Following Rabbi Shlomo' sermon last Shabbat which dealt with why fixing a calendar is the first Mitzvah taught in the Torah and how the lunar (Jewish) calendar interacts with the solar (secular) calendar, Raphael Langham kindly sent me the following notes:
1. Judaism isn't the only religion that has a lunar calendar adjusted to the solar one. Burmese Buddhism (and probably other branches as well) uses one. They have twelve months each of 28 days and every few years an extra month is added to keep sync. with the solar calendar so that religious festivals are at much the same time each year. Interestingly the extra month has the same name as the previous one but with the number 2 (or the Burmese equivalent of sheni) at the end.
2. I hope it works better than ours. In 20,031 (Gregorian) 23792 (Jewish) Yom Kippur falls on Christmas day. Only just over 18,000 years to go, I just can't wait!
3. One should always try to work by the precept 'The best is the enemy of the good'.
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