Tag Archives: Jewish Calendar

A Kabbalistic History of the World

Does the first chapter of Genesis secretly allude to the major events in the history of mankind? How do the Six Days of Creation parallel the past six thousand years of human civilization? Find out in this class where we review the key developments of history through the lens of Torah, Talmud, and Kabbalah, and take a peek into what’s to come in the long-awaited seventh millennium. Also: does AI have anything to do with the forthcoming Messianic Age?

For more on the Sefirot and ‘Fundamentals of Kabbalah’, see here.
For the specific colours associated with the Sefirot, see here.
For ‘Astrology and Astronomy in Judaism’, see here.

The Watchers & the Book of Jubilees

A deep dive into the eye-opening ancient Book of Jubilees. Along the way, we unravel the story of Enoch and the mysterious “Watchers” and fallen angels in the pre-Flood generations, the difference between Nephilim and Anakim, how Jubilees envisions the End of Days, and what really happened with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

For lots more information on Nephilim and Anakim, please see here.
For more on Jubilees, see here.
The class on Noah’s Ark and the Tower of Babel
Part One and Part Two of this series on the Apocrypha.

The Kabbalah of Solar

This Friday evening, we usher in the new year 5784 of the Hebrew lunisolar calendar. Our calendar follows lunar months, but is synchronized to the sun over the course of a 19-year cycle. Since a lunar month is 29.5 days, each month on the Hebrew calendar is either 29 or 30 days, resulting in a year that is typically just 354 days long. The solar year is a bit over 365 days long, meaning that a strictly lunar calendar will fall behind 11 days each year. To avoid this problem, we add an entire leap month, a second Adar, seven times in 19 years. This ensures that we stay in synch with both moon and sun. The upcoming year will be such a leap year, with 13 months instead of 12.

Although our calendar is lunisolar, and Jewish holidays, rituals, and halakhot generally follow this calendar, there are exceptions to the rule. In fact, there are a handful of Jewish laws and principles that follow not the lunisolar calendar, but the solar calendar of 365 days! We will explore some of the major ones below, and then look at the Zohar’s incredible revelations about the secrets of the solar calendar. Continue reading