Rosh Hashanah, the head of the Jewish Year, began at sundown on 18 Sept 2020. My calendar, the 2020 Religious Arts Calander, indicates that this began year 5781.
Yom Kippur begins this evening, 27 Sept 2020, at sundown. On Friday of the 25th week in ordinary time, 25 Sept 2020, the office of the readings included a section from the book of the Prophet Ezekiel:
On the tenth day of the month beginning the twentyfifth year of our exile, fourteen years after the city was taken, that very day the hand of the Lord came upon me and brought me in divine visions to the land of Israel, where he set me down on a very high mountain.
Yom Kippur is the 10th day after Rosh Hashanah, the head or beginning of the Jewish year. Ezekiel is having these visions on Yom Kippur.
It is interesting to note he doesn't say the year is 571 BC, or 571 BCE. No, he sets the year as relating to the year "the city was taken," and the "year of our exile."
The Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, is not the 1st of January, and it doesn't begin at midnight with a ball drop at Times Square in NYC.
The Jewish calendar is not 'common' with the calendar that we use. The Jewish year is 5781, not 2020. The Jewish day is not midnight to midnight, nor are the months in the Jewish calendar named January, February, March etc. The Jewish months are named Nisan, Iyar, Sivan, etc.
Jewish months do not follow the rule:
Thirty days has September, April, June and November...
No, Jewish months are a lunar cycle, new moon to new moon. Islamic months are also lunar.
It is an error to label the years in our calendar CE for Common Era, and BCE for Before Common Era.
We follow the Gregorian Calendar. In the Gregorian Calendar it is appropriate to use the terms Before Christ (BC), and the Year of our Lord, Anno Dominum (AD).
Would that we as a culture would recognize this truth, and act accordingly.
