


HEBCAL(1)     User Commands     HEBCAL(1)



NAME
  hebcal - a Jewish calendar generator

SYNOPSIS
  hebcal [ -acdDehHiorsStTwy ]
    [ -I inputfile ]
    [ -Y yahrtzeitfile ]
    [ -C city ]
    [ -l latitude -L longitude]
    [ -z timezone ]
    [ -Z daylightsavingsscheme ]
    [[ month [ day ]] year ]
  hebcal help
  hebcal info
  hebcal DST
  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/y.

  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.  In if the
  hebrew dates option is turned on, this number represents  th
  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.

  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 Jew-
  ish calendar year 5752.

  NOTE:  hebcal 92 is not the same as hebcal 1992.   The  year
  is  assumed  to be complete, so the former calendar preceeds
  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.




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  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 on-line help, type
    hebcal help
  at the command prompt.

OPTIONS
  -a Use Ashkenazis hebrew.

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

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

  -D Print the hebrew date for dates with some event.

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

  -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 end-
    ing 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 the Israeli sedra scheme when used in  conjunction
    with   - S  or   -s. This has no effect if the -S or -s
    switches are unused.

  -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
    month day description



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    where month is a string identifying the Jewish month in
    question  day 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.
    Adar 1 Start cleaning kitchen for Passover.

  -l deg,min
    Set the latitude for solar calculations to deg  degrees
    and min

  -L deg,min
    Set the longitude for solar calculations to deg degrees
    and  min minutes. NOTE: Negative values are EAST longi-
    tude.

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

  -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.

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

  -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
    month day year description
    where month, day and year form the  gregorian  date  of
    death.   description  is a newline-terminated string to



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    be printed on the yahrtzeit. An example might be

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

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

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

  1) The default: the system manager sets a default city  when
  the program is compiled.
  2) Hebcal looks in the environment variable HEBCALCITY  for
  the  name  of  a  city in hebcal's database, and if it finds
  one, hebcal will make that the new default city.
  3) 1 and 2 may be  overridden  by  command  line  arguments,
  including  those  specified  in  the HEBCALOPTS 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 informa-
  tion with the -l, -L -z and - Z  DST  switches.   Note  that
  changing  the  geographic coordinates causes the timezone to
  default to Zulu and the daylight savings time  processor  to
  default to 'none.' To get a list of possible values for DST,
  type
    hebcal DST
  at the command prompt.

  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
     .
     .
     .



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    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:

  HEBCALCITY
    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

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

AUTHOR
  Danny Sadinoff

SEE ALSO
  calendar(1),  emacs(1),  hcal(1),  hdate(1),  omer(1),  rem-
  ind(1), rise(1)

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

  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.

  A well written treatment of the Jewish calendar for the lay-
  man  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.




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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 DST
    Prints  a  list  of  available  daylight  savings  time
    schemes, suitable as arguments to the -Z DST option.

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

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

  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  ENVOPT  environment
  variable.

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

  Hebcal performs no checking for changes between  the  julian
  and  gregorian  calendar,  so  secular dates before 1752 are
  untrustworthy.




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

BUG REPORTS TO
  Danny Sadinoff
  sadinoff@panix.com

COPYING
  Copyright (c) 1994 Danny Sadinoff

  Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies
  of  this  manual provided the copyright notice and this per-
  mission notice are preserved on all copies.

  Permission is granted to copy and distribute  modified  ver-
  sions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copy-
  ing, provided that the entire resulting derived work is dis-
  tributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to
  this one.

  Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of
  this  manual  into  another language, under the above condi-
  tions for modified versions,  except  that  this  permission
  notice  may be included in translations approved by the Free
  Software Foundation instead of in the original English.

  For a full text of the copyright and lack of warranty infor-
  mation, type
  hebcal copying
  or
  hebcal warranty
  at the command line.
























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