Mark A. Schneegurt, "Everyday Holiday: A Jewish Calendar of Events and Observances" (Independently Published, 2024)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: New Books Network

Episode: Mark A. Schneegurt, "Everyday Holiday: A Jewish Calendar of Events and Observances"

Host: Ari Barbalat
Guest: Dr. Mark A. Schneegurt
Date: September 26, 2025
Book: Everyday Holiday: Because Every Day Is a Special Day on the Jewish Calendar (Self Published, 2024)

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Overview: Main Theme and Purpose

In this episode, host Ari Barbalat interviews Dr. Mark A. Schneegurt about his comprehensive and unique work, "Everyday Holiday." Schneegurt’s book serves as an expansive calendar chronicling events and observances across the Jewish year—major and minor, global and local, joyous and tragic. The discussion touches on the book’s origins, the nature and richness of the Jewish calendar, its cultural and spiritual significance, and how both lay readers and experts can use it to deepen their understanding and connection to Jewish life.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Author Background and Book Genesis

• Personal Roots and Inspiration

  • Dr. Schneegurt, raised in a Conservative Jewish family in New York, credits both his upbringing and later independent study for his deep dive into the Jewish calendar.
  • Interest piqued by trying to keep track of family yahrtzeits and Jewish holidays in a personal calendar, which evolved into a vastly larger project.
  • “It was something that came out of my personal interest in just learning more about Judaism, learning more about the calendar, the cycle of Jewish events throughout the calendar.” (03:06)

• Development Path

  • Began as notes and entries in a digital calendar, grew into an app, then a website, and finally became a published book.

2. Purpose, Themes, and Lessons of "Everyday Holiday"

• Inclusivity of Jewish Dates:

  • The calendar features not just widely known holidays (like Passover or Hanukkah), but also lesser-known observances, personal milestones, local festivals, and historical events.
  • “Eventually the entire calendar, every day, filled up with several events, so that every day became a special day.” (05:27)

• Spiritual Perspective:

  • The calendar helps users connect to the unique “energy” or meaning of each day, enhancing personal and communal engagement with Jewish time.
  • “By understanding that cycle, we're more involved with it… perhaps there are energies in the reality that we live in that are resonant on certain days… that brings us closer to Hashem.” (06:39)

3. The Uniqueness and Importance of the Jewish Calendar

• Structural Distinctions

  • Unlike the solar-based Gregorian calendar, the Jewish calendar’s foundation is lunar, with leap months that keep holidays in their correct seasons—a distinguishing trait compared to calendars like the Islamic one.
  • “The Jewish calendar is interesting at first in that it is a lunar calendar, not a solar calendar… It's got deeper meaning to it. It follows the moon, the lesser of the two lights, the light of wisdom.” (09:06)

• Ritual Consistency

  • Holidays persist in their seasonal context, maintaining ancient connections between agricultural cycles and religious events.

4. Utility and Audience

• For Clergy and Educators

  • Rabbis and teachers can use the book as a “jumping off point” for sermons, lectures, or lessons, delivering timely and contextually relevant material.
  • “It's a jumping off point. It's tidbits of information listed chronologically that you can explore and then seek further information to flesh out a sermon or a little piece for a lecture.” (16:07)

• For Beginners and General Readers

  • Provides exposure to the full richness of Jewish life—major and minor holidays, biblical stories, rabbinic yahrtzeits, Holocaust dates, and more.
  • “Even for people who know a lot, there's thousands of entries here and probably many important rabbis that you've not studied, you've not learned about them…” (19:16)

• For Specialists and Scholars

  • Facilitates focused research by providing searchable, chronological data on themes, individuals, or places.
  • “A scholar could go in and… search for keywords and find a collection of events that are related in some way, perhaps to a time in Jewish history, perhaps to a set of years…” (23:00)

5. Research and Methodology

• Challenges and Achievements
  • Sourcing accurate data, especially for ancient or medieval figures and events, required consulting original sources, cross-referencing with genealogical and encyclopedic databases, and noting conflicting information.
  • “Some of these rabbis… their gravestones don't exist anymore, and it's hard to find the information...I tried to find at least three sources that seemed independent…” (27:01)

6. Unique Content Highlights

• Inclusion of Modern and Diverse Entries

  • Expanded second edition includes sports figures, politicians, and cultural icons (deceased).
  • “You have Jewish sports figures from the Olympics, from organized sports in the United States and elsewhere… there's so many stories.” (30:03)

• Regional and Lesser-Known Holidays: The Case of Sigd

  • Ethiopian Jewish holiday Sigd explored in detail; its scriptural, historical, and cultural context, and how it exemplifies local variation within global Jewry.
  • “This Sigd is a very interesting holiday… Ethiopian Jews believe that they were descended from the Queen of Sheba, and… are the line of Messiah.” (33:28)
  • Schneegurt describes personally celebrating by preparing traditional Ethiopian stew and reading some of the associated passages. (38:16)

