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Adding a Hebrew Date Field

Noa Cohen-Orlov

May 14, 2011 17:28

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I would like to migrate my family's tree from another site to Geni. The only issue that prevents me from doing so is lack of Hebrew dates. In my family, we use Hebrew dates only for all significant dates (birth, death, marriage etc.). It would be great if there was a way to add Hebrew dates, at least for people who write "jewish" as their religion).

27 comments

• 1
  
  David Prins October 31, 2011 20:03

  See also http://help.geni.com/entries/457401-hebrew-date

• 5
  
  Chuck Bury November 04, 2011 17:18

  This is a useful feature for anyone with Jewish relatives because Jewish graves are often marker year of birth and death in  both the 'normal' calendar and the Hebrew calendar - because the years don't line-up, this can narrow down the specific date of birth to a much smaller (typically either 3.5 or 8.5 month) period than a full year.

• 1
  
  Ando November 18, 2011 01:20

  + the [http://help.geni.com/entries/20693628-julian-calendar Julian calendar] please.

  Julian calendar

• 0
  
  Ando November 18, 2011 01:22

  sorry for the mess, can someone clean it up please as it seems I'm not able to edit my previous post any more.

• 3
  
  Mindy Schwartz Brown September 30, 2018 16:45

  Hebrew dates would help confirm identity
  document and gravestones re: Jewish Ancestors written in Hebrew

• 2
  
  Dorann Cafaro September 30, 2018 17:28

  yes please add Hebrew dates as it might help someone.

• 1
  
  Mark Harold Melmed September 30, 2018 17:35

  Superb idea!

• 2
  
  Jon Arnon September 30, 2018 17:53

  This is a great idea. If you convert from Hebrew to English dates, remember that Hebrew days start at sundown.

• 1
  
  Sidney Barry Rabin September 30, 2018 18:19

  Please add Hebrew dates.
  Thank you

• 1
  
  Joshua Zvi Levin September 30, 2018 18:26

  Would be a good feature to add. Good idea.

• 1
  
  Todd Michael Edelman September 30, 2018 19:34

  Please dd this feature! It adds tremendous value to this great genealogy engine!

• 4
  
  Avrohom Marmorstein September 30, 2018 19:55

  Would be an excellent feature. In general Geni could expand to include items suitable for people of different backgrounds. For instance including whether someone is a Kohen or a Levite helps Jews, and including other tribal identities may be of use to genealogy researchers of societies where that is important. Cantonal and provincial identities may be important to some, baptism date is included because of the early LDS roots of many genealogists, but other societies have their needs too.

• 1
  
  Ben Slutzky September 30, 2018 22:46

  Hi all, this sounds like a very good feature -- regardless of exactly how it can be used. Perhaps there could be a way to add Hebrew dates for events, in addition to (OR instead of) Gregorian dates? I'd want to ensure as little confusion as possible when referencing past events. 

• 2
  
  Carol Fuchs (Halperin) October 01, 2018 06:08

  Would help a lot

• 1
  
  Jacqui October 01, 2018 09:29

  This sounds indeed like an extremely useful idea..
  One could also include a software that allows to convert the date in either direction (with a special mark signifying which one is a converted date), so that everyone can have access to both dates.

• 1
  
  Judy C. Navon-Dreyfuss October 01, 2018 09:30

  Might help. as long as we have hebrew dates in addition to dates as written until now. Thank you

• 1
  
  Yosef Bentzion October 01, 2018 18:58

  Great idea

  maybe a calendar converter too!

• 1
  
  Nina Golod October 02, 2018 04:33

  Not only Jews, but other nationalities also have the national calendar. The dates if birth some people celebrate according to the national calendar, others - according to Gregorian. 

  Geni make possible to create several tabs according to language. I expected to add the Jewish date in Hebrew tab. But this tab also have only Gregorian date.

  User can enter Hebrew date if he/she fill Hebrew tab, or leave the field empty. 

  I.e. the same profile can have both Gregorian (in English tab) and Jewish (in Hebrew tab) date of event. 

  User can enter only one of them. In addition the field "send.. reminder" can be checked only in one of the calendars. Let's consider, that because the same person celebrate his/her birthday according to the Jewish calendar, and wedding date according to Gregorian.

• 1
  
  Jesse Eisenheim October 02, 2018 20:05

  Yes, please add this as it would be a very useful feature.

• 1
  
  Joe Slater October 02, 2018 22:42

  I agree, this is a really important improvement for anyone recording data specified using the Jewish calendar.
  1) We should be true to dates given in original documents;
  2) Since Jewish days start at nightfall, while secular ones start at midnight (at least nowadays) a naive conversion is not possible;
  3) The staggered adoption of the Gregorian calendar across Europe means that conversion between Jewish and secular dayes may be actively misleading.

• 0
  
  David Ziants October 03, 2018 12:12

  This is a very good idea. There should also be an indicator that can be set if the person passed away at night time before (civil) midnight, and then automatic conversion Hebrew to Gregorian or Gregorian to Hebrew should not be an issue and this can be automated (Joe Slater's point 2 resolved).
  A decision would need to be made of whether this is available on Hebrew and Yididsh language tab's only.  My approach would  prefer to have this available on all language tabs. Maybe alternative date fields which can be caused to appear on the form by the user pressing a "+" or something, of course in addition to the Gregorian date if this is known. Date options can also include Muslim date,Julian date as is relevant for the profile.

• 0
  
  David Ziants October 03, 2018 12:17

  Someone mentioned indicator to say whether person is kohen or levi.
  I actually find the name suffix field is just right for this. In English haKohen or haLevy and in Hebrew הכהן or הלוי.

