Zmanin-WP: Common Codes, part 1

If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know that I’ve been working on my Zmanim-WP plugin for WordPress for a while now. This blog series is designed to help you dig deeper into the plugin and understand what it does, how it works, and whether it’s right for your needs.

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“…And There Was Morning…”

There are a four shortcodes that help calculate times related to the start of the day.

• Sunrise
• Alot hashachar
• Sof Zman Kria Shema
• Sof Zman Tefilah

I’ve discussed some of these times in other parts of this series and I want to keep the focus of these blogs on HOW to use each shortcode. Feel free to let me know in the comments if you want a more explicit tutorial on each of these (and upcoming) times and when they are used.

• Sunrise ([zman_sunrise])- this is, as the name implies, the time the sun rises. I covered the shortcode extensively in the previous blog post.
• Alot hashachar ([zman_alot]) – before “sunrise” (when the disk of the sun appears over the horizon) is “dawn”. This is a somewhat murky concept, but it basically relates to the time the first light of the sun can be seen coming over the horizon.
• Sof Zman Kria Shema ([zman_shema]) – the latest time one can say the Shema prayer.
• Sof Zman Tefilah ([[zman_tefilah]]) – the latest time one can say morning (shacharit) prayers.

To these I’m going to add one more: The date itself ([zman_zmandate]).

Each of those shortcodes can be used as-is, or with the options I described in the previous blog post.

Examples:

• [zman_sunrise date="saturday"]
• [zman_shema date="saturday" dateformat="g:i:s a"]
• [zman_alot offset=-20]
• [[zman_tefilah dateformat=”g:i a”]]
• [zman_zmandate]

But, of course, there’s more.

Special Options

In addition to the standard options, there are special options that only apply to certan shortcodes. Today, I’m going to look at just one:

lang

This let’s you control whether information displays in English (the default) or Hebrew. It works for the following shortcodes:

• Rosh Chodesh ([zman_chodesh])
• the Molad ([zman_molad])
• the Parsha ([zman_parsha]).
• Shabbat Mevorchim ([zman_mevorchim])
• the date ([zman_zmandate])

For the date ([zman_zmandate]) you can also specify “transliterated” (or “translit” or even “trans”) to give an English-ified version of the Hebrew date.

So, while [[zman_date lang="hebrew"]] would give you:

י״ד טבת תשפ״ו

[[zman_date lang="transliterated"]] would render as:

14 Tevet, 5786

A Matter of Opinion

Unlike my last blog on the plugin, where I dug into the options, in this case the complexity comes from the initial setup:

Most of the standard time options give you the chance to select the Rabbinic opinion (“shitah”) used for it’s calculations. For example, Alot hashachar could use any one of the following opinions:

• alos72
• alos60
• alos72Zmanis
• alos96
• alos90Zmanis
• alos96Zmanis
• alos90
• alos120
• alos120Zmanis
• alos26Degrees
• alos18Degrees
• alos19Degrees
• alos19Point8Degrees
• alos16Point1Degrees
• alosBaalHatanya

What each of these items mean, and what circumstances they should be used in, is the topic for another day (and probably another 5 blog posts). Until then, you can get some details on the KosherJava documentation site: https://kosherjava.com/zmanim/docs/api/com/kosherjava/zmanim/ComplexZmanimCalendar.html#getAlos60()

Here are the shitot for each of the shortcodes we’re covering today:

• Alot hashachar ([zman_alot])
  • alos72
  • alos60
  • alos72Zmanis
  • alos96
  • alos90Zmanis
  • alos96Zmanis
  • alos90
  • alos120
  • alos120Zmanis
  • alos26Degrees
  • alos18Degrees
  • alos19Degrees
  • alos19Point8Degrees
  • alos16Point1Degrees
  • alosBaalHatanya
• Sof Zman Kria Shema ([zman_shema]) “sofZmanShmaMGA
  • sofZmanShmaGra
  • sofZmanShmaMGA19Point8Degrees
  • sofZmanShmaMGA16Point1Degrees
  • sofZmanShmaMGA18Degrees
  • sofZmanShmaMGA72Minutes
  • sofZmanShmaMGA72MinutesZmanis
  • sofZmanShmaMGA90Minutes
  • sofZmanShmaMGA90MinutesZmanis
  • sofZmanShmaMGA96Minutes
  • sofZmanShmaMGA96MinutesZmanis
  • sofZmanShma3HoursBeforeChatzos
  • sofZmanShmaMGA120Minutes
  • sofZmanShmaAlos16Point1ToSunset
  • sofZmanShmaAlos16Point1ToTzaisGeonim7Point083Degrees
  • sofZmanShmaKolEliyahu
  • sofZmanShmaAteretTorah
  • sofZmanShmaFixedLocal
  • sofZmanShmaBaalHatanya
  • sofZmanShmaMGA18DegreesToFixedLocalChatzos
  • sofZmanShmaMGA16Point1DegreesToFixedLocalChatzos
  • sofZmanShmaMGA90MinutesToFixedLocalChatzos
  • sofZmanShmaMGA72MinutesToFixedLocalChatzos
  • sofZmanShmaGRASunriseToFixedLocalChatzos
• Sof Zman Tefilah ([[zman_tefilah]])
  • sofZmanTfilaMGA
  • sofZmanTfilaGra
  • sofZmanTfilaMGA19Point8Degrees
  • sofZmanTfilaMGA16Point1Degrees
  • sofZmanTfilaMGA18Degrees
  • sofZmanTfilaMGA72Minutes
  • sofZmanTfilaMGA72MinutesZmanis
  • sofZmanTfilaMGA90Minutes
  • sofZmanTfilaMGA90MinutesZmanis
  • sofZmanTfilaMGA96Minutes
  • sofZmanTfilaMGA96MinutesZmanis
  • sofZmanTfilaMGA120Minutes
  • sofZmanTfila2HoursBeforeChatzos
  • sofZmanTfilahAteretTorah
  • sofZmanTfilaFixedLocal
  • sofZmanTfilaBaalHatanya
  • sofZmanTfilaGRASunriseToFixedLocalChatzos

My goal here is not to overwhelm you. Rather, I want to emphasize that, for each of the different shortcodes, you should look over, consider, and select the opinion that best fits your needs.

Until next time!