• Local and Personal Purims

  • The calendar catalogs numerous minor, communal, and personal “Purims,” local days of deliverance, often marked by special readings or rituals.
  • “You could have personal Purims… it was like Purim, you were in jeopardy and you were miraculously saved in some way.” (41:18)

7. Broad Inclusivity and Intended Audience

• Wide Appeal
  • Conceived as both a personal tool and a general resource, Schneegurt sees the book as useful for people of any background—Jewish or not—seeking to connect with Jewish history or explore daily spiritual enrichment.
  • “It was originally written just for me, but others can use it as well and learn more about what’s happening and learn more about Jewish history and Jewish life…” (45:55)

8. Title Significance and Living in Jewish Time

• Living Every Day as Special
  • The book aims to inspire readers to be present and attentive to the unique significance of each day, fostering gratitude, learning, and deeper connection.
  • “One of the best things you can do for yourself is to live now, live today, live for this moment… I think making every day a holiday just gives you something to celebrate, something to feel good about, something to learn from every day.” (47:14)

9. Afterword: The Author’s Current Projects

• Continuing Scholarship
  • Schneegurt is working on translating and publishing the poetry of Haskalah figure Ephraim Kau and songs from the crypto-Jewish tradition, in partnership with musicians to “unsilence” voices from history.
  • “They are musicologists really, from University of Oxford… we’re starting to hear these songs sung for the first time in 400 years. We’re unsilencing the women and men that were trapped in the Inquisition…” (48:27)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Book's Purpose:
  “Every day, filled up with several events, so that every day became a special day. And it gave me an opportunity to enjoy that. And hopefully the reader will have an opportunity to connect with that as well.”
  (05:27, Mark Schneegurt)

• On the Lunar Nature of the Jewish Calendar:
  “It follows the moon, the lesser of the two lights, the light of wisdom… the Jewish calendar runs through a 19-year cycle. It has leap months and leap days…”
  (09:06, Mark Schneegurt)

• On the Use of the Calendar in Scholarship:
  “I look at entries… just kind of explore something. And one of the first things I explored was a cultic holiday… Sigd, that was not on my calendar originally. So I learned more about that.”
  (23:41, Mark Schneegurt)

• On Purims:
  “Some event in your life where it’s like Purim, you were in jeopardy and you were miraculously saved in some way. It seems miraculous to you…. You can create Purims for yourself and your family too, if you want. Make every day a holiday.”
  (41:18, Mark Schneegurt)

• On Every Day as Special:
  “One of the best things you can do for yourself is to live now, live today, live for this moment… I think making every day a holiday just gives you something to celebrate, something to feel good about, something to learn from every day.”
  (47:14, Mark Schneegurt)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |---|---| | 02:29 | Schneegurt’s Jewish upbringing, academic background, and early inspiration | | 04:02 | Book’s purpose: connecting readers daily to Jewish occasion | | 06:26 | Jewish calendar as a spiritual and mystical cycle | | 09:03 | The uniqueness of the Jewish calendar (lunar/solar distinction) | | 11:45 | The project’s origin as a personal tool and its development | | 16:01 | Utility for rabbis, educators, and lay people | | 18:57 | Value for beginners and advanced learners | | 22:51 | Use cases for specialists and experience as a research “launchpad” | | 26:53 | Research challenges: finding accurate historical data | | 29:33 | Inclusion of sports/history figures—criteria and challenges | | 33:28 | Discussion on the Ethiopian Jewish holiday Sigd | | 41:10 | Multiple Purims: communal days of deliverance | | 43:39 | The array of rabbis included—why and how | | 45:51 | Intended audience: for everyone | | 47:09 | Book title and the philosophy of living each day as holiday | | 48:11 | Schneegurt’s current projects: poetry, music, and crypto-Jewry |

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Conclusion

This episode is a compelling exploration of a book that maps the intricate, resonant topography of Jewish history and spirituality across the daily landscape of the calendar. Dr. Schneegurt’s work straddles the boundaries of scholarship, personal journey, and practical religious resource. Listeners leave with a sense of the layered richness of Jewish time—and are encouraged to find meaning and connection in every day.

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Transcript

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[New Books Network Intro]

Welcome to.

[Mark Schneegurt]

The New Books Network.

[Ari Barbalat]

Hello, welcome to the New Books in Jewish Studies channel of the New Books Network Podcast. I am your host, Ari Barbalat. Today I'm honored to engage in a dialogue with Mark Schneegert. We will discuss his newly published book Everyday Holiday because Every day is a Special Day on the Jewish Calendar. Self published by the author. 2024 Mark Schneegert is Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and affiliated faculty in the Department of History at Wichita State University in Wichita, Kansas. Mark, it's an honor to be in dialogue with you today.

[Mark Schneegurt]

Well, thanks Harry. It's fun to be here today. Thanks.

