google israelToday is Israel's Independence Day (aka Yom Ha'atzmaut יום העצמאות‎). It happened on May 14, 1948 (5 Iyar, 5708). Although today is 6 Iyar, it is celebrated today because yesterday was Monday and due to new rules, if it falls out on a Monday, the celebration is pushed off a day.

In the Jewish world, there is a debate if today is a religious event or just a secular event. I see arguments for both sides and I will not get into it here.

I do want to say that this does impact our iPhone Siddur. The Siddur, Jewish prayer book, automatically shows you the prayers you need to say for that day. Those who believe today is a religious holiday, include Hallel in their prayers today. Those who do not, don't. So we made a setting in our Siddur to "Show Hallel on Yom Ha'atzmaut: Yes or No." Isn't technology great?

Well, we did mess up and we had 5 Iyar (yesterday) as the day for Yom Ha'atzmaut. We didn't program the special rule for moving Yom Ha'atzmaut to a different day, such as this year. So the setting won't work today anyway. We fixed the bug and apologized in the alerts section.

Anyway, Happy Independence Day Israel.