Living Torah: The Double Month of Adar

By Rabbi Ari Enkin, Rabbinic Director, United with Israel

Unlike a secular leap year, which has merely one additional day, a Jewish leap year includes an additional month, causing confusion that necessitated rabbinical rulings.

Glancing at your Jewish calendars may sometimes be cause for confusion. That’s because in some years the Hebrew month of Adar seems to extend significantly longer than 30 days.

Indeed, unlike a secular leap year, which includes merely one additional day, a Jewish leap year has an additional month, a second Adar. This additional month, which surfaces seven times within a 19-year cycle, is an essential Torah-mandated appendage, primarily intended to ensure that Pesach (Passover) will never fall in the winter.

The Torah tells us that Pesach must be observed “in the spring.” With the lunar calendar being “behind” the solar calendar by 11 days each year, sooner or later Chanukah would fall in July and Pesach in December – an unacceptable arrangement.

This additional month of Adar does make for some legitimate confusion. For starters, which Adar is the real one – the first or the second? This Adar ambiguity is especially evident with regard to the observance of lifecycle events and, perhaps most important, Purim.

Conveniently, with regard to Purim, the Mishna (rabbinic literature) is very clear in ruling that the reading of Megillat Esther (The Book of Esther) and other related mitzvot (commandments) of Purim must be observed in the second Adar, making the first Adar appear to be the supplementary one. Nevertheless, the first Adar is viewed with some sanctity as well. For example, according to many authorities, the halachic requirement to be joyful in the month of Adar also applies to the first Adar. An interesting complication of a double Adar is that in many instances, if two people enter into a “year-long” agreement, and it is then discovered that there’s an additional Adar that year, the agreement may be binding for 13 months!

(templeinstitute.org)

The laws of mourning are somewhat different. They are actually a unit classified as “12 months” and not “one year.” As odd as this may sound, in a year containing a second Adar, mourning restrictions will nevertheless cease after 12 months, even though an entire calendar year may not have passed.

The laws as they apply to a yahrzeit (anniversary of a person’s death) are distinctive as well, with no definitive opinion on how to conduct oneself. Some authorities rule that all Adar yahrzeits are to be observed in the second Adar, while others rule that they are to be observed in the first. There is, of course, an additional opinion which rules that a yahrzeit is to be observed in both Adars!

With regard to a bar mitzvah, the practice is, by and large, as follows: If there were two Adars in both the year that the boy was born and again in the year of the bar mitzvah, then everything is straightforward. If, however, the boy was born in a year that had one Adar, and in the year of his bar mitzvah there are two Adars, then the bar mitzvah is to take place in the second Adar. Here’s something intriguing: it is actually conceivable for a boy who is younger to become bar mitzvah before one who is older! For example, a boy born on the 10th of Adar II will become bar mitzvah before a boy born on the eighteenth of Adar I, if in their bar mitzvah year there’s only one Adar!