[Ari Barbalat]

To begin, please tell us about yourself. Where did you grow up? What formative events in your life catalyzed your interest in the subject presented in this book?

[Mark Schneegurt]

Thanks. I'm originally from New York. I was born in Brooklyn, raised on Long island and had a typical conservative Jewish upbringing. Went to Hebrew school, went to services sometimes. Some years we were three day Jews, some years not and I left for college and really only go back to New York to visit. So I got a PhD from Brown University. I then did a lot of postdoctoral training in industry and Purdue University, University of Notre Dame studying biology, which is my main interest. And then 25 years ago, came out to Wichita, Kansas, where I work in astrobiology and environmental sciences mainly. My interest in this work began perhaps 10 to 15 years. Well, maybe 15 years ago. And it was something that came out of my personal interest in just learning more about Judaism, learning more about the calendar, the cycle of Jewish events throughout the calendar. And it just seemed to grow from there to become a work of its own.

[Ari Barbalat]

What inspired you to prepare this book? What message do you hope to convey and provide to readers?

[Mark Schneegurt]

The book is a list of events, a list of events on the calendar and the Hebrew calendar. And it includes both historical events, religious observances, and many other events in Jewish history and about the Jewish people. And it's a way to connect to these events. Knowing when things are happening, knowing that certain days are special, can be enriching. It gives you an opportunity to study, learn more about that special quality of the day. It gives you more time and a reason to connect with that spirit and that energy. So it's enriching both personally and for your knowledge base as you learn more about these events. Typically, I might look at the calendar and choose one of the events for that day and start looking things up about it. And perhaps it's the yard site of a famous rabbi, and perhaps he wrote a book and there's some quotes or aspects of his philosophy that I can learn about, and it just becomes enriching. And this is not only for those types of historical events, but for the Jewish observances as well. I think everyone knows the major holidays, but they may not know the minor holidays. They may not know other special days. The one that I like to use as an example is the first of Nisan. This is a day when we say a blessing that you only say once a year. So it's special. And many people don't connect with that, But I really think that they should. I think they'll find that these smaller observances are also very valuable. And eventually the entire calendar, every day, filled up with several events, so that every day became a special day. And it gave me an opportunity to enjoy that. And hopefully the reader will have an opportunity to connect with that as well.

[Ari Barbalat]

Can you kindly summarize this book for us? What themes and lessons are conveyed to the reader?

[Mark Schneegurt]

You know, the Jewish calendar is a cycle of events that can direct our lives and keep us thinking and focused in a positive direction that brings us closer to Hashem. By understanding that cycle, we're more involved with it. And the. The book allows us to look at that and learn more about it and follow along as we move around the calendar. And from a mystical perspective, perhaps there are energies in the reality that we live in that are resonant on certain days and at certain times during the high holidays. There's a certain feeling, there's a certain energy that pervades our lives, and we want to connect with that. That brings us closer to Hashem, that brings us closer to our reason for being here as we learn about this and connect with those energies. And it's not just the energies of the holidays or of historical events, good or bad. When someone is born and when someone dies, the energies on those days characterize them or they characterize those energies. Everyone, it is said, chooses the moment of their birth. They choose the circumstances into which they're born. They choose the parents that they'll have and the challenges that they'll face in their life. And this all has to do with the timing. It's in part astrological or zodiac. It's from the Yetzera attributed to Abraham, the book. And these things all connect to what's going on around us. And as you experience that and know more about it, you can use that to your advantage to be more successful, to have deeper relationships, not only with other people, but with Hashem. So each learning about these just allows you to connect with that, and it's enriching. So that's the message I'm trying to get across.

[Ari Barbalat]

What, if anything, is unique about the Jewish calendar? Why is the Jewish calendar important to Jews and the Jewish religion?

[Mark Schneegurt]

Yeah, the Jewish calendar is interesting at first in that it is a lunar calendar, not a solar calendar. So the secular calendar that we're used to perhaps, is based on the sun and the yearly cycle of following the months as they're laid out. The Jewish calendar is more than that. It's. It's got deeper meaning to it. It follows the moon, the lesser of the two lights, the light of wisdom. It keeps us in sync with the heavens by following the lunar calendar. So this is traditionally the way the dates are given in the Bible as well. So you're keeping up with those dates and the lunar calendar as it's laid out, the Hebrew calendar, as it's laid out for Jews, is a calendar where the months and the holidays remain in their season. They don't move around the calendar. So Passover is always in the spring, and Sukkot is always in the fall. And these make sense because they're harvest holidays for certain crops. They're. They belong in the spot where they were originally celebrated. So the Jewish calendar runs through a 19 year cycle. It has leap months and leap days, depending on where you are in that cycle. But it keeps everything essentially where it was. As opposed to the lunar calendar for Islam, where the calendar shifts around the year and different holidays show up in different seasons each year. And to me it's fine for their studies, but for me I find it more valuable to have the holidays stay in their season so that when we're celebrating them, we're more connected to the real meaning of the holiday and the origin of the holiday. So I think that kind of makes the Jewish calendar stand out from even other lunar calendars.

