I received the following in my email following one of our Shire Network News podcasts and I though the answer might be of interest here.
Could you please explain this Israel Independence Day to me? I thought it was May 14 / 15th. Now everyone is saying it was May 8th.
Then, I hear things about sundown. Man, you’ve got more confusing rules than Dungeons & Dragons or, dare I say it, rugby.
Anyway, please let me know ASAP. I bought a new Israeli flag for the occasion and only got to fly it for a few hours on the 8th. If I can get another day or two out of it (with the added bonus of pissing off all the Palestinians in the neighborhood with their “river to sea” thug wear hip hop air brushed oversized t-shirts and low rider cars with big shiny rims and Pali flags hanging from the mirror, so much the better).
I understand your confusion. It stems from the observance of Israeli Independence Day following the Hebrew calendar. This is the lunar calendar that governs all the major Jewish festivals like Passover and Chanukah. This calendar, while keeping exactly in line year by year with the regular year of the Georgian calendar, does shuffle dates around within each year. If you follow this calendar, Jewish observance is much easier as festivals fall on exactly the same day each year making things seem much more logical.
So, in 1948, yes, Independence was declared on 14th May, that was also the 5th of Iyar in the year 5708. This year, the 5th of Iyar fell largely on the 8th.
I say largely because, just to make things even more interesting, Hebrew days actually begin at sun-down not at an arbitrary point in the middle of the night that you need modern gizmos like clocks to determine. When the sun hits the sea (looking west) a day is over and the next “day” begins. Actually in Hebrew its a bit more nuanced as the term day really means day, and night means night rather than day also being able to mean night! A careful reading of the opening of Genesis (in Hebrew) is needed for this but the separation of dark and light is important.
So, to recap, this year Independence day started on Wednesday 7th in the evening (when all the parties and fireworks would have happened in Israel) and continued to the 8th when you wouldn’t have been able to find a single patch of bare grass in any public place in Tel Aviv for all the apartment dwellers out making BBQs.
I think the Palestinians have some other way to work out when to cry.
And the time is always right to wave an Israeli flag (unless you live in Europe in which case you’d need an armed escort).
