What Is Shabbat and How Do You Find Its Times?

Updated

Shabbat is the weekly Jewish day of rest, running from Friday sunset to nightfall on Saturday. To find its start and end times, you look up candle-lighting (Friday, before sunset) and Havdalah (Saturday, after nightfall) for your specific city — Hebcal supports candle-lighting and Havdalah times for Shabbat and holidays across more than 100,000 world cities. The times are location-dependent, so the city you enter determines the result.

What Shabbat Is

Shabbat is the seventh day of the Jewish week, observed as a day of rest. In the Jewish calendar it recurs every week, and it sits alongside the holidays, Rosh Chodesh, and special Shabbatot that Hebcal lists. It is also tied to the weekly Torah portion: the Parashat ha-Shavua is read on Shabbat, and Hebcal provides an aliyah-by-aliyah breakdown, full kriyah, triennial cycle, and weekday readings.

Two time markers frame the day:

  • Candle-lighting — Friday, before sunset, marks the beginning of Shabbat.
  • Havdalah — Saturday, after nightfall, marks its end.

Hebcal also gives start and end times for fast days, which use the same kind of time lookup.

How to Find Shabbat Times

  1. Go to the Shabbat Times section of Hebcal.
  2. Enter your city. Over 100,000 world cities are supported, so use the city you actually need rather than a nearby large one if the two differ.
  3. Read the candle-lighting time for Friday and the Havdalah time for Saturday.
  4. If you want the whole year at once, use the year-at-a-glance view instead of checking week by week.

The expected result is a pair of times for the coming Shabbat in your location. Because candle-lighting is before sunset and Havdalah is after nightfall, the two times are not symmetric around the day — they depend on local sunset and nightfall.

Getting Times Into a Calendar

Hebcal lets you download Jewish holidays and Hebrew dates to iPhone, iPad, Android (via Google Calendar), Outlook, macOS Desktop Calendar, or any app that supports iCalendar (.ics) feeds. If you want Shabbat times to appear automatically each week, this avoids re-querying the site.

Common Pitfalls

  • Wrong city or time zone. Times are calculated per location. A city in a different time zone, or even a different latitude, can shift candle-lighting and Havdalah noticeably.
  • Confusing the two markers. Candle-lighting is the Friday start; Havdalah is the Saturday end. Mixing them up will give you the wrong day.
  • Assuming a fixed clock time. The times move with the seasons because they track sunset and nightfall, so last week's time may not apply this week.

Where Shabbat Fits in the Wider Calendar

Shabbat is one layer of the Jewish calendar that Hebcal covers. The same site handles:

Feature What it gives you
Holidays Major, minor, and modern holidays, Rosh Chodesh, minor fasts, special Shabbatot
Date Converter Conversion between Hebrew and Gregorian dates
Torah Readings Aliyah-by-aliyah breakdown, full kriyah, triennial cycle, weekday readings
Yahrzeits and Birthdays Personal lists of Yahrzeit, Yizkor, Hebrew birthdays, and anniversaries for 20+ years
Daily learning Daf Yomi and Mishna Yomi

If you are building something rather than just looking times up, Hebcal offers JavaScript, JSON, and RSS APIs under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license, so content can be embedded directly into a synagogue website.