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:
“Why should the generations overlap one another at all? Why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty thousand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, and wake up, as the Sphinx wasp does, to find that its papa and mamma have not only left ample provision at its elbow but have been eaten by sparrows some weeks before we began to live consciously on our own accounts?”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“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)
“I weathered some merry snow-storms, and spent some cheerful winter evenings by my fireside, while the snow whirled wildly without, and even the hooting of the owl was hushed. For many weeks I met no one in my walks but those who came occasionally to cut wood and sled it to the village.... For human society I was obliged to conjure up the former occupants of these woods.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)