[Ari Barbalat]

Why did you decide to undertake the project of a calendar in particular? Why specifically a calendar as opposed to a different kind of book? Can you describe the origin story of this project? Where did the inspiration first come from?

[Mark Schneegurt]

Thanks. To be honest, it was very personal for me. It was something that came out of what I was doing. I had a calendar on my phone and it was a secular calendar. And I would put events on initially started with of course, the big holidays. So I knew when Rosh Hashanah was and I knew when the other holidays were on the secular calendar. And then I started to put, well, my Hebrew birthday or my father's Hebrew birthday or yard sites of family members. And since the lunar calendar shifts relative to the secular calendar to some extent, given this 19 year cycle and leap months and it moves around a little bit every year, I would have to copy these events over to my new calendar, at least at that time. And I started adding other things. Well, I found that there were these minor holidays or cultic holidays or special days or special purims that were celebrated by certain communities. And I found all of these interesting. And I kept adding to my calendar and at some point I was transferring over perhaps 2000 entries and it became cumbersome. So I said, well, there must be a better way to do this. And initially I tried to write write applications for the iPhone and I learned how to write apps and I started writing apps. Some of them were pretty silly, just kind of basic apps and putting them in the app store. And I tried to make everyday holiday into an app. And it was really just for me. But it has to be public to be on the, you know, to be available for my phone. But I found that my. I'm really not a programmer, I'm a biologist. So I really couldn't get the database to work properly. And so I took the material and I wrote a website. In fact, the website is still there. It's been updated with the second edition of the book. And the website was mainly for me. I didn't advertise it. I didn't put it anywhere. I just didn't get a bunch of links towards it. And I would just be able to go up and look at it. And it has a little calculator that tells you what the Hebrew date is. So I could just look and find where I was and. And see what was going on that day. And so it really started with me. And then I had been writing or preparing some other books, and I thought that I would turn this into a book. And the first edition published about 10 years ago. But in looking at it a couple of years later, I realized that some of the entries, as I looked them up, did not seem as accurate as I would want them to be. The date wasn't as secure as I thought it was. The information was not scattered, but wasn't in the same format for each entry. So I had originally used secondary sources for all of it. Two or three secondary sources, including things like the Jewish Encyclopedia from 1904. And I wanted to fix that. I wanted to change that. So I spent a few years going through each one of the entries, doing a much more extensive search, looking for more original sources to clarify the dates and the places and the events themselves, Sometimes finding multiple pretty sound sources that did not agree with each other. And so that's noted in the book as well. And with this second edition, I also added a lot, many more events than had been there before in areas where it might have been weak. Perhaps the 20th century sports and music figures, and those types of entries are in there as well. So it really came out of my own personal interest in having the calendar. And once it was a website, it got turned into a book, and now it's in its second edition.

[Ari Barbalat]

So how can rabbis and clergy benefit from this book? How can Jewish educators benefit from this book?

[Mark Schneegurt]

It's a jumping off point. It's a point where a rabbi or an educator can look at what's happening that day and bring it to their class or bring it to their congregation. Perhaps they'll find something that would make. That would connect to the Torah reading that week. Perhaps they'll find something that they could include in their sermon for a teacher. I'm always starting my class with current events or a historical event or something to kind of catch their interest and make them think and be aware of today. Be aware of the moment that you're living in now and the context of that. So it's a jumping off point. It's tidbits of information listed chronologically that you can explore and then seek further information to flesh out a sermon or a little piece for a lecture that you're working on. So I think it's a good opportunity to learn more and bring more to your class and your congregation.

[Ari Barbalat]

How long did it take you to complete this project?

[Mark Schneegurt]

It's hard to say exactly. I don't know. When I started the first edition came out in 2014 and I had been working on it for maybe four or five years at that point to pull it together once I decided that I was going to make it into a website and flesh it out. But it was a few years before that that I was putting things on my calendar and then as I said, it was published and got it picked up by a few libraries and I started to look at some of the entries and felt that I wanted to improve the book. And it took perhaps five years to do that reassessment of the book while working on other projects, of course. And then this published last year in its second edition, which I think is a lot better, a lot more uniform and a lot higher fidelity to the truth, to the actual dates and places.

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[Ari Barbalat]

What does this book offer to beginners? How can laypersons with minimal previous knowledge grow from this work? How can those with basic or no pre existing knowledge benefit from this work?

