QUESTION: My father died last year around this time. It is now the time of his first yahrzeit. He died on the 20th of Adar last winter or early spring. My synagogue has sent me two yahrzeit notices, one for the 20th of Adar I and one for the 20th of Adar II! What is this all about?
ANSWER: You have touched on one of the more complicated, but interesting topics in the Jewish calendar cycle.
Approximately every three years we have a Jewish leap year. In the Jewish leap year, there is an extra month not just an extra day like there is in the secular leap year. The reason for this extra month is that the Jewish year is a lunar year that contains approximately 354 days a year. That is over 11 days shorter than the 365 ¼ days in a secular solar year. Therefore, after just three years we are a month ahead of the secular year.
If we did not adjust our calendar an extra month approximately every three years, our holidays would fall completely out of line with the seasons. Pesach would be in the fall instead of the spring and Sukkot would be in the summer or the winter. A number of our holidays are tied and connected to seasons of the year. For example, Passover must be in the spring.
To keep our holidays in line with the seasons we need to “adjust” our calendar approximately every three years (actually a little more frequently than that) to keep our holidays in line with the appropriate seasons.
That extra month occurs during the month of Adar. So, instead of just having the plain month of Adar in the leap year (again approximately every three years), we have an Adar I and an Adar II. Since there is some debate among the rabbis of old as to which Adar is which with two of them, the tradition has developed in most synagogues and most legal circles that if one has a death in a plain year (a non-leap year) like last year when your dad, of blessed memory, died, then when the leap year comes around with the two months of Adar, the yahrzeit (to hedge our bets) is observed twice, once in each Adar on that appropriate day. So if someone has a loss on the 20th of Adar, in a leap it is observed on the 20th of Adar I AND the 20th of Adar II.
If one has a death in a leap year, where one’s relative is passing away in either Adar I or Adar II specifically, then in a future leap year that yahrzeit only occurs once in the appropriate month. Namely, if one has a loss in Adar I then the yahrzeit in future leap year months will always be in Adar I.
There are a few oddball things that occur as well. For example, if one loses a relative on the 30th of Adar I, when is the yahrzeit in future non-leap years? Since there is no 30th of Adar normally in a regular, non-leap year, that question requires a rather complicated answer that will be reserved for a future column.
This is a leap year, we are slowing things down. Last fall, Rosh Hashanah was only a couple of days from Labor Day. This year it will be almost in October. Starting from Purim through Pesach, etc., the holidays will be dramatically later than they were last year, bringing us back in line with the way the seasons should function. I hope this answers your question.