Jewish holidays in the context of "Hebrew calendar"

Passover, also called Pasch (/pæsk/) or Pesach (/ˈpɛsɑːx, ˈpeɪ-/; Biblical Hebrew: חַג הַפֶּסַח‎, romanized: Ḥag hapPesaḥ, lit. 'Pilgrimage of the Passing Over'), is a major Jewish holiday and one of the Three Pilgrimage Festivals. It celebrates the Exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.

According to the Book of Exodus, God commanded Moses to tell the Israelites to slaughter a lamb and mark their doorframes with its blood, in addition to instructions for consuming the lamb that night. For that night, God would send the Angel of Death to bring about the tenth plague, in which he would smite all the firstborn in Egypt. But when the angel saw the blood on the Israelites' doorframes, he would pass over their homes so that the plague should not enter (hence the name). The story is part of the broader Exodus narrative, in which the Israelites, while living in Egypt, are enslaved en masse by the Pharaoh to suppress them; when Pharaoh refuses God's demand to let them go, God sends ten plagues upon Egypt. After the tenth plague, Pharaoh permits the Israelites to leave. Scholars widely believe that the origins of Passover predate the biblical Exodus, with theories suggesting it evolved from earlier semi-nomadic or pre-Israelite rituals and was later transformed through religious and cultic traditions.

The Book of Esther (Hebrew: מְגִלַּת אֶסְתֵּר, romanized: Megillat Ester; Greek: Ἐσθήρ; Latin: Liber Esther), also known in Hebrew as "the Scroll" ("the Megillah"), is a book in the third section (Ketuvim, כְּתוּבִים "Writings") of the Hebrew Bible. It is one of the Five Scrolls (Megillot) in the Hebrew Bible and later became part of the Christian Old Testament. The book relates the story of a Jewish woman in Persia, born as Hadassah but known as Esther, who becomes queen of Persia and thwarts a genocide of her people.

The story takes place during the reign of King Ahasuerus in the First Persian Empire. Queen Vashti, the wife of King Ahasuerus, is banished from the court for disobeying the king's orders. A beauty pageant is held to find a new queen, and Esther, a young Jewish woman living in Persia, is chosen as the new queen. Esther's cousin Mordecai, who is a Jewish leader, discovers a plot to kill all of the Jews in the empire by Haman, one of the king's advisors. Mordecai urges Esther to use her position as queen to intervene and save their people. Esther reveals her Jewish identity to the king and begs for mercy for her people. She exposes Haman's plot and convinces the king to spare the Jews. The Jewish festival of Purim is established to celebrate the victory of the Jews of the First Persian Empire over their enemies, and Esther becomes a heroine of the Jewish people.

The Hebrew calendar (Hebrew: הַלּוּחַ הָעִבְרִי, romanized: HaLuakh ha'Ivri, IPA: [ha‿ˈluaχ ha‿ʔivˈʁi]), also called the Jewish calendar, is a lunisolar calendar used today for Jewish religious observance and as an official calendar of Israel. It determines the dates of Jewish holidays and other rituals, such as yahrzeits and the schedule of public Torah readings. In Israel, it is used for religious purposes, provides a time frame for agriculture, and is an official calendar for civil holidays alongside the Gregorian calendar.

Like other lunisolar calendars, the Hebrew calendar consists of months of 29 or 30 days which begin and end at approximately the time of the new moon. As 12 such months comprise a total of just 354 days, an extra lunar month is added every 2 or 3 years so that the long-term average year length closely approximates the actual length of the solar year.

Jewish cuisine refers to the worldwide cooking traditions of the Jewish people. During its evolution over the course of many centuries, it has been shaped by Jewish dietary laws (kashrut), Jewish festivals and holidays, and traditions centred around Shabbat. Jewish cuisine is influenced by the economics, agriculture, and culinary traditions of the many countries in which Jewish communities were displaced and varies widely throughout the entire world.

The history of Jewish cuisine begins with the cuisine of the ancient Israelites. As the Jewish diaspora grew, different styles of Jewish cooking developed. The distinctive styles in Jewish cuisine vary according to each community across the Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi diaspora groupings; there are also notable dishes within the culinary traditions of the standalone significant Jewish communities from Greece, Iran, and Yemen.

Shavuot (listen, from Hebrew: שָׁבוּעוֹת, romanized: Šāvūʿōṯ, lit. 'Weeks'), or Shvues (listen, in some Ashkenazi usage), is a Jewish holiday, one of the biblically ordained Three Pilgrimage Festivals. It occurs on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan; in the 21st century, it may fall anywhere between May 15 and June 14 on the Gregorian calendar.

Shavuot marked the wheat harvest in the Land of Israel in the Hebrew Bible according to Exodus 34:22. Rabbinic tradition teaches that the date also marks the revelation of the Ten Commandments to Moses and the Israelites at Mount Sinai, which, according to the tradition of Orthodox Judaism, occurred at this date in 1312 BCE. or in 1313 BCE.

Some Christian groups incorporate Jewish holidays into their religious practice, typically altering and reinterpreting their observation to suit a supersessionist theology.

Supporters point to Jesus' Jewish roots, and to the tradition that he and the Apostles observed Jewish holidays. Though some early Christian sects like the Jewish Christian did maintain elements of Judaism, the phenomenon is modern, originating in 20th century Evangelical movements like Hebrew Roots, Messianic Judaism, and Armstrongism.

Vashti (Hebrew: וַשְׁתִּי‎, romanized: Vaštī; Koine Greek: Ἀστίν, romanized: Astín; Modern Persian: وشتی, romanized: Vâšti) was a queen of Persia and the first wife of Persian king Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther, a book included within the Tanakh and the Old Testament which is read on the Jewish holiday of Purim. She was either executed or banished for her refusal to appear at the king's banquet to show her beauty as Ahasuerus wished, and was succeeded as queen by Esther, a Jew. That refusal might be better understood via the Jewish tradition that she was ordered to appear naked. In the Midrash, Vashti is described as beautiful but wicked and vain; she is viewed as an independent-minded heroine in feminist theological interpretations of the Purim story.

Attempts to identify her as one of the Persian royal consorts mentioned in extra-biblical records remain speculative.

Purim (Hebrew: פּוּרִים Pūrīm, lit. 'lots') is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the saving of the Jewish people from annihilation at the hands of an official of the Achaemenid Empire named Haman, as it is recounted in the Book of Esther.

According to the Book of Esther, Haman was the royal vizier to the Persian king Ahasuerus (Xerxes I or Artaxerxes I; Khshayarsha and Artakhsher in Old Persian, respectively). His plans were foiled by Mordecai of the tribe of Benjamin, who previously warned the king about an assassination attempt, and Esther, Mordecai's cousin and adopted daughter who had become queen of Persia after her marriage to Ahasuerus. The day of deliverance became a day of feasting and rejoicing among Jews. Although traditionally viewed as a historical document, modern scholarship generally regards the Book of Esther as a historical novel with legendary elements, not a reliable account of Purim’s origins.