KosherJava » Hebrew Date

Calculating Kiddush Levana Times Using the Zmanim API

KosherJava — Fri, 20 May 2011 22:43:43 +0000

Calculating the earliest and latest times for Kiddush Levana has not been part of the KosherJava Zmanim API until now. This is because unlike other zmanim that solely rely on solar calculations that are tied to the Gregorian calendar, times for Kiddush Levanah depend on the Jewish calendar molad (lunar conjunction) computation. With the recent addition of Jewish calendar support to the alpha releases of the KosherJava Zmaim API 1.3, molad calculation was added, allowing for calculation of kidush levana times. Times include the earliest time calculated as 3 and 7 days after the molad. Sof zman kidush levanah includes the Maharil’s opinion that it is calculated as halfway between molad and molad, and the more lenient full 15 days from the molad mentioned by the Mechaber in the Shulchan Aruch. It should be noted that some opinions hold that the Rema who brings down the opinion of the Maharil’s of calculating half way between molad and molad is of the opinion that the Mechaber agrees with him. Also see the Aruch Hashulchan. For additional details on the subject, See Rabbi Dovid Heber’s very detailed writeup in Siman Daled (chapter 4) of Shaarei Zmanim.

Calculating the Molad

Kidush levanah times depend on the time of the molad. The time of the molad announced in shuls on Shabbos Mevarchim is the time of the Molad Emtzai (Average Molad) in Yerushalayim local mean time. This has to be converted to standard time. Standard time uses time zones to unify clock times across a large area. With 360° of longitude around the globe, the world is divided into 24 timezones (one per hour) resulting in timezones that are 15° of longitude each. Har Habayis with a longitude of 35.2354° is 5.2354° away from the 30° longitude line. Multiply the 5.235° by 4 minutes per degree (15° of longitude per hour) to reach 20.94 minutes, or 20 minutes and 56.496 seconds (5.235 * 4 = 20.94). This time is subtracted from the local molad time to arrive at Standard time. Since the time of the molad is at the same instant globally (unlike zmanim such as sunrise that depend on a person’s location), converting this to a user’s local time involves simply calculating the time difference between the time in Yerushalayim and your location. If daylight savings time is in use, this has to be added to the calculation. Java date formatting classes do this calculation on Date objects without forcing the developer to do any calculations.

Calculating the Start and End of Kiddush Levana Times

The JewishCalendar class contains the methods for claculating these zmanim. Calculating Tchilas Zman Kiddush Levana (the earliest time Kiddush Levana can be said) is done by adding 3 days or 7 days to the molad time. Sof Zman Kiddush Levana (the latest time Kiddush Levana can be said) is either the time between molad and molad calculated by adding 14 days, 18 hours, 22 minutes and 1.666 seconds to the molad (half the 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 1 chelek (3.333 seconds)), or by adding 15 days to the molad.

Using the Zmanim API Calculate Molad Based Times

Here is sample code for calculating various kiddush levana times for anywhere in the world for Shevat 5729 (1969). Since formatting classes requires a timezone for proper formatting, the simple code below assumes that you are looking for the time in your local timezone. If you want the time for a timezone other than the one your computer is in, set the SimpleDateFormat.setTimeZone() to the timezone you wish to display the times for.

int year = 5729;
int month = JewishDate.SHEVAT;
Date tchilas3Days = JewishCalendar.getTchilasZmanKidushLevanah3Days(year, month);
Date tchilas7Days = JewishCalendar.getTchilasZmanKidushLevanah7Days(year, month);
Date sofZmanBetweenMoldos = JewishCalendar.getSofZmanKidushLevanahBetweenMoldos(year, month);
Date sofZmanKidushLevanah15Days = JewishCalendar.getSofZmanKidushLevanah15Days(year, month);
SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("MMM dd, yyyy 'at' HH:mm:ss z");
System.out.println("Tchilas Zman Kiddush Levana 3 Days: " + sdf.format(tchilas3Days));
System.out.println("Tchilas Zman Kiddush Levana 7 Days: " + sdf.format(tchilas7Days));
System.out.println("Sof Zman Kiddush Levana Between Moldos: " + sdf.format(sofZmanBetweenMoldos));
System.out.println("Sof Zman Kiddush Levana 15 Days: " + sdf.format(sofZmanKidushLevanah15Days));

this will output the following in an EST timezone.

