The Jewish Month

The Lunar Cycle

The Jewish calendar is based on lunar cycles. Towards the beginning of the moons
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cycle, it appears as a thin crescent. That is the signal for a new Jewish month. The
moon grows until it is full, the middle of the month, and then it begins to wane until it
cannot be seen. It remains invisible for approximately two days and then the thin
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crescent reappears, and the cycle begins again.

The entire cycle takes approximately 29 days. Since a month needs to consist of
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complete days, a month is sometimes twenty-nine days long (such a month is known
as chaser, missing), and sometimes thirty (malei, full).
Knowing exactly when the month begins has always been important in Jewish practice,
because the Torah schedules the Jewish festivals according to the days of the month.
The first day of the month, as well as the thirtieth day of a malei month, is calledRosh
Chodesh, the Head of the Month, and has semi-festive status. See Why is Rosh
Chodesh sometimes one day and sometimes two?

The Jewish Months

Nissan is the first month on the Jewish calendar. Before the Jews left Egypt, on the first
day of the month of Nissan, G-d told Moses and Aaron: This chodesh(new moon, or
month) shall be to you the head of months. Thus the peculiarity of the Jewish calendar:
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the year begins on Rosh Hashanah, the first day of the month of Tishrei (the
anniversary of the creation of Adam and Eve), but Tishrei is not the first month. Rosh
Hashanah is actually referred to in the Torah as the first day of the seventh month.

The Jewish Months and their Special Dates

Jewish Month

Nissan

Approximate Secular

This Months Special

Date

Dates

MarchApril

Passover

Iyar

AprilMay

Lag BOmer

Sivan

MayJune

Shavuot

Tammuz

JuneJuly

Menachem Av

JulyAugust

Elul

AugustSeptember

Tishrei

SeptemberOctober

Tisha BAv

The High Holidays (Rosh

Hashanah andYom
Kippur), Sukkot, Shmini
Atzeret, andSimchat Torah

Marcheshvan

OctoberNovember

Kislev

NovemberDecember

Chanukah

Tevet

DecemberJanuary

Conclusion of Chanukah

Shevat

JanuaryFebruary

Tu BShvat

Adar

FebruaryMarch

Purim

Sanctifying the Month

The L- rd spoke to Moses and to Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, Thischodesh shall
be to you the head of months. (Exodus 12:12)
From the wording of this verse, shall be to you, the sages deduced that the
responsibility of pinpointing and consecrating the chodesh, the crescent new moon, was
entrusted to the leaders of our nation, the Sanhedrin, the rabbinical supreme court of
every generation.

Originally, there was no fixed calendar. There was no way to determine in advance the
exact day of a coming holiday or bar mitzvah, because there was no way to determine
in advance when the month would begin. Each month anew, the Sanhedrin would
determine whether the month would be 29 or 30 days longdepending on when the
following months new moon was first sightedand would sanctify the new month.

Nowadays
In the 4th century CE, the sage Hillel II foresaw the disbandment of the Sanhedrin, and
understood that we would no longer be able to follow a Sanhedrin-based calendar. So
Hillel and his rabbinical court established the perpetual calendar which is followed
today.
According to this calendar, every month of the year, except for three, has a set number
of days:

Nissan30

Iyar29

Sivan30

Tamuz29

Menachem Av30

Elul29

Tishrei30

Mar Cheshvan29 or 30

Kislev29 or 30

Tevet29

Shevat30

Adar29 (in leap years, Adar I has 30 days)

Regarding the variable months of Kislev and Cheshvan, there are three options: 1) Both
can be 29 days (the year is chaser), 2) both are 30 (the year is malei), or 3) Cheshvan
is 29 and Kislev is 30 (the year is ksidran, meaning these two months follow the
alternating pattern of the rest of the months). Hillel also established the rules that are
used to determine whether a year is chaser,malei, or ksidran.
The rules of the perpetual calendar also ensure that the first day of Rosh Hashanah will
never take place on Sunday, Wednesday or Friday.

When Hillel established the perpetual calendar, he sanctified every Rosh

Chodesh until Moshiach will come and reestablish the Sanhedrin.

The Sanhedrin Sanctification

The following is a brief description of the procedure the Sanhedrin followed in days of
yore to determine the date of the onset of a new month.
On the 30th day of every month, the Sanhedrin would open for business in a large
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courtyard in Jerusalem called Beit Yaazek. Witnesses who claimed to have seen the
new moon on the previous night would come to give theirtestimony and be crossexamined.

