Jewish days and holidays

Question 1

Rosh Hashana

Answer 1

Jewish New Year (literally ‘head of the Year’). It occurs on the first and second day of Tishri in September or early October.

Question 2

Yom Kippur

Answer 2

The day of Atonement. It occurs on 10 Tishri, in late September or early October.

Question 3

Succot

Answer 3

Succot - literally ‘booths’ or ‘huts’, is the festival of Tabernacles, beginning on 15 Tishri, in late September or early October.

Question 4

Simchat Torah

Answer 4

Literally ‘Rejoicing of the Torah’ celebrates the conclusion and the new beginning of the yearly Torah-reading cycle.

Question 5

Hanukkah

Answer 5

Festival of Dedication or Festival of Lights, is an 8 day festival, usually in late November or December. Not mentioned in the Bible. It is commemorating the recovery of Jerusalem and subsequent rededication of the Second Temple at the beginning of the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid Empire in the 2nd century BCE.

Question 6

Tu B’Shevat

Answer 6

AJewish holiday occurring on the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat (in 2021, Tu BiShvat begins at sunset on January 27 and ends in the evening of January 28). It is also called Rosh HaShanah La’Ilanot literally ‘New Year of the Trees’. In contemporary Israel, the day is celebrated as an ecological awareness day, and trees are planted in celebration.

Question 7

Purim

Answer 7

Pûrîm, “lots”, from the word פור, “pur”, translated as ‘lot’ in the Book of Esther, perhaps related to Akkadian pūru, “stone, urn”; lso called the Festival of Lots is a Jewish holiday which commemorates the saving of the Jewish people from Haman, an Achaemenid Persian Empire official who was planning to kill all the Jews in the empire, as recounted in the Book of Esther, usually dated to the 5th century BCE).

Question 8

Pessach

Answer 8

Passover, also called Pesach or the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and Shavuot occurs on the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan, the first month of Aviv, or spring. As recounted in the Book of Exodus, God commands Moses to tell the Israelites to mark a lamb’s blood above their doors in order that the Angel of Death will pass over them.

Question 9

Sefirat HaOmer

Answer 9

Counting of the Omer, 49-day period between the Passover and Shavuot. The idea of counting each day represents spiritual preparation and anticipation for the giving of the Torah, which was given by God on Mount Sinai at the beginning of the month of Sivan, around the same time as the holiday of Shavuot.

Question 10

Shavuot

Answer 10

The word Shavuot means “weeks”, and it marks the conclusion of the Counting of the Omer. The Feast of Weeks occurs on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan (it may fall between May 15 and June 14 on the Gregorian calendar). In the Bible, Shavuot marked the wheat harvest in the Land of Israel.

Question 11

Yom HaShoah

Answer 11

Holocaust Remembrance Day is held on the 27th of Nisan (falls in April or May), unless the 27th would be adjacent to the Sabbath, in which case the date is shifted by a day.

Question 12

Yom HaAtzmaut

Answer 12

Israeli Independence Day (April or May)

Question 13

Tisha B’Av

Answer 13

Tisha B’Av, lit. “the ninth of Av”, is an annual fast day in Judaism, on which a number of disasters in Jewish history occurred, primarily the destruction of both Solomon’s Temple by the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the Second Temple by the Roman Empire in Jerusalem.
It is regarded as the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, and it is thus believed to be a day which is destined for tragedy. Tisha B’Av falls in July or August in the Gregorian calendar.