[Mark Schneegurt]

This is something that could be used by anyone really. I mean beginners, they know a few of the holidays, they may not know all of the holidays. They may not know even the basics. And this is a way for them to see where they fall to just stimulate additional learning. So beginners will see things in here that they may not know. They'll also get to see the rich tapestry of Jewish life, of Jewish history. There's a great number of dates that are related to the Holocaust. There are a great number of dates that are related to happy events in Jewish communities. There are many dates that are related to historical events that are in biblical times. So you could learn more about the Bible, learn more about those stories, see the references to the Tanakh, and go in there and take a look. So for beginners, I think there's a lot of material there. And even for people who know a lot, there's thousands of entries here and probably many people, many important rabbis that you've not studied, you've not learned about them, and you may not be able to access their texts. They could be in Hebrew. You may be able to find something on the web about them, some excerpts, and learn a little bit more about them. Originally I was going to flesh it out and add all of those things. And some of the website entries do have click throughs where you can learn more about a particular topic. But in the end, when I started to figure out how long that would take to do properly, it would be writing an encyclopedia. And I just didn't. I thought it would take perhaps 20 years to do that. And I didn't commit to doing that at the time. But I think even from beginners to scholars could learn something from the book.

[Ari Barbalat]

What is your book's relationship to previous scholarship?

[Mark Schneegurt]

There are other calendars. This is not the first. It seems to be the largest. It seems to be the most extensive calendar of Jewish events assembled. There are others, there are others that are online from various organizations. There are other books. There were some of my sources that like the Jewish Encyclopedia has a lot of excellent information. There were a couple of other calendar books that had come out, one in the 60s, and so it builds off of those. I certainly used those as sources originally to gather information and make the list, but then went to a number of other sources throughout the web. There's so much out there today in terms of original sources, from newspaper entries to books that are specific about certain people. You can get a lot of information. And so those were sources that I looked at. And then there's a lot of books that'll have historical events with long stories about them. And here it's just kind of laid out entry by entry as to what happened that day. And a lot of the coincidences are interesting to note when you get certain types of events happening on certain days. So it fits in that context. It's again a jumping off point for scholarship, really, but it's not unique, but it is the largest, I believe.

[Ari Barbalat]

What does this book offer to specialists with advanced background knowledge? How can experts grow from engaging with your work? Can you comment on the relationship between this book and your other books in this context.

[Mark Schneegurt]

So I'll tell you a personal story of how I use the calendar. At one point, of course, a scholar could go in and if they have an electronic copy, can search for keywords and find a collection of events that are related in some way, perhaps to a time in Jewish history, perhaps to a set of years, they can get that kind of. Or place. You could search all of those and find all the entries for Prague, for instance, and learn more about the Jewish community and gather that information and the personalities that you might want to talk about when you're researching this. Personally, I would look at entries. I would just look at what was happening that day, kind of like a daily calendar when I had a little time. And I would take a look and just kind of explore something. And one of the first things I explored was a cultic holiday in a community of Jews that is kind of separated from traditional Judaism. And this is the Jewish community in Ethiopia, and they have a holiday, Sijid, that was not on my calendar originally. So I learned more about that. Another time, I ran into a poet who was part of the Haskala movement. He was Ephraim Kau, and he was a friend of Moses Mendelssohn and part of this whole change in Judaism and the birth of a different style of Judaism. And he was part of that Salon community. He was an epigrammist. He wrote short, witty poems. And his work, he was in the 18th century, and his work had never been translated into English, occasional poems here and there, but really had not been examined. So at the time, I translated the first 100 of his published poems. They were published after his death in 1792. So I published the first 100 and published a book of his poetry about 10 years ago. Now I'm working on all the rest of it. 649epigrams, 121 Translations of martial poems into German and then into English. So it's become a larger project for me just from learning about it. And he's always quoted as the first Jewish poet to write in a Western language, or at least to be published in a Western language. And then by looking at the calendar one day I found a poet and I learned more about him. And he was from the late 16th century, Louis de Carvajal. And Louis de Carvajal was a Mexican crypto Jew. So after the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal in 1492, he had converted, his family had converted, but they came to Mexico and lived as hidden Jews. Eventually, they got caught up in the Inquisition. And in their trials, there are poems or prayers, however you want to look at them. They're really songs, most of them, that are part of that community. They didn't have rabbis, they didn't have books, they didn't have Hebrew, they didn't have the liturgy. But they had these personal poems and songs. And so I started pulling those out of the Inquisition trials and made a collection of them and published that in 2020. So for me, it's been, like I say, a jumping off point. I see something, I learn about it, and then I'm just inspired to go down that rabbit hole and just keep learning more and more about it. And some of these have turned into full blown books for me.

[Ari Barbalat]

Which pieces of information included in this calendar were the hardest for you to find? Can you describe how you obtained such?

