April is the most crowded month in the Israeli year. Passover almost always falls in it, and is usually followed by Holocaust Remembrance Day, Memorial Day and Independence Day: a sequence running from freedom to mourning to celebration inside a fortnight. Schools break and return, a full working week barely exists, and no two years look alike, because everything hinges on the weekday the Seder falls on.
Where the name April comes from
April is the one month of the calendar whose name nobody can account for with certainty. The oldest and most widely repeated explanation, offered by the Romans themselves, derives Aprilis from the verb aperire, to open: the month in which the buds open and the ground opens. A second explanation, just as old, ties it to Venus through the Etruscan form of Aphrodite's name.
Either way the sense is the same: this is the month the natural world starts working again. The Hebrew calendar marks the same weeks in much the same terms: the Torah calls Nisan the month of aviv, spring, and makes it the month from which the year's months are counted.
April around the world
April's great festival in the Christian world is Easter, and its date is fixed exactly the way a Jewish festival's is: the Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. That rule was settled in the fourth century out of a wish to stay close to the original story, in which the crucifixion happens at Passover, which is why the two festivals drift through the civil calendar together and almost always land in the same week.
The first of April is a day for hoaxes across much of the western world. One popular theory ties it to the moving of new year from late March to 1 January, leaving those who kept celebrating on the old date as figures of fun. There is no proof of it, but the custom itself is documented in Europe centuries back.
In Japan April is a genuine new year: both the school year and the fiscal year open on the first of the month, in the same week the cherry trees bloom. Millions go out to picnic beneath them: a custom called hanami, flower-viewing, which lasts a week or two a year and no longer.
What April weather is like in Israel
April is full spring, and the month in which the rain takes its leave. There is usually one more downpour or two (the malkosh, the last rain of spring) and after that the country dries out until October.
Tel Aviv typically runs between about 15°C and 25°C, Jerusalem between roughly 12°C and 22°C, and Eilat between 21°C and 33°C. The sea warms to around 20°C, enough for the first swim of the year.
It is also when the sharav arrives in earnest: days when the wind swings round to the east, the temperature jumps past 35°C and the air fills with desert dust, and then, within a day, the whole thing breaks and the weather is mild again. Anyone planning an outdoor meal in April does better to check the forecast the day before than the week before.
Jewish dates that fall in April
April usually spans Nisan and the start of Iyar, and no civil month of the year is busier:
- Passover: opens with the Seder on 15 Nisan and runs seven days in Israel, eight in the Diaspora. It falls between 26 March and 25 April, and nearly always here. The first and last days are festival days of rest, with the intermediate days between them.
- Shvi'i shel Pesach: the day that closes the festival, 21 Nisan, marking by tradition the splitting of the Sea of Reeds. In the Diaspora an eighth day follows it.
- Mimouna: the night the festival ends, a Moroccan Jewish custom that has become a general Israeli event of open houses and thin pancakes.
- Yom HaShoah: 27 Nisan, a week after Passover ends. It falls in April in most years and in early May in the rest. At ten in the morning a two-minute siren stops the country.
- Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut: 4 and 5 Iyar, back to back, falling in April in about half of years and in May in the rest.
Every date of the year in one table: the annual holidays calendar.
Common questions about April
When is Rosh Chodesh in April?
In most years April carries Rosh Chodesh Iyar, and it runs for two days, because Nisan always has thirty. In early years Rosh Chodesh Nisan turns up in its opening days as well. The grid above marks both. This year: Rosh Chodesh Iyar: 23-24/4/31.
Which Hebrew months does April cover?
Usually Nisan and the beginning of Iyar.
How many days are in April?
Thirty.
How many days off are there in April?
It depends on the year. Passover brings two festival days of rest and roughly a fortnight of school holidays, and in years when Independence Day also falls in April a third day off joins them. Yom HaShoah and Yom HaZikaron are working days.
When is Passover?
On 15 Nisan, between late March and late April, this year on 8-15/4/31. The Passover page carries the dates and times.
Printing an April calendar
The grid at the top of this page shows April whole, from the 1st to the 30th: the civil date and the matching Hebrew date in every cell, the Sabbaths and their Torah portions, and every festival and remembrance day falling in the month: days of rest, intermediate days and siren days alike. In a month like this one that is the difference between planning and guessing. The button above the grid prints it to a single page, portrait or landscape.
- Every date of the year with its own page: the annual holidays calendar
- The full printable year: home page
- For a Hebrew-month view, in which Nisan and Iyar each appear whole: Hebrew month calendar