Image: Hebcal.com logo superimposed on an old fashioned wall calendar.
Every Jew needs access to a good Jewish calendar. There is a prodigy somewhere who can keep track of all the ins and outs of the nineteen-year cycle of the Jewish year, but the rest of us need a little help.
My favorite Jewish calendar is an online calendar: www.hebcal.com. (The builders of the calendar say it’s pronounced HEEB-kal dot com.) It is free and fabulous: their description:
We offer a powerful custom Jewish calendar tool that lets you generate a list of Jewish holidays for any year (past, present or future). Also available are a Hebrew date converter, Shabbat candle lighting times and Torah readings(both full kriyah and triennial system), and a page to look up yahrzeits, birthdays and anniversaries.
— “About Hebcal”
If you find that you use the calendar often (or all the time, like me) remember to support it with a donation, so that Michael Radwin and Danny Sadinoff can continue to provide this labor of love.
If I could have access to only one site on the entire Internet, this one would be it!
Not only is Hebcal reliable, but it is super helpful when trying to explain to friends and organizations when Jewish holidays actually start and end. This has come up when professional conferences and conventions are planning their meetings and have inadvertently not known to look at a Jewish calendar. This problem has landed me on many a planning committee! Hebcal has been a great resource for me.