It’s About Time

Why does Easter ‘move about’? And why doesn’t Christmas? Why might Muslims return from the mosque disappointed at the end of Ramadan? Why can you not find out the date of Chinese New Year 2028? Why does February only have 28 days in a normal year? Is the Jewish calendar really unreasonable? In this session, Clive will explore the variety of calendars from around the world, drawing from his past experience as editor and compiler of the seminal ‘Calendar of World Religions’ Festivals’. Proposing that calendars are one of the quickest routes to understanding a culture, Clive will look at a number of calendars in use around the world, set in context the Jewish calendar and consider whether or not it is one of the most obvious or strangest to be found on the globe.

Clive Lawton, currently CEO of the Commonwealth Jewish Council, a tribunal Chair for the NHS, scholar-in-residence at London’s JW3 Jewish cultural centre and a Presiding Justice on the Wiltshire Bench, became a leading calendrical expert through his work on world religions and their festivals back in the 1980s. With over a dozen books published and several degrees, most relevant here is a Master’s in Hinduism and Islam from the University of Liverpool. Clive is perhaps best known in the Jewish world as one of the four founders of Limmud and was responsible for its worldwide spread.