Looking at the dates for Hanukkah, Wikipedia says it starts on 25 Kislev and ends on 2 Tevet or 3 Tevet. I’m assuming that’s the correct way to write it, with the number first and the month second?
Is it also read aloud that way? Would I actually say “twenty-five Kislev”?
AFAIK first of all, the day is written in Hebrew numerals, not Arabic numerals. Hebrew numerals are not a decimal place/value system, e.g. 1 = א but 10 = י. Anyway, 25 = כה.
So the 25th day of Kislev would be כה’ בכסלב. I assume the numerals are read out as individual letters. Meaning kaf, he but I could be wrong, cf Lag B Omer, Tishah B’Av
If you had in mind English, how are you used to pronouncing dates? Remember, the fifth of November?
Sure, but I don’t know how to write in Hebrew. So I guess I’m asking how to write it in English - consider it a translation. If I want my audience to know what I’m talking about and they don’t speak or read Hebrew, then I need to write it in English. Is it the 25th day of the month of Kislev? If it is, then I’m going to use the Arabic “25” and the name “Kislev” written in English.
So is “25 Kislev” an appropriate way to write it? It’s certainly an unorthodox way to write it in English - I’d almost always write the month first and the number second.
I’ll assume, in your delightful last paragraph, that you just meant to answer my question directly and say, “Yes, you would say ‘the 25th of Kislev.’”
That is indeed my answer.
It looks OK to me. I have seen dates written in English as “9 November” as well as the other way round and am not sure it’s even unorthodox. [I just checked a couple of news websites and The Times had “August 11”, while the BBC had “11 August” on at least a few of the articles.]
Month first then day is the American convention - November 9 or November 9th.
Day first then month is the British convention - 9 November or the 9th of November
So both are correct in English, and English speakers should understand either even if they are much more accustomed to one or the other.
I don’t speak Hebrew, but I would think when you speak and write in English but using the Hebrew calendar, the conventions are the same as for the Gregorian calendar. And these conventions differ among English-speaking countries. So a Brit might write “25 Kislev” and pronounce it as “the twenty-fifth of Kislev”, whereas an American might write “Kislev 25” and pronounce it as “Kislev twenty-fifth” or “Kislev twenty-five”. The conventions are governed by the language you speak, not the calendar you use the language for.
Speaking as an American Jew, I’ve always seen “25 Kislev”, and I would say it aloud that way, I wouldn’t switch the order.
Browsing English Wikipedia, I see a Mayan date written as “2 Pop”, and an Islamic lunar date as “10 Rajab”. On the other hand, the article concerning the Malayalam calendar has both “the 1st of Metam” and “Metam 1”. All that is the result of some anonymous Wikipedia editors, of course.
I still think it’s perfectly correct to write “25 Kislev” and say “the twenty-fifth of Kislev”. FWIW in spoken and written Hebrew the numeral comes first.
The people who generally use the Hebrew calendar, even in Israel, are the highly religious. They tend to use the numerology system for numbering the day. So the first of the month is א, the second is ב, and so on; י is 10, כ is 20, ל is 30, and so on; ק is 100 and so on till ת which is 400.
So the date, including the day number and year number, would be written in Hebrew numerals.
How often do people use the Hebrew calendar in Israel? Would an average secular Jewish Israeli use it in day-to-day life, like to make a doctor’s appointment?
It’s a calendar used to calculate Jewish religious holidays; it isn’t used beyond that in Israel more than anywhere else, except for some extra holidays like Israeli Independence Day. It might be relevant to a doctor’s appointment as far as making sure you don’t accidentally schedule an appointment for Yom Kippur or similar, but the person taking the appointments should have holidays blocked out in their book.
Not at all, in my experience.
When I was a kid there was a commercial for this snack – basically biscuits and chocolate spread in a little plastic container, and you’d dip the biscuits in the chocolate. The commercial showed a class field trip to a Roman amphitheater where all the kids are sitting on rocks and listening to a lecturer talk about history; it’s portrayed as dreadfully boring until one of the kids whips out this snack and passes it around to his friends who all get excited, all while the oblivious lecturer drones on. The lecture begins with the guy rattling off a date using the Hebrew calendar, and it stands out to me all this time later because it’s one of the only times I’ve seen anyone list a date this way.
I think the reason they did that was specifically to make the lecture appear even more boring and unrelatable.
