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.
If I Could Keep Time in a Bottle
If part 1 was focused on the zmanim for the start of the day. Part 2 looked at afternoon times. Part 3 to us through to nightfall. So what’s left for part 4?
For this installment, I’m only covering two (ok, two and a half) shortcodes:
- Sha’ah Zmanim ([zman_shaah]) – This is the concept of a “Seasonal hour”, where you take all the available daylight and divide it into 12 equal parts.
- Misheyakir ([zman_misheyakir]). “Misheyakir” is more commonly known as “the earliest time to put on tallit and tefillin”. It’s after Alot haShachar (the first light of dawn) but considerably before Netz/Sunrise.
- Misheyakirweekly ([zman_misheyakirweekly]). This shortcode is really an extension of the previous one, but provides an additional convenience in grabbing all of the misheyakir times for the week (Sunday through Friday) and allowing you to display them by using a number (0 through 6).
Both Sha’ah Zmanim and Misheyakir operate in ways that differ from the others we’ve covered so far, so they both deserve a little extra time, love, and attention:
Shortcode Spotlight: Sha’ah Zmanim
Unlike every other shortcode, a Sha’ah zman is really a fraction of a “regular” hour. Depending on the time of year, a seasonal hour may be more or fewer minutes than a 60-minute clock hour. Therefore, the result is just a number.
Example: [zman_shaah]Result: 48.17
Example: [zman_shaah date="friday"]Result: 48.79
Example: [zman_shaah date=20251222]Result: 45.86
Example: [zman_shaah date=20250622]Result: 75.92
In each case, you’re getting the number of clock minutes that make up a halachic hour on that day.
Many of the other shortcode options WON’T work, because they’re simply not relevant. Specifically “offset” and “dateformat” aren’t going to work here.
It’s a Matter of Opinion
Like most of the shortcodes in the Zmanim-WP plugin, Sha’ah Zmanim has a wide variety of opinions on how that number is calculated. The options you can choose from are:
- shaahZmanis19Point8Degrees
- shaahZmanis18Degrees
- shaahZmanis26Degrees
- shaahZmanis16Point1Degrees
- shaahZmanis60Minutes
- shaahZmanis72Minutes
- shaahZmanis72MinutesZmanis
- shaahZmanis90Minutes
- shaahZmanis90MinutesZmanis
- shaahZmanis96MinutesZmanis
- shaahZmanisAteretTorah
- shaahZmanisAlos16Point1ToTzais3Point8
- shaahZmanisAlos16Point1ToTzais3Point7
- shaahZmanis96Minutes
- shaahZmanis120Minutes
- shaahZmanis120MinutesZmanis
- shaahZmanisBaalHatanya
- shaahZmanisGra
- shaahZmanisMGA
Shortcode Spotlight: Misheyakir
As explained earlier in this blog, Misheyakir tells you the earliest time of day you can put on tallit and tefillin. All of the usual shortcode options apply, but there’s one extra: timeformat
Like dateformat (see my first blog in this series for details) this uses PHP formatting codes to specify the time format. This extra option is needed because Misheyakir Weekly is intended to show this zman for multiple days in a series, with separate date and time formatting.
Example: [zman_misheyakir date="friday"]Example: [zman_misheyakir date="tomorrow"]Example: [zman_misheyakir timeformat=:"g:i a"]
It’s a Matter of Opinion
Like most of the other shortcodes, there’s also a range of opinions on how to calculate this time. Compared to many of the other shortcodes, the list this time is blessedly short:
- misheyakir11Point5Degrees
- misheyakir11Degrees
- misheyakir10Point2Degrees
- misheyakir7Point65Degrees
- misheyakir9Point5Degrees
Shortcode Spotlight: Misheyakir Weekly
A minor challenge with the common usage of misheyakir is that synagogues want to print a full week of times (because they change daily and that difference can make a big impact for folks looking to finish morning prayers and get a start on their day) but using dates is unwieldy, and using day names ([zman_misheyakir date="monday"], [zman_misheyakir date="tuesday"], etc.) has the unfortunate effect of showing NEXT week’s time once the current week’s day has passed.
To get around this, I’ve included the shortcode [zman_misheyakirweekly]. This automatically grabs all of the misheyakir times for Sunday through Friday for the week indicated, and lets you output all or some of them in sequence.
So the first thing to understand is, “which week”. This is based on the date= option.
- [zman_misheyakirweekly date='today']
- [zman_misheyakirweekly date='tomorrow']
- [zman_misheyakirweekly date='12/10/2025']…etc…
Regardless of whether your date= option lands on a Sunday, Monday, or whatever, the shortcode will grab all of the times for that week.
As a reminder, your date= options are:
- today – the current date
- tomorrow: the day after the current date.
- sunday, monday, tuesday, etc: the upcoming weekday of that name.
- (an actual date): that specific date.
- BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!! This shortcode adds the keyword “next”
Second, to output a specific day, you use the daynum= option, along with a number 0 (for Sunday) through 6 (For Saturday). The result looks like this:
- [zman_misheyakirweekly date='today' daynum=0]
- [zman_misheyakirweekly date='next' daynum=3]
- [zman_misheyakirweekly date='12/10/2025' daynum=6]
Finally, a reminder that you probably want to use the dateformat with this shortcode more than others because the default format doesn’t show the day of the week. My preferred format is D m/d, and the full code looks like this:[zman_misheyakirweekly date="next" dateformat="D m/d" daynum=0]
We’re Not Done Yet!
Believe it or not, there’s still more to go. In upcoming posts I’m going to look at:
- Other shortcodes that are specific to Shabbat: candle lighting, Torah portion, and special Shabbat names
- Shortcodes for monthly events: Shabbat Mevarchim, the Molad, and Rosh Chodesh
- A means to set options for “early” and “regular” Shabbats, and have a single shortcode automatically switch based on that logic
- A shortcode that prints a full year of information all at once
I hope you’ll stay with me as we continue to explore. Until next time…