JEWISH RELIGIOUS YEAR

the cycle of Sabbaths and holidays that are commonly observed by the Jewish religious communityand officially in Israel by the Jewish secular community as well. The Sabbath and festivals are bound to the Jewish calendar, reoccur at fixed intervals, and are celebrated at home and in the synagogue according to ritual set forth in Jewish law and hallowed by Jewish custom. In this article dates are listed as BCE (Before the Common Era = BC) and CE (Common Era = AD). Additional reading Roland De Vaux, Les Institutions de l'Ancien Testament, 2 vol. (195860; Eng. trans., Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions, 1961), summarizes the contemporary state of biblical scholarship regarding the origin and development of the Jewish calendar, sabbath, and festivals. Other relevant works include: Hayyim Schauss, The Jewish Festivals (1938; orig. pub. in Hebrew, 1933); Theodor H. Gaster, Festivals of the Jewish Year (1953), an anthropological, comparative, and often speculative approach to the sabbath and festivals; Shlomo Yosef Zevin, ha-Mo'adim ba-halakhah (1944), a modern classic (in Hebrew) treating talmudic and post-talmudic developments in the festival observances; and Menahem M. Kasher, Torah Shelemah, vol. 13 (1949), a comprehensive history of the Jewish calendar, also in Hebrew. Sid Z. Leiman