Jewish Bubba: Starting JANUARY off With A Bang In Israel

Nadene Goldfoot

Happy New Year Everyone to 2024. On the Jewish Calendar it's Tevet/Shevat 5784; the year five thousand seven hundred and eighty-four years. Today, January 1, is Tevet 20. Tevet is the name of the month. What are the 12 months of the Jewish calendar? Usually there are twelve months in the Jewish (Hebrew) calendar. They are, in order: , Iyar, Sivan, Tammuz, Av, Elul, Tishrei, Heshvan, Kislev, Tevet, Shevat, and Adar. Today the whole world operates under the calendar starting with January. This is the Gregorian calendar which is the calendar used in most parts of the world. It went into effect in October 1582 following the papal bull Inter gravissimas issued by Pope Gregory XIII, which introduced it as a modification of, and replacement for, the .

If you think "how old" these names are, look at what the world is still using; Roman names of 2 months. The names of Roman months originally functioned as adjectives January and March honor the gods Janus and Mars;

In ancient Roman religion and myth, Janus (/ˈdʒeɪnəs/ JAY-nəs; Latin: Ianvs [ˈi̯aːnʊs]) is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces.

The god, Janus

July and August honor Julius Caesar and his successor, the emperor Augustus, and the months Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December are archaic adjectives formed from the ordinal numbers from 5 to 10.

So on this auspicious date, let's look at what's happening in Israel. Israel welcomed the new year of 2024 under a large Hamas rocket attack targeting the center and south of the country, including Tel Aviv. 18 rockets were intercepted and no damage or casualties were reported. Rockets and attack drones were also launched from Lebanon.

I went to bed last night with the sounds of fire crackers for about an hour or two. I thought of how in Israel such a sound would be for real. It was. How frightening that must have been.

The IDF strike targets in Khan Yunis, Gaza and in southern Lebanon. Khan Yunis is a city in the southern Gaza Strip; it is the capital of the Khan Yunis Governorate in the Gaza Strip. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Khan Yunis had a population of 205,125 in 2017. Khan Yunis, which lies only 4 kilometers (about 2.5 miles) east of the Mediterranean Sea, has a semi-arid climate with temperature of 30 degrees Celsius maximum in summer and 10 degrees Celsius minimum in winter, with an annual rainfall of approximately 260 mm (10.2 in)