Arthur wrote on 2005-02-20:
He was also trying to convince me it was an important Jewish holiday, because I believe in the context of the event being celebrated in the Islamic faith, it was considered to coincide with an event in the Jewish calendar. Wasn't aware of yesterday as a significant day in the Jewish calendar, but that doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't.A Jewish holiday for some definition of a Holiday :-). This Saturday was the first day ("Rosh Hodesh" = "Head of a Month") of Adar II (this year being a leap year with a second Adar month added). Friday was the 30th day of the previous month (Adar I), which is also considered a Rosh Hodesh (but not all monthes have a 30th day).
A Rosh Hodesh is not really celebrated, it only has some extended/different prayers (it was a more important event long ago, when (1) there was a temple in Jerusalem and (2) it was determined from observing the new moon and the news were distributed to the whole nation to start counting a new month). Anyway, the Rosh Hodesh of Adar (II) is slightly special, Adar (II) being the month containing the Purim holiday is held to be merry month. "Mishenichnas Adar marbim besimcha" - "Since Adar enters, be more joyful". But it's still not really celebrated (except by students perhaps).
Also, the Islamic holiday cannot always coincide with a Jewish holiday because the Islamic calendar constantly drifts relative to the Sun (having no leap monthes it misses about 11 days per year). Some years from now it will occur in the summer, while Adar is always in the winter. So he could only mean the coincidence to have some meaning at this specific year.
[Pardon me if I'm explaining the obvisous, when I'm don't know the correspondent's level I tend to err on the side of too much details]
-- Beni Cherniavsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Note that I can only read emails on week-ends. _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