[Mark Schneegurt]

Yeah, it's, you know, you're thinking about finding obituaries, essentially, or information about events that happened long ago. So some of these rabbis, well known, there's not that much known about their lives. And oftentimes their gravestones don't exist anymore, and it's hard to find the information. So if you're looking back in the 19th century, it's a little easier. But when you get back to the 16th century, the dates are not as well known. And if you're talking a thousand years ago, there's many stories. They become almost mythical figures, some of these rabbis from back in those days. And it's hard. You see a lot of conflicting information and different sources. And I just kept looking and looking and tried to find at least three sources that seemed independent of each other that gave the same date. And then if I saw others, I would include those as alternate dates in the book that it may be. But I tried to put it on the best date possible. So that kind of information was difficult to get. Where a person might have lived or passed was also very difficult to get. And even more modern events, you'll be surprised, even events from the Holocaust, we don't know when a person passed in a concentration camp or the dates for this event. People will look at it differently. When did that pogrom start or end? And not everybody agrees on all the moments that these things happened. And so to codify that and write down an exact time took a lot of searching and many, many different sources. But Judas Encyclopedia is an excellent source. And I found that information to really agree with a lot of other sources, both before and after that. And some of the genealogical websites also seem to have reasonable, reasonably sound information that matched other dates. And times that I had found. So those things were probably the hardest and took the most searching to find.

[Ari Barbalat]

What key dates are included in this calendar from the world of sports and athletics.

[Mark Schneegurt]

Well, this was something that wasn't in the original version very much. There just were fewer people that were involved at that you could hear about in athletics. It wasn't organized in the same way that it is today. And the original version of the book, while I did use sources, particularly source text from the 1960s, much of it came from the 19th century or early 20th century. And so it was richer in those materials than it was in more modern materials. So the second edition has a lot more people you might have heard of. I don't include people that are living still. I don't know what their lives are going to be like and what their legacy is going to be like. And I didn't want to put people in the book that perhaps shouldn't be celebrated despite doing something great in their life, notable in their life at that point. So there are no really living people in the book, or at least at the time that it was published, but only people that had passed. And so Certainly in the 20th century, you have a great number of Jewish entrepreneurs. You have Jewish sports figures from the Olympics, from organized sports in the United States and elsewhere. There's a lot of Jewish politicians. With the influx of Jews into the United States, there's been a lot more chance for them to be in positions and be in celebrity positions. And so there's more writers and artists and people like that. There were some from earlier times, but there's fewer that are well known still. These are more accessible and you could go forever. There's so many interesting Jewish lives and Jewish stories, from Nobel Prize winners to Pulitzer Prize winners to Olympic gold medalists. There's so many stories, and at some point you just have to say, okay, this is the second edition, and these are the things that are going to be in it. But you could just. I'm sure there's somebody's favorites that aren't in there. That'll happen, too.

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[Mark Schneegurt]

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[Ari Barbalat]

See mintmobile.com you describe the Ethiopian holiday Sigd, which occurs in the month of Heshvan.

[Mark Schneegurt]

Yeah, this, this Sigd is a very interesting holiday. You know, the, the Ethiopian Jews believe that they were descended from the Queen of Sheba, and the Queen of Sheba had gone and lived in the court of King Solomon for quite some time. And they speculate that they had had children together and that they went back to Ethiopia and they were the ruling family of Ethiopia. So they believe that they are descended from David and are the line of Messiah. The community, however, that grew up in Ethiopia really didn't have Hebrew until 400 AD or so. That horn of Africa, it was very separated from the rest of the Jewish people. And there are communities like this throughout the world. The Cochin Jewish community in Southern India is another one that I'm interested in. And these communities, like the Inquisition, like the crypto Jews, although these weren't crypto Jews, but like them, they have their own liturgy, they have their own books. If you look at the Ethiopian Bible, it has more books than any other Bible. There are books that don't have equivalents in the Hebrew Bible today, in the Tanakh, even in the Apocrypha, you won't see these books. So they have books of Maccabees, but they're not the books of Maccabees. That we know they have other books of wisdom that have no equivalent. And they're written in traditional languages. Many of them have been translated into the modern Ethiopian languages of Amharic. But it was interesting to look at those. Some of those have been translated now, but translated in a type of pidgin English rather than translated into regular or American or European English. So this particular holiday in Chechon, if you know Sheshvan, they often call it Marsheshvan because it's a little bit sad, because it doesn't have any holidays in it. The month of Sheshvan doesn't have a holiday. You'll have, you know, the seventh of Sheshvan if you're in Israel. That's when you start to change the daily liturgy and asking for rain and those types of things after Sukkot. But there really isn't a holiday in the month of Sheshvan. It's the only month that doesn't have a holiday. And so the Ethiopian Jews is Beta Israel, they Falashas they call them in Israel. They have a holiday in Sheshvan and It's on the 29th of Sheshvan, and it's a law giving holiday. They celebrate the giving of the Torah. They read parts from Ezra, the giving of the Law and other parts of the Torah. So it has other prayers that go along with this day. And they celebrate. They go to the top of the mountain, they're very solemn in the morning. By the evening they're having a celebration and they have various things that they read. So if you look at where it is on the calendar, it is 50 days after the harvest holiday of Sukkot. And 50 days might ring a bell for you. You shall count seven weeks and then the day after you'll celebrate the giving of the law, which is Shavuot. So you count from the day of the offering on the second day of Passover, and you count seven weeks. And then the 50th day is a lawgiving holiday. So you're going from a harvest holiday to a law giving holiday in 50 days. And Sijjit is like that. It goes from a harvest holiday to a law giving holiday in 50 days. It seems like it should be there, but it's not in traditional Judaism. So you have to ask, is this something that used to be part of the calendar and then was lost, or was this something that was added by that community? I tend to go towards the latter, that it was added later, but we really don't know for sure the origin of it. One of the things that I found interesting about the holiday was they read Psalm 122, and Psalm 122 is a return to Israel holiday. It's a. If we do the right things, we will go back to our homeland and be able to celebrate there and be closer to Hashem. And in the middle of this, between verse three and four, they added some text, and they added a lot of text, like maybe a page of text into the middle of Psalm 122. And this hadn't been translated into English at the time, and it was hard to find. Eventually I got a copy of it. It was in Hebrew. It had been translated into Hebrew, and it had also been transliterated into Hebrew. So it was the original language with Hebrew letters and Hebrew sounds. So the Hebrew I was able to translate and have an English version of it. Now, the other. I happened to have an Ethiopian student in my office, and I said, let me read this to you, because I could read the Hebrew. And I read it to her, and she recognized it. She's like, well, that's Amharic. That's the language that I speak. So I knew what language it was in. And this is something also that I published. It's not a book, but it's available at the Wichita State University Libraries Online in their SOAR repository. So it's been translated since then. And there's a website that has some translations of the other books from Ethiopia. So to me, that was one of the first really deep dives that I took into one of the entries. And now every year I make an Ethiopian stew. And it's just something that's a. It's, you know, I make adora wat. It's just something that. And I don't read some of the passages because I collected all the passages from the Torah that they read, from the Tanakh that they read. And, you know, I'm not really celebrating it, but I'm recognizing it and I'm enjoying it. And it's enriching that day for me. And I try to do that every day.

