year by year. Example like this year on October but last year were in September. Please clarify the above for better understanding. Toda rabah.
Actually the Jewish festivals do have a fixed date, but in the Jewish calendar, the calendar that the Torah uses. That calendar is a “lunar calendar”, based on the lunar cycle in which the moon finishes its cycle in roughly 29 1/2 days. Therefore the months of the Jewish calendar have sometimes 30 days, sometimes 29 days, so it shifts in regard to the solar calendar the we use today, the Gregorian calendar.
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, always falls on its date, the first of Tishrei. It is the first of Tishrei that sometimes coincides with a day in September and sometimes with a day in October.
Why no fixed date for Jewish festivals? Rosh Hashanah festivals keeps changing year by year. Example like this year on October but last year were in September. Please clarify the above for better understanding. Toda rabah.
Shalom Oommen,
Actually the Jewish festivals do have a fixed date, but in the Jewish calendar, the calendar that the Torah uses. That calendar is a “lunar calendar”, based on the lunar cycle in which the moon finishes its cycle in roughly 29 1/2 days. Therefore the months of the Jewish calendar have sometimes 30 days, sometimes 29 days, so it shifts in regard to the solar calendar the we use today, the Gregorian calendar.
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, always falls on its date, the first of Tishrei. It is the first of Tishrei that sometimes coincides with a day in September and sometimes with a day in October.
You can read more about this here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_calendar
Thanks for writing. Wishing you a Happy and Healthy New Year.
Boruch Rappaport