The members of the Sanhedrin were well schooled in astronomy. They knew exactly
when the new moon would have appeared, and where it would have been visible.
Nevertheless, the sanctification of the moon depends on the crescent new moon
actually being seen by two witnesses. The word this (in the above-quoted verse, This
month shall be to you . . .) implies something that is actually seen.
The rabbis of the Sanhedrin would question the witnesses in the order of their arrival.
They knew what the proper responses to their questions ought to be, and were thus
quickly able to identify fraudulent claims. Starting with the elder of each pair, they would
ask: Tell us how you saw the moon:
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In which direction was it in relation to the sun?

Was it to the north or south?

How high in the sky did the moon appear to be?

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In which direction were the crescents tips facing?

How wide was it?

After they had finished questioning the first witness, they would bring in his partner and
question him in similar fashion. If the two accounts corroborated, the evidence was
accepted.

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That day, the thirtieth day, was now declared Rosh Chodesh of the new month. The
head of the Sanhedrin would proclaim: Mekudash! (Sanctified!) and everyone would
respond, Mekudash! Mekudash! The previous month was now retroactively
determined to have had only twenty-nine days.

Publicizing the New Month

The following night (the second night of the month), huge bonfires were lit on
designated mountaintops. Lookouts stationed on other mountaintops would see that a
fire had been lit, and would light their own fires. This chain of communication led all the
way to Babylonia, so that even very distant communities knew that the day beforehand
had been declared Rosh Chodesh.
Eventually, the Sadducees started lighting fires on the wrong days in order to
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manipulate the calendar. To prevent this confusion, the fire-on-mountaintop method of

communication was discontinued, and instead messengers were dispatched to
Babylonia and all other far-flung Jewish settlements. This took a lot longer, a delay
which had (and still has) halachic implications with regards to observance of the second
day of holidays in the Diaspora. (See Why are holidays celebrated an extra day in the
Diaspora?)

The 30-Day Month

If no witnesses came on the thirtieth dayeither because the moon had not been
reborn yet, or because it was not visiblethen the next day, the thirty-first day, was
automatically declared Rosh Chodesh, retroactively rendering the previous month
a malei month.

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Members of the Sanhedrin would go to a highly visible location, where they would
partake in a celebratory meal to signify the new month. No fires were lit that night. The
new month is always either on the 30th or 31st day; if they hadnt lit fires the night
before, it was understood that the new month started on the 31st day.
For the spiritual spin on lunar time, see these following links:
The 29th Day
The Lunar Files
Previous
The Jewish Day
Next
The Jewish Year

FOOTNOTES
1. The lunar cycle which the Jewish calendar follows is called a synodic monthnot to be confused with the sidereal month,
the amount of time it takes for the moon to complete an orbit around the earth, which is a bit more than 27 days. The
synodic month is longer because after completing its orbit, the moon must move a little farther to reach the new position
of the earth with respect to the sun.
2. For about one day before and one day after it is closest to the sun.
3. To be more precise, 29.5306 days.
4. Exodus 12:2.
5. Leviticus 23:24.
6. This guarantees that Yom Kippur will not fall on a Friday or Sunday, which would result in two consecutive days when
preparing food and burying the dead is prohibited; and that Hoshana Rabbah will not occur on Shabbat, which would
interfere with the custom of taking the willows on this day.
7. If their astronomical calculations indicated that the new moon could not possibly have been seen on the previous night,
the Sanhedrin would not convene on the thirtieth day.
8. The Talmud tells us that all the witnesses who arrived would be lavishly entertained there, in order to attract potential
witnesses to travel to Jerusalem to testify.
9. One of the heads of the Sanhedrin, Rabban Gamliel, actually had diagrams of the various phases of the moon on a tablet
mounted on the wall of his chamber. He would show these diagrams to unlearned witnesses and ask, Did it look like this
or like this?
10. The new moon is visible only around the time of sunset.
11. Even though their testimony was no longer needed, all the other witnesses who came were questioned perfunctorily, so
they should not feel that they came for nothing and would then be discouraged from coming if they ever saw the new
moon again.

12. A sect of Jews who denied rabbinic authority, and were constantly at odds with the Sanhedrin.
13. On certain occasions, if the astronomical data required so, the Sanhedrin would establish Rosh Chodesh on the 30th day
even in the absence of witnesses who saw the new moon. For example, suppose that the land of Israel was covered with
clouds on the 30th night for several consecutive months. If the Sanhedrin would allow all these months to be malei, then
several months down the line the new moon could appear on the 25th day of the month! The Sanhedrin always ensured
that the new moon should never possibly appear on any night other than the 30th or 31st.
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