[Ari Barbalat]

Your calendar makes mention of various different Purims. They include the. The Basra Persian Purim of 1774, the Carpenter France Purim of 1692, the Purim of Bombe Fossano of 1796, the Purim of Chios, 1669, the Purim of Urbino, 1798, the Prague Purim of 1619, the Pouring of Florence in 1790, the Purim of Ostrog, 1792, the Purim of Algiers, 1774, the Purim of Candia Crete 1583, Ibrahim Pasha Purim of Hebron, 1832, the Moroccan Purim of 1578, the Purim of Bandits of Opal, 1786, the Purim of the Poisoned Sword of Wedin, 1807, the Purim Edom of Alexandria of 1541, the Purim of Widen, 1807, the Purim Moed Katan of Shiraz and others. Can you say something about these events? Why are they not widely known? Why are they not better known than they actually are?

[Mark Schneegurt]

That's a lot of Purims and there's many more. You know, the Purims are days that you can choose, you can have personal Purims. Some event in your life where it's like Purim, you were in jeopardy and you were miraculously saved in some way. It seems miraculous to you. And it couldn't have come out that way, but it did. Even though you had the sickness, you had the terrible event happen. Somehow it came out better than it was before and you were saved. And that's what these Purims are. Now. You could have personal Purims like that. And some of them are personal Purims for rabbis, but many of them were Purims for a community. The community was under siege. The community was under very harsh rule. And somehow they got out of it. Somehow the leaders survived. Somehow the plague went away when they needed it to. And they remember that day some of the. And they celebrated in that community. And sometimes there are written works that are associated with this. Just like on Purim you read a megillah. There are megillahs associated with these Purims, oftentimes that they read in the synagogue to commemorate that holiday. Like some would read the scroll of Antiochus for Hanukkah. But there's many of these, and it's just interesting to learn about them. What is the story behind this Purim? Why do they celebrate this? Do they still celebrate it today? And how would it be fun to be there and celebrate with them and just feel their connection to Hashem for having saved their community. And many of these have been celebrated for hundreds of years. So it was important to them. And you can create Purims for yourself and your family too, if you want. And days that you celebrate and traditions and rituals that are just for you and your family that you can enjoy. Make every day a holiday.

[Ari Barbalat]

Can you say something about the rabbis whose deaths are noted in this calendar?

