Hebrew Calendar
Iyar 5792

Iyar is a month made entirely of transition. It starts after Passover and ends before Shavuot, and there is not a single day in it that falls outside the Omer count: twenty-nine days that each carry a number on the way from one to fifty.

And yet it holds the densest concentration of dates fixed in living memory. Pesach Sheni and Lag BaOmer are ancient; Israel's Memorial Day, Independence Day and Jerusalem Day were all set in the twentieth century, inside this same month. The result is a month that changes register constantly: from mourning to celebration inside a day, and from spring to summer inside three weeks.

The month of Ziv, whose whole content is a count

In the Bible this month goes by a different name entirely. Describing the start of work on the Temple, the book of Kings says it happened "in the month of Ziv — that is, the second month" ¹. The word Ziv means radiance, or budding: a name describing what is happening outdoors at the close of spring rather than any historical event. "Iyar", like every Hebrew month name in use today, arrived later, from Babylon.

That is part of its character. The Torah assigns it no festival at all. What it does assign is a count that runs through the month from end to end: "from the day on which you bring the sheaf of elevation offering... you shall count off seven weeks; they must be complete" ². The counting opens in Nisan and closes in Sivan, but its entire middle, four weeks and more, lies in Iyar. This is the month with no destination in it, only the road to one.

The days of Iyar, in order

Rosh Chodesh Iyar (30 Nisan and 1 Iyar). Two days, because Nisan is always full: the first of the two still belongs to Nisan, the second is already Iyar.

Yom HaZikaron, Israel's Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and victims of terror (4 Iyar). The country's national day of mourning, opened by a siren in the evening and closed by a second one the next morning.

Yom HaAtzmaut, Independence Day (5 Iyar). The day the State was declared in 1948, arriving immediately after Memorial Day: a deliberate hinge, so that each day explains the other.

Pesach Sheni (14 Iyar). Exactly one month after the eve of Passover: the date the Torah sets for anyone who could not bring the Passover offering at its proper time.

Lag BaOmer (18 Iyar). The thirty-third day of the Omer, on which the mourning customs of the counting period lift. In Israel it is the night of the bonfires.

Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day (28 Iyar). Marking the reunification of Jerusalem in the Six-Day War; the newest of the month's dates, fixed in 1968.

All of them sit inside one unbroken sequence: the Omer count, which carries on from here into Sivan and Shavuot.

"Why must we be debarred?": the people who asked for a second chance

Most dates in the calendar were handed down. One of them was created because people complained.

In the first year in the wilderness, as Israel prepared to bring the Passover offering, a small group came to Moses. They had been in contact with a corpse and were therefore ineligible, and instead of accepting that, they asked a question: "Impure though we are by reason of a corpse, why must we be debarred from presenting God's offering at its set time with the rest of the Israelites?" ³. Moses had no answer, and held the matter open until one arrived.

The answer, when it came, was not an explanation but a new date: anyone impure or away on a long journey would keep the Passover "in the second month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight" ⁴, exactly one month later. That is how Pesach Sheni came into being: the only date in the calendar added in response to a request, and one whose entire content is the idea that being late once need not be final.

A month that changes mood halfway through

A tradition of mourning attaches to the counting period, and it comes from a single passage in the Talmud: Rabbi Akiva had twelve thousand pairs of students, "and they all died in one period of time, because they did not treat each other with respect", and a few lines later the text adds: "they all died between Passover and Shavuot" ⁵. Which is to say, in the stretch Iyar sits at the centre of. From this comes the widespread custom of holding no weddings and taking no haircuts during part of the Omer, and from it comes Lag BaOmer, a day whose whole content is that the mourning stops.

The striking thing is that the young state placed its own days of remembrance on precisely this month, with no reference to that tradition. The result is a sequence with no parallel in the calendar: the 4th of Iyar a national day of grief, the 5th a day of independence, and the join between them is not a gap but a deliberate argument.

Iyar, then, is where the Hebrew calendar does the thing it does better than any other calendar: hold two opposite moods next to each other, and ask neither of them to apologise.

Common questions about the month of Iyar

When is Rosh Chodesh Iyar?
Rosh Chodesh Iyar runs for two days, because Nisan always has thirty. The first of the two is still the 30th of Nisan; the second is the 1st of Iyar. Both count as the new moon. The civil dates shift every year (this year 11-12/4/32), as shown in the grid above.

What month is Iyar?
By the count that starts in Nisan it is the second month; by the count of years that starts in Tishrei, the eighth. In civil terms it falls across April and May, sometimes reaching early June.

How many days are in Iyar?
Twenty-nine, always. Iyar is one of the fixed-length months: it does not vary between a full and a deficient year.

What are the dates in Iyar?
Memorial Day on the 4th (14/4/32), Independence Day on the 5th (15/4/32), Pesach Sheni on the 14th (25/4/32), Lag BaOmer on the 18th (29/4/32) and Jerusalem Day on the 28th (9/5/32). Some have their own pages with exact dates; the grid above shows how they sit inside one month.

When does Iyar end?
On the 29th of Iyar (10/5/32). Sivan begins the next day, and Rosh Chodesh Sivan lasts only one day, because Iyar is a deficient month.

An Iyar calendar: the whole month on one page

The grid at the top of this page shows Iyar as the Hebrew calendar sees it: the large numerals are the days of the Hebrew month, with the corresponding civil date printed beneath each one. It makes visible what is otherwise hard to see: how tightly packed these dates are. The 4th and the 5th touching, the 14th and the 18th four days apart, and the 28th almost at the close.

You can also see the two days of Rosh Chodesh Iyar opening the month, the Sabbaths and Torah portions read during it, and the 29th of Iyar closing it before Sivan. The button above the grid prints it to a single page, portrait or landscape, without the navigation or this text.

• Every festival and fast of the year in one table, and from there the page for each one with its own dates: Jewish holidays 2026
• The full printable calendar: printable 2026 Jewish calendar with holidays
• For a civil-month view, in which April and May appear separately: Gregorian month calendar

Related pages

• April 2032
• May 2032
• The Hebrew month of Iyyar 5792