Are the Holidays Late This Year? Judaism and the Lessons of Modern Biblical Scholarship

Speaker: Professor James Kugel, Director of the Institute for the History of the Jewish Bible, Bar Ilan University

Location: Temple Shalom; Chevy Chase, MD

Some of the most familiar holidays in the Jewish calendar look very different in the light of biblical research. What is more, the Dead Sea Scrolls have revealed that, compared with the "Jewish calendar" we use today, Jews in late biblical times used an entirely different calendar—one in which the holidays were never "late this year.” What are Jews today to make of these findings?