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Question of the Week:

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What's the name of the first-known English publication in the
United States?

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*v. Elizabeth Applebaum
AppleTree Editor

Adar I, or in Hebrew, Adar Ris-
hon (First Adar). Adar II, or Adar
Sheyni, (Second Adar) begins at
id you know that this is a
I sundown on Tuesday, March 7.
leap year and a leap year?
You may wonder: Why is it
No, that's not a typo-
that for gentiles one extra day is
graphical error. This is a leap
good enough for leap year, but
year on the "secular" calendar
we Jews have to add an extra
(actually, the calendar we use
month? What were the rabbis
was decreed by a pope) and on
thinking — if a little is good, a
the Jewish calendar.
lot is better?
The secular leap year most
First, the Jewish calendar is much
people know about: it's covered
older than the secular calendar, so
by the extra day added to Febru-
it's not a matter of one-upmanship.
ary every four years to give the
Second, an extra month comes
month 29 days.
into play because the Jewish most-
The other leap year, on the
ly lunar-based calendar is funda-
Jewish calendar, will be noticed
mentally different from the solar-
first this Shabbat
based secular
by those who
many
one.
2. a Ng War
recite the Birkat
e1 taLma r
This whole
HaChodesh, the
n
business
of a
=ennAlibi.
blessing of the
tfi
NO
leap year comes
new month. The
Long before anyone else
about because
new month,
even considered it,
there is no other
which begins at
rabbis were considering
practical way to
sundown Sunday,
what to do with those
construct an
Feb. 6, is called
extra minutes.
astronomically

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Getting ready or
Adar I and Adar
II, and taking a
look at some
correct calendar.
On the secular side,
it complicated issues
works like this:
The calendar the
alonc the way.
world at large uses is

an inheritance from
ancient Rome. Until 1582, most
of Europe had a calendar
devised by a Greek mathemati-
cian, which was authorized by
Julius Caesar in 46 B.C.E. The
Julian calendar, as it came to.-be
known, assumed that a year was
365 1/4 days. To tidy up that
quarter day hanging at the end
of each year, the Julian calendar
gave every fourth year 366
days. The system seemed to
work well until an Anglo-Saxon
monk known as the Venerable
Bede came along in 70 C.E.
and announced that the Julian
year was 11 minutes and 4 sec-
onds too long. Every 128 years,
Bede said, all those minutes and
seconds would be enough for
one whole extra day, which
would really mess things up.

p

Everyone ignored Bede until
1582
when the great minds
realized that Bede was right,
and the Julian error had grown
now to 10 days.
Back then, the ecclesiastical
leaders of the Catholic Church
pretty much had the final word
on how the people of Europe
lived. In stepped Pope Gregory
XIII to declare what should be
done to correct the mistake in
time. The pope decided to sim-
ply get rid of those 10 erroneous
days and decreed that the day
after Oct. 4, 1582, would be
not Oct. 5 — but Oct. 15.
Although the Gregorian calen-
dar continues to give every fourth
year 366 days, it still is not astro-
nomically correct. If leap years
occurred every four years, the

—

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2/4
2000

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