Tchilas Zman Kiddush Levana 3 Days: Jan 21, 1969 at 06:06:29 EST
Tchilas Zman Kiddush Levana 7 Days: Jan 25, 1969 at 06:06:29 EST
Sof Zman Kiddush Levana Between Moldos: Feb 02, 1969 at 00:28:31 EST
Sof Zman Kiddush Levana 15 Days: Feb 02, 1969 at 06:06:29 EST

Kiddush Levana Times During Daylight Hours

As you can see, all of these times are at night (After tzais 72 and prior to Alos 72 minutes in Montreal). Many times, these calculations will result in times that are during daylight hours when Kidush Levana can’t be said. When using the API and calculating the time for the tchilas zman kiddush levana and the time is during daylight hours, the earliest time should be tzais the following night. When the calculated time of sof zman kiddush levana is during daylight hours, the time posted should be alos on the previous night. The API may at some point support a method of automatically calculating this.

FAQ: How do I Calculate the Jewish/Hebrew Date for …?

KosherJava — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 05:14:16 +0000

Question:

How do I get the Jewish Date for … using the Zmanim API?

Answer:

The current version of the Zanim API does not support Jewish calendrical calculations. Zmanim are almost exclusively based on the solar calendar, so for example, the sunrise on February 8th this year in Montreal (or any other date and location), will be almost the same every year. for this reason there was little point (as far as zmanim) to support Jewish date calculations in the API. One of the only zmanim to rely on a Jewish date is the sof zman kidush levanah calculation, though there are some opinions that it is purely molad based, and this can be calculated without a Jewish calendar component to the API. This zman is obviously not currently implemented in the Zmanim API. I am currently working on adding Jewish date support to the API. The code is based off Avrom Finkelstein‘s no longer active HebrewDate project. I refactored a lot of the code and fixed a number of bugs. Anyone interested in alpha testing this code can download the latest Zmanim SVN code (or download the Zmanim API 1.3.0 alpha release). I mentioned that it “will be almost the same every year” and this is due the the approximate 1/4 day drift between the 356 day calendar year and the approximately 365.25 days actually present in the astronomical year, a discrepancy corrected every leap year. A future FAQ (probably a few of them) may delve specifically into this drift as well as general zmanim accuracy issues in detail. If you are simply looking to convert a Hebrew date to Gregorian or Gregorian to Hebrew online without the API, try the JewishGen calendar conversion tools.

New release of the Hebrew Date Plugin for WordPress

KosherJava — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 19:55:55 +0000

Mike who took over development of the WordPress Hebrew Date plugin in 2006, released a new version of the plugin. The WordPress Hebrew Date plugin is now hosted at the WordPress plugin repository. This should make it easier for people to find and update the plugin. New in this version is support for the WordPress 3.0 default theme, a general rewrite, and expansion of the API calls intercepted by the plugin. See the changelog page for a more detailed list of all the changes. Please contact Mike with any suggestions, comments or bugs.

ZmanimPlasma (Linux) Released

KosherJava — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 03:52:15 +0000

Moshe Wagner recently released ZmanimPlasma for the Linux platform. This KDE Plasma desktop widget displays the Hebrew date and zmanim on a Linux desktop. The zmanim calculations use Moshe’s C++ port Zmanim CLI wrapper that enables a C++ program to call the Java Zmanim API. There are no current plans to make this widget available on any other platform. It can be downloaded from the Luach project download page. Moshe has in the past used the Zmanim API for use in Linux and some cross platform projects. These include the above mentioned Zmanim CLI, and Zmanim GUI that uses the ZmanimCLI. Updated on 4/13/2010 to reflect information from Moshe explaining that this was not a port

ZmanimCLI (Command Line Interface)

