Free Printable Jewish Calendars and Hebrew Gregorian Calendar Converters

Calendars help us mark time; not everyone follows the same calendar, however. The Jewish calendar dates time differently than the western Gregorian calendar. Here are free printable Jewish calendars and calendar converters. Calendars are marked with Jewish holy days. You can print monthly calendars for each month of the Jewish year. You can also print calendars cross-referenced with the western Gregorian calendar.

For free printable Jewish calendars, visit Printable Jewish Calendar (here). The months of the Jewish calendar include: Nissan, Iyar, Sivan, Tammuz, Av, Elul, Tishri, Cheshvan, Kislev, Tevet, Shevat, Adar I (found only in leap years) and Adar. These months are listed in the order they occur within the calendar year. Their western equivalents begin with March-April: Nissan, April-May: Iyan, May-June: Tammuz, etc. The free printable Jewish calendars are dated for 5771, the current year in the Jewish calendar. You can print Western calendars for 2010 and 2011 with Jewish holidays and date equivalents, or you can print Jewish 5771 calendars, with or without western dates.

The Jewish calendar begins with Pesach or Passover in Nissan, but the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah takes place in Tishri (the seventh month which is equivalent to September-October in the western calendar). This is when the new year is numbered.

It is difficult to make direct comparison between the western Gregorian calendar and the Jewish calendar. Calendars differ by orientation. The Julian and later Gregorian calendar (western calendar which we now use) are solar calendars (based upon the earth's path around the sun). The Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar, also called luni-solar. The Hebrew or Jewish calendar reconciles the phases or cycles of the moon with the earth's orbit around the sun.

See Abdicate.com (here) for details on how the Jewish and Gregorian (western) calendars coincide and mark time. This site also has a calendar converter tool. Convert calendars written in English or Hebrew.

Jew FAQ or Judaism 101 (click here) explains the Jewish calendar on several levels, from basic to more advanced. Sources agree that the Hebrew calendar has the least degree of error of all the calendars.

Fourmilab (click here) has a free calendar converter tool with converts date in the Western Gregorian calendar to dates in the Jewish calendar and from Jewish to Gregorian.

For more on world religions, history, calendars and lesson plans, visit the listed blogs.