• 2
  
  David Ziants October 03, 2018 12:31

  For a Jew or Jewess - with regards to name - what would also be useful would be a "shem 'b'yisrael" (Jewish Name) field. This is the person's Hebrew or Yiddish name (or combination of Hebrew or Yiddish) combined with the patronymic - and this is used in formal Jewish settings - for example on ketuba. (marriage document) or grave stone. In Israel and among some orthodox Jews in the diaspora this can also be the civil name (without patronymic), but for this there is already the Hebrew and Yiddish tabs. Also alternative versions of this should be available for entry - as unfortunately for example, many a time the name on the gravestone is not exactly as the name on the ketuba. Meanwhile, if there is a double barrel name one component is Hebrew and one part Yiddish - for example Tzvi Hirsch - I put the Tzvi bit on the Hebrew tab and the Hirsch bit on the Yiddish tab - but I feel this to be quite awkward.

• 0
  
  ing Jeroen M.W. van Dijk December 01, 2019 16:24

  I must say I have not seen a request with this high number of support. And no reaction from the Geni staff or the mother company. 

   

  I support the idea that it could be a localized option or that you can add the data in your own local system. And see it in your own language and system. 

   

  For me it is dd/mm/'yy and it would nice if everyone can see it in their own language or system. 

• 0
  
  Nina Golod December 01, 2019 17:49

  We are talking about different calendar, no language. Some of my relatives celebrate their birthdays according to Hebrew calendar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_calendar

  The calendar use the different system of months and days counting.

  I receive the birthday reminders sometimes earlier and sometimes a month after the birthday. So, I cannot use the birthday reminders for some relatives.

  It is really strange, that it is no reaction of Geni staff during 8 years. MyHeritage also not support Hebrew and other national calendars.

• 0
  
  Dimitri Vulis July 28, 2020 20:44

  I was thinking about how Geni/MyHeritage might support multiple calendars and wanted to share a simple suggestion. It would be helpful if one could associate a list of one or more alternative calendars with a (Gregorian) date stored in Geni asking Geni to automatically display the same date in the other calendars when rendering the date for display. I'll illustrate this suggestion with a few use cases.

  For concreteness, suppose that I knew that my second great grandfather died exactly on March 15, 1896  .

  I'd store the Gregorian (new style) date in Geni. (It would be too hard and error-prone to ask Geni to allow entering dates in other formats. Let the genealogist entering the information into Geni figure out the corresponding Gregorian date. There are many good conversion tools on the Internet).

  However the Gregorian date needs an additional data item: the choice of "before sunset", "after sunset", or "unknown with respect to subset", to support calendars where a new day starts at sunset, rather than at midnight.

  Use case: Julian (old style) calendar(s)

  Any sources from the pre-1918 Russian archives would have either only the Julian (old style) date March 3, 1896; or both Julian and Gregorian dates with a stroke (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_dating for example). I would cite such a source, but the Julian date would not match the (Gregorian) date stored in Geni.

   For example, Geni could be asked to display this date as:

  March 15, 1896 (Julian, Old style: March 3)

  Or: January 3, 2020  (Julian, Old style: December 21, 2019)

  For example, Geni could be asked to display George Washington's birth date as February 22, 1732 (Julian, Old style:  February 11, 1731) - showing that we do match the date in his birth certificate. (I am not sure if we can get away with using the same alternative calender for Russian and British 'old style' - they may need to be separate calendars).

  Use case: Jewish (Hebrew) calendar

  If I had a photograph of the grave showing his death date as 1st of Nisan, 5656, then,  not considering sunset, it would be helpful to cite this photo as a source; and to have Geni automaticlly render the date as 

  March 15, 1896 before sunset (Hebrew: 1 Nisan 5656)

  to show that it matches the source, or for yahrtzeit.

  (It should not be hard to include support for other even more diverse calendars, e.g. 30 Ramadan 1313 or 25 Esfand 1274 or 25 Phalguna 1817, if anyone ever needs these on Geni - see http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/calendar/ for many examples)

  Anniversary reminders

  Geni can be asked to e-mail reminders of birthdays and wedding anniversaries using the Gregorian calendar. It probably would not be a lot of work to associate another calendar (such as Hebrew) for tracking anniversaries of particular dates. However I'm not sure how central this function is in Geni.

  Considerations for converting incomplete dates

  Suppose that I know that an event happened in the calendar year 1896 (Gregorian) but I don't know the month or the date of the month. A way to for Geni render this information in Jewish (Hebrew) calendar without loss of information is "between 15 Teveth 5656 and 26 Teveth 5657".

  Suppose that I know that an event happened in the calendar year 1896 (old style). The way for me to store this information in Geni without loss of information is "between 13 January 1896 and 12 January 1897".

  Suppose that I know that an event happened in the Hebrew calendar year 5656, but not the month. The way for me to store this information in Geni without loss of information is "between 18 September 1895 after sunset and 7 September 1896 before sunset".

  Gedcom Considerations

  Gedcom standard supports INT keyword to record Gregorian dates interpreted from other calendars

  date value := INT <date> (<date phrase>) 

  for example:

  2 DATE INT 15 March 1896 (Hebrew 1 Nisan 5656)

  Alternatively, one could also annotate an interpreted date with a note:

  2 DATE 15 March 1896

  3 NOTE Interpreted from Hebrew 1 Nisan 5656

  However Gedcom standard doesn't seem to support before/aftrer sunset flag.

   

   

   

  Edited by Dimitri Vulis July 26, 2021 15:29
• 0
  
  David Ziants October 19, 2020 19:30

  You are welcome. Now that you edited the comment with the correction, I see no point is maintaining my remark, and so have deleted this.