[Mark Schneegurt]

The rabbis are a broad collection. They include well known leaders from all branches of Judaism, from Jewish communities around the world. They're Often noted where they were rabbis. Many of them were chief rabbis for their country. And many of them have unique philosophies, unique views of the world that made them valuable. Some of them were also political leaders of their time. They were leading communities through difficult times, perhaps, and we can learn from them. So there are hundreds of rabbis listed in the book, all of them. Each one of them has a story. Each one of them, for the most part, has written works that you can learn from, whether it be more about Jewish ethics or more about controlling your speech or learning about how to celebrate certain events and certain holidays. So there's quite a few of them in there. And again, you know, the day that someone passes is a special day. We celebrate their yahrzites. We acknowledge that. We say special prayers for them. We remember them at that time because their energy is strong then, and you can connect with it. So if you know about these individuals, if you know about a rabbi from a certain community or the first rabbi in a dynasty of rabbis or other rabbis that were important to various aspects of Judaism, you can. That's a good time to connect with that energy and connect with them and read some of their stuff and learn something about them around the time of their yard site to just get more out of your own life by understanding their lives.

[Ari Barbalat]

Who did you write this book for? Who do you have in mind as your ideal reader and readers? Who do you have in mind as your imagined audience or audiences?

[Mark Schneegurt]

Very broad, I would say very broad, because I think there's a level at which anyone can come into the work. It's kind of like a desk calendar. Maybe I should make a desk calendar out of it, where you can tear off and see what's happening that day. And so I think anybody can use it, as I said, it was originally written just for me, but others can use it as well and learn more about what's happening and learn more about Jewish history and Jewish life, and that's just going to be more enriching for them. So I think it's something that's open for anyone and even people who aren't practicing Judaism. There's a lot of historical events that are interesting that connect to other aspects of history and other religions as well. It's not just Jews in the book. There's also people who are important in Jewish history, usually in a negative way, but oftentimes the king who gave Jews rights back. So there's a lot of history here. And you can learn something from the book itself. And then you can also go and explore and get deeper knowledge.

[Ari Barbalat]

Can you elaborate on the significance of the title of the book?

[Mark Schneegurt]

Everyday Holiday. Every day is a special day in the Jewish calendar. You can make every day a holiday. I mean, one of the best things that you can do for yourself is to live now, live today, live for this moment, not get caught up in the future or the past, but learn today and what's happening now. And I think making every day a holiday just gives you something to celebrate, something to feel good about, something to learn from every day. Because being Jewish, living a Jewish life, it's very enriching. And this is just ways to add more to that. And as you add more, perhaps you'll add more mitzvahs too, and perhaps you get closer to Hashem. And this will just bring great tidings for you.

[Ari Barbalat]

As we bring our dialogue today to a close, can you kindly tell us about where your time and attention have gone since completing this work?

[Mark Schneegurt]

In this area of study, I've been focusing back again on my work with Ephraim Kau's poetry from the 18th century. So I'm going to publish probably next year, a complete transcription and translation of his works for the first time. So very little of it has been translated. I've been spending a lot of time work on that book, annotating. There's a lot of references to Greek and Roman literature and literature of the time, historical figures, lots of names. And each one of the names means something. He's using it for a reason. So I'm spending a lot of time doing that. I've also been continuing my work with the Inquisition trial poetry. We recently have connected with musicians and they are musicologists really, from University of Oxford. And they've been taking the songs, the poems and rewriting them, composing them into songs again. So we're starting to hear these songs sung for the first time in 400 years. We're unsilencing the women and men that were trapped in the Inquisition, that were true martyrs. They were all burned at the stake in 1596 or in the years following. So to convert these back into songs and hear them, get them played again is very exciting. Just this week we had a recital of some of this material eventually be recorded. And the crypto Jewish community, the poetry, there's more to be found. I've been working with a periodical called Holopede, the Torch from the Portuguese Jewish community, the crypto Jewish community in Portugal. You know, the inquisition ended in 1834. You've been persecuted for hundreds of years. How long before you build a synagogue before you come out of hiding and feel safe. Especially in the. The home of the Inquisition, essentially. So this was the early 20th century and it's a very famous story of Captain Bastos, who's the Portuguese Dreyfus, and he got this community going again and built a large synagogue. And a very interesting story, but in his periodical there are prayers and poems collected from that community, some of which are hundreds of years old, it seems. So I've been collecting those, transcribing them and translating those and pulling those together. There's 170 of them or so. So that's what I've been working on in this realm lately.

[Ari Barbalat]

As we end today, I'd like to convey my heartfelt gratitude to you for your thoughtfulness and erudition throughout the course of today's dialogue. I can hardly be more thankful.

[Mark Schneegurt]

Yeah, same here. I really appreciate the opportunity to do this and I hope to talk to you about my next book.

[Ari Barbalat]

I would be delighted. As we end today, I'm signing off as Ari Barbolette, your host on the New Books in Jewish Studies channel of the New Books Network podcast. Today I've been in dialogue with Dr. Mark Schneegort. He is professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and a member of the affiliated faculty of the Department of History at Wichita State University in Wichita, Kansas. We have been discussing his newly published book, Everyday Holiday because every day is a special day on the Jewish calendar. Self published by the author, 2024. Thank.

[Mark Schneegurt]

You.

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[Mark Schneegurt]

Oh, come on.

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[Mark Schneegurt]

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