opus
12-09-2025, 02:01 PM
Oh vey
>>> A year without Hanukkah may sound like the plot to a less-than-stellar Hallmark Channel movie but it’s also a mathematical certainty that’s just 1,000 years away.
The reasons have to do with the fact that no calendar perfectly captures the nuances of the Earth’s orbit around the sun and the Hebrew calendar in particular is “complicated,” Ordower told the Forward.
While the Hebrew calendar’s system of leap years — seven of them in a 19 year cycle — is meant to compensate for discrepancies, it still “slips one day against the seasons in about 215 years,” said Ordower.
The average length of the Hebrew calendar year is about six minutes and 40 seconds too long. And so every 216 years that accumulates to about one day, over what’s called the mean, tropical year.”
The result is that the Jewish holidays are gradually getting later and later. Add all that up and your distant descendants will one day celebrate Hanukkah on Jan. 1, 3032 — and again in December of that year.
https://forward.com/fast-forward/529156/a-year-without-hanukkah-its-a-mathematical-certainty-in-the-year-3031/
>>> A year without Hanukkah may sound like the plot to a less-than-stellar Hallmark Channel movie but it’s also a mathematical certainty that’s just 1,000 years away.
The reasons have to do with the fact that no calendar perfectly captures the nuances of the Earth’s orbit around the sun and the Hebrew calendar in particular is “complicated,” Ordower told the Forward.
While the Hebrew calendar’s system of leap years — seven of them in a 19 year cycle — is meant to compensate for discrepancies, it still “slips one day against the seasons in about 215 years,” said Ordower.
The average length of the Hebrew calendar year is about six minutes and 40 seconds too long. And so every 216 years that accumulates to about one day, over what’s called the mean, tropical year.”
The result is that the Jewish holidays are gradually getting later and later. Add all that up and your distant descendants will one day celebrate Hanukkah on Jan. 1, 3032 — and again in December of that year.
https://forward.com/fast-forward/529156/a-year-without-hanukkah-its-a-mathematical-certainty-in-the-year-3031/