The Jewish calendar is based on lunar months of 29 or 30 days (like the Muslim calendar), but (unlike the Muslim calendar) it is adjusted to keep roughly in line with the solar year.  That means that leap years don’t just have one extra day (like February 29th) but a whole extra month every two or three years, to ensure that that Pesach/Passover, which is referred to in the Torah as “the Spring Festival”, is always in the spring.

The western calendar is a Christian calendar, as the year 0 marked the year Jesus was believed to have been born, whilst, according to tradition, the Jewish calendar dates back to the creation of the world.

The Jewish New Year (see Rosh Hashanah) falls in autumn, so Jewish years straddle two secular years (and vice versa!).  For example, the year 2000 straddled the Jewish years 5760-61.

Jewish days run evening to evening, not midnight to midnight. This originates from the Torah’s description of the days of creation which describes each evening as coming first: “And there was evening and there was morning, a first day”. This is why Shabbat and all Jewish festivals begin at sundown.

There are many festivals that punctuate the Jewish year. Most are laid out in the Torah but there are also festivals that commemorate later events, such as Chanukah and Purim.

The most recent additions to the Jewish calendar include two special days marking events in recent history – Yom HaShoah,remembering all those murdered by the Nazis during the second world war (not to be confused with the secular International Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January); and Yom HaAtzma’ut,Israeli Independence Day, marking the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state in May 1948 following a resolution of the United Nations the previous November.