Calendar and Community: A History of the Jewish Calendar, Second Century BCE to Tenth Century CE

Sacha Stern is a scholar of Jewish history at a research university, and this book is an academic history of how the Jewish calendar actually developed, from the observational lunar calendar of the Second Temple period through to the fixed arithmetic calendar used today, published by Oxford University Press. Its method is documentary, working from rabbinic, Qumran and other ancient sources to show the calendar changed over time rather than being handed down complete. That is also where its value lies for a reader, it corrects a common assumption that the modern fixed calendar is ancient, tracing exactly when and why it was fixed. Its limit is audience, it is a technical academic history and assumes some familiarity with rabbinic sources, not an introductory explainer of how the calendar works today.