Re: master 9b762c35a1: Add Sefirot to Omer counting

[Eric Brown <ecbrown@ericcbrown.com>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> The biblical references for the Parashat HaShavua and its Haftorah are
>> definitely religious in nature.
>
> And the Hebrew calendar itself isn't?  Where do we draw the line?
>
> The proposal was NOT to cite those texts in Emacs, the proposal was
> just to _name_ them.  Now, please tell me what is the fundamental
> difference between having the string "Bereishit" in Emacs and having
> the string "Rosh HaShanah" or "Yom Kippur" in Emacs?  Yom Kippur isn't
> just a date, it has a very strong religious meaning, and without that
> is just another day.  Or what about "Tzom Gedaliah" -- isn't that a
> 100% religious notion?
>
> From where I stand, naming or labeling dates is OK in Emacs's
> calendar-related features; but _quoting_ religious texts related to
> those dates is outside the scope of Emacs.  A label or a name are just
> references to a thing, they aren't the thing itself (mumbles the
> immortal passage from Alice in Wonderland regarding the difference
> between a thing, the name of a thing, the name of the name, etc...)

I agree that many calendars have religious origin so it's not like Emacs
could be totally devoid of anything even tangential to religion. The
Hebrew calendar is pretty involved; there is a book called a Luach which
is consulted for e.g. Bar Mitzvah planning.

1)  The small point that these are the Parashot _and_ the Haftarot, so
may affect the name of the Lisp form
2)  The cited verses are not the same for all the denominations
- Orthodox Judaism reads the whole Torah completely in one year, but other
groups read it triennially so the proposed verses aren't right for many
- Some years Parashot are combined, some years they aren't
- Haftorot may be different for Ashkenazim and Sephardim
- Inside Eretz Yisrael or in Diaspora due to two-day Chagim causing
special readings and differences in length of Chol HaMoed.

Rising to your challenge to draw the line: Perhaps just enough of
the Hebrew calendar where it has effect on civil society's days off or
what goes on in secular school. So, Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur, and the
Shalosh Regalim are definitely days off in Israel. The Omer is counted
from Pesach to Shavuos so I don't see any big controversy here.

If you want to get into usefulness *for me*, the Fast days and
Channukah/Purim could be listed. I am not aware of inter-denominational
differences for those days. It would be "out there" to have the Omer
counted but Purim omitted. :-)