Steve Morse is a Jewish computer scientist who had a problem of sorts with the Hebrew calendar and a big question about Rosh Hashana, the New Year. It seemed to him the first Rosh Hashana had fallen on the wrong day of the week, if the rest of the calendar was to fall into place.
The ancient Jewish calendar, which is both a solar and lunar calendar, is dauntingly complex to the unschooled. Yet unlocking it is extremely important to many, including historians and genealogists researching vital records from "the old country."
The ancient Jewish calendar, which is both a solar and lunar calendar, is dauntingly complex to the unschooled. Yet unlocking it is extremely important to many, including historians and genealogists researching vital records from "the old country."
When Morse was a teenager, in the years before personal computers, he tried to calculate his grandmother's secular birthday from her known Jewish-calendar birth date. He didn't succeed in nailing it down before her death, and so they celebrated it on the approximate date. Now, many uears later, Morse has solved the problem and has written a computer program for otehrs to use that always gives the correct dates.
You can read more in an article in the Denver Post at: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_16016724#ixzz0yxHqy6j7
My thanks to W David Samuelsen for telling me about this article.
