Weeks
The Hebrew calendar follows a seven-day weekly cycle, which runs concurrently but independently of the monthly and annual cycles. The names for the days of the week are simply the day number within the week. In Hebrew, these names may be abbreviated using the numerical value of the Hebrew letters, for example יום א׳ (Day 1, or Yom Rishon (יום ראשון)):
- Yom Rishon - יום ראשון (abbreviated יום א׳), meaning "first day" (starting at preceding sunset of Saturday)
- Yom Sheni - יום שני (abbr. יום ב׳) meaning "second day"
- Yom Shlishi - יום שלישי (abbr. יום ג׳) meaning "third day"
- Yom Reviʻi - יום רביעי (abbr. יום ד׳) meaning "fourth day"
- Yom Chamishi - יום חמישי (abbr. יום ה׳) = "fifth day"
- Yom Shishi - יום ששי (abbr. יום ו׳) meaning "sixth day"
- Yom Shabbat - יום שבת (abbr. יום ש׳), or more usually Shabbat - {Hebrew|שבת} = "Sabbath-rest day" .
The names of the days of the week are modeled on the seven days mentioned in the Creation story. For example, Genesis 1:5 "... And there was evening and there was morning, one day". One day here in Genesis 1:15 as translated in JPS and KJV, etc., also translated as first day in some, should properly be rendered as day one. In subsequent verses it reads as ordinal numbers, e.g., 'second day', 'third day', and so forth. See Genesis 1:8, 1:13, 1:19, 1:23, 1:31 and 2.2.
The Jewish Shabbat has a special role in the Jewish weekly cycle. There are many special rules which relate to the Shabbat, discussed more fully in the Talmudic tractate Shabbat.
In Hebrew, the word Shabbat (שַׁבָּת) can also mean "(Talmudic) week", so that in ritual liturgy a phrase like "Yom Reviʻi bəShabbat" means "the fourth day in the week".
Read more about this topic: Hebrew Month, Sources and History
Famous quotes containing the word weeks:
“Until I was twenty-five, I had no development at all. From my twenty-fifth year I date my life. Three weeks have scarcely passed, at any time between then and now, that I have not unfolded within myself. But I feel that I am now come to the inmost leaf of the bulb, and that shortly the flower must fall to the mould.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“A two-week-old infant cries an average of one and a half hours every day. This increases to approximately three hours per day when the child is about six weeks old. By the time children are twelve weeks old, their daily crying has decreased dramatically and averages less than one hour. This same basic pattern of crying is present among children from a wide range of cultures throughout the world. It appears to be wired into the nervous system of our species.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“It took six weeks of debate in the Senate to get the Arms Embargo Law repealed—and we face other delays during the present session because most of the Members of the Congress are thinking in terms of next Autumn’s election. However, that is one of the prices that we who live in democracies have to pay. It is, however, worth paying, if all of us can avoid the type of government under which the unfortunate population of Germany and Russia must exist.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)