WORD OF THE MONTH

A weekly feature of Torah Tidbits to help clarify practical and conceptual aspects of the Jewish Calendar, thereby better fulfilling the mitzva of HaChodesh HaZeh Lachem... 

A simple curiosity many years ago lead to an ongoing compilation and observation of various statistics of the Jewish Calendar, which have graced this column continually over the years. It started with wondering how often there was a second Shabbat Chanuka, and therefore how rare was its special Haftara read. This lead to a homemade computer program to help find the stats. There are two Shabbat-Chanuka on average 18.4% of the time. Next came the "discovery" of a rarer Haftara – the regular Haftara of Mikeitz (which we read this Shabbat). Mikeitz is NOT Shabbat Chanuka only 10.1% of the time. That means that on average, we should read the episode of Shlomo HaMelech and the two babies once in ten years.

However, the different types of years are not evenly distributed. The last times Mikeitz was not Cahnuka 5757, 5737, 5733, 5730, 5710. That's 3 times in an 8-year period flanked by two gaps of 20 years each. In our fixed calendar, the next time we are scheduled to read the regular Haftara of Mikeitz is 20 years from now, 5781. (Then 3 and 17 years after that.) So pay extra attention this Shabbat to a rare Haftara with a very famous story.