KosherJava — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 04:52:50 +0000

Moshe Wagner who wrote the Zmanim GUI notified me in August that that he created a command line interface for zmanim using my Zmanim API. The technical approach of using reflection was similar to the way I used reflection in the Zmanim Clock Applet, but he took it to new heights. Sample use of accessing zmanim using his CLI interface is:

moshe@debian:~/Desktop$ java -jar ZmanimCLI.jar sunrise
6:10:28

moshe@debian:~/Desktop$ java -jar ZmanimCLI.jar --date 2010/08/12 tzais72
20:38:15

moshe@debian:~/Desktop$ java -jar ZmanimCLI.jar
Usage: ZmanimCLI [options] [Time]

Options:
       -d      --date              Set date. (Year first!)
       -lat    --latitude            Set location's latitude
       -lon    --longitude          Set location's longitude
       -e      --elevation          Set location's
elevation; Positive only
       -tz     --timezone            Set location's TimeZone

Help:
       -h      --help                          Show this help
       -stl    --time-list                     Show common available
times to display
       -ftl    --full-time-list                Show all available
times to display
       -tzl    --timezone-list                 Show available timezones

Example:
       ZmanimCLI --latitude 31.7780 --longitude 35.235149 --elevation
600 --timezone Israel Sunrise
       Will show the sunrise time today in Jerusalem

While your first reaction may be that it is interesting in a theoretical geeky way, but has no practical value, I will quote Moshe’s explanation as to why it is useful:

Why is this useful? Well, first of all it was a nice experiment. But mainly, you can now use Zmanim (although externally), via any language you want, no longer being tied to Java.

Months later, Moshe actually put this to practical use in his C++ based Luach project. This Luach (similar to the known Kaluach) uses the Qt framework. utilizing libhdate for the date stuff (something not offered by the Zmanim API, and the topic of a future Zmanim API FAQ), displaying zmanim using the Zmanim API via CLI for the zmanim calculations. While you would expect such an approach to be slow, using the Luach seemed almost instantaneous. I will post more about his Luach program (recently reviewed at KosherDev.com) at some point in the future.

WordPress Hebrew Date Plugin Has a New Home

KosherJava — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 01:51:34 +0000

The Hebrew date Plugin has not been in active development for a while, and I am pleased to announce that it now has a new home at mikeage.net. Mike added a config page as well as a few new options. The plugin can be downloaded from the WordPress Hebrew dates Plugin Page. As a backup, you can also download it from Mike’s Site (zip). In addition to Mike’s work, Jacob Fresco has used the code to create an additional Jewish Date plugin that displays the current Jewish date. This plugin has since been merged to Mike’s version. Read the following posts at Mike’s site for more details

Hebrew Year Conversion

KosherJava — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 02:19:47 +0000

There was a request on the Correspondence page of Remy Landau’s Hebrew Calendar Science and Myths site for a utility that generated “Hebrew Year Number Transliteration”. Since I had already developed the code as part of PhpGedView and the hebrew date plugin, I just ported it to JavaScript as a demo.

New Version of the Hebrew Date Plugin Available

KosherJava — Sun, 26 Jun 2005 20:42:49 +0000

A new version (v0.3.0) of the Hebrew Date Plugin is now available. This fixes the post time formatting issue. The code is crude and relies on the detection of a ‘:’ in the Date String to determine that it is a time and not date. This works well with the default WordPress 1.5 theme (Kubrick). Other themes that use alternate date formatting might not work perfectly with this plugin. It is worth noting that as far as I know, this plugin will only work with WP 1.5. The plugin does not require changes to the theme, and can simply be activated from the Admin plugin screen.

WordPress Hebrew Date Plugin Alpha Release

KosherJava — Sun, 26 Jun 2005 06:43:46 +0000

I just hacked a simple plugin that displays Hebrew dates alongside the current Gregorian dates on posts. This is now active on this site. The alpha quality code (v0.2.0) is now available for your testing. For the most part the code is almost identical to the PHP code that I wrote to display Jewish dates in PhpGedView. While the PhpGedView code has various display options, for the sake of simplicity and the fact that I never wrote any WordPress plugins before, I did not code any of these options yet. Also not done is parsing of the “Month, Year” format of the archive pages. The PhpGedView code has many options such as displaying the dates in

Hebrew Only – י"ז סיון תשס"ה
Hebrew and Gregorian – June 24th, 2005 – י"ז סיון תשס"ה
Hebrew using the Latin characters – 17 Sivan 5765

and more. These may eventually be added to the plugin.