The hebrew year is more relevant and sometimes you’ll see it listed but almost always in a religious context still (Hannukah Party *תש"פ instead of Hannukah Party 2020).
Supposedly some religious people celebrate their birthdays and anniversaries based on the hebrew date but I couldn’t tell you if that’s true or not, and I’ve always used my Gregorian birthday. In hindsight, I should have convinced my parents to celebrate both – two birthdays a year!
*פ is a letter that varies between פ and ף depending on whether it ends a word – almost like a reversed capital letter. I had to look up if the proper way to spell the year is פ or ף and it turns out this is a matter of contention in some communities! I didn’t read deeply enough to see what the arguments for each side are but an interesting tidbit nonetheless.
Not true. It’s implicitly used by anyone who wants to know when a Jewish Holiday will be. I mean, I write down on my traditional Western calendar thatYom Kippur will be September 27, but I expect my Temple Newsletter to also refer to it (and all the other holidays) by it’s Hebrew calendar date, and whenever I go to a service they mention what day it is in the Hebrew calendar.
So… Do I use the Hebrew calendar. Maybe not really. But do I routinely hear people say Hebrew-calendar dates out loud? Yes. And I’m not very religious.
Not my experience at all. The only time I see the Hebrew year is on Rosh Hashanah cards, and the only time I hear it is during the high holidays (and mostly on Rosh Hashanah.) Whereas the clergy will literally mention the Hebrew date every single week, and use it to say how long until the next holiday, etc. It’s also tied to which Torah passage we will be reading.
(“In this month of Adar our thoughts turn towards…”)
That seems like a nitpick to me. If I want to know when Passover is, then yes, it’s Nissan 15. But since I don’t use the Jewish calendar for anything else, I have to look up when that date falls on the Gregorian calendar in a given year.
You’re right that the month comes up occasionally as well. But aside from learning the months in school I can’t think of another time I used them.
And yes, the rabbis at synagogue mention the dates, but even if you go to synagogue weekly without being highly religious, the clergy certainly qualify! At least in my book.
There’s nothing wrong with writing 25 Kislev.This is the way it’s done in Hebrew, except that we Israelis would use the Hebrew-letter numerals instead of 25.
If you want to write it the other way (Kislev 25), because that sounds more natural, that would be fine, too. You are aiming at an audience who speaks English-- The important thing is to communicate clearly, not to get hung up on grammar and word order in a foreign language with an incomprehensible alphabet and horrible gutteral sounds that hurt your throat. 
.
When speaking, you should say “the 25th of Kislev”, which sounds as natural as saying “the 4th of July”.
As for use of the Hebrew calendar among Israelis: it is basically non-existent among non-Orthodox Jews. With one exception: the year.
The school year starts in September, as does the Hebrew year., For example, right now there is a serious issue with going back to school because of the virus, so the newspapers are reporting on whether the תשפא school year will begin, not the 2020 school year… And all diaries and office calendars (such as appointment books, etc) also begin (and end) in September, are labelled with both the Hebrew and Gregorian year… The Hebrew dates and months are listed in small letters on each page, but never really used.
I guess my point isn’t that non-religious people USE the Hebrew calendar, but that we sometimes refer to Hebrew dates, and often see them. And despite being a non-religious English-speaking American, I expect the date to be written “25 kislev”, and I’d be surprised to see anyone refer to “kislev 25”, which just looks wrong to me.
Since OP asks specifically how it would be spoken aloud, note that dates are pronounced with the preposition “B”, meaning “in”. So for example Tishah B’Av literally says “Ninth in Av”.
“B” can be translated into English in various ways, according to whatever is idiomatically best. So a date like Tishah B’Av might typically be translated as “Ninth of Av” rather than “Ninth in Av”, since that is how we’d typically say that in English.
“B” is also sometimes translated as “with”. This is one way of creating adverbs. From the Wiki page on Hebrew grammar:
Thus, “in carefulness” (carefully), for example, could also be translated as “with care”.
In a phrase like “Is there in truth no beauty?” the words “in truth”, in Hebrew, would be “b’emet” (literally, “in truth”) but could be translated as “with truth” or simply “truly”.
It you want to be really literal, it actually means “Nine in Av”; “ninth” would be “Tshi’i”.
(Incidentally, the Hebrew versions of First, Second, Third etc. only go from 1 to 10).