Yahrzeit calculator
Enter the date somebody died and this gives you the Hebrew date, and the civil date the yahrzeit falls on for the next twenty years.
Type a date, or open the calendar
What a yahrzeit is
A yahrzeit is the anniversary of a death, kept by the Hebrew date rather than the civil one. It is when kaddish is said, a candle is lit for twenty-four hours, and in many families when the grave is visited.
Because it follows the Hebrew calendar, the civil date moves every year - usually by ten or eleven days earlier, then jumping forward by about nineteen when a leap month is added. That is why a date you worked out once is no use the following year.
Why the day starts at sunset
A Hebrew day runs from sunset to sunset. Somebody who died at nine in the evening on 3 March died on the Hebrew date that the civil calendar only reaches on the 4th.
There is no way to tell this from the civil date alone, which is why the question has to be asked. If the time is not known, the usual practice is to take the civil date as given.
The two dates that do not exist every year
Two Hebrew months change length: Cheshvan and Kislev have either twenty-nine or thirty days depending on the year. A death on the 30th of Cheshvan therefore has no anniversary at all in some years.
Adar is the harder one. Seven years in every nineteen have a second Adar, so a death in Adar of an ordinary year has two candidate months in a leap year. Practice differs: many follow the ruling that it is kept in Adar II, others in Adar I, and some keep both. This is a question for your rabbi rather than a calculator.
Death date or burial date
Where burial followed more than three days after death, some authorities hold that the first yahrzeit follows the burial and every year after follows the death. Others follow the death date throughout. Again, worth asking rather than assuming.
Common questions
How is the yahrzeit date calculated?
The civil date of death is converted to its Hebrew date, and the yahrzeit is that same Hebrew day and month in each later year. The civil date it lands on changes every year.
What if the death was after sunset?
The Hebrew day had already begun, so the Hebrew date is the following one. Tick the sunset box and the calculation shifts by a day.
Why does one year in the table have no date?
The Hebrew date does not occur that year - either it was the 30th of a month that had only twenty-nine days that year, or an Adar question. Ask your rabbi which day to keep instead.
Is this calculator free?
Yes, and it needs no account. If you want the date to appear in your own calendar every year automatically, you can make a free family calendar that does that.