Israel’s clocks spring forward early Friday morning

Daylight savings time went into effect across Israel at 2 a.m. Friday morning, setting the clocks ahead by one hour to 3 a.m.

The period of extended daylight hours will last until October 29, after the autumn Jewish holidays have ended.

The Palestinian Authority will move its clocks forward on Saturday.

Jordan will usher in daylight savings time at midnight next Friday, a week after Israel.

Most European states will do the same on March 26.

In 2013, the Knesset passed legislation extending daylight savings time from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October. Before that, standard time would begin the Saturday night before Yom Kippur, so that the day’s fast, which is pegged to nightfall, would end an hour “earlier.”

Because the Hebrew calendar is lunar, Yom Kippur can fall between mid-September and mid-October, which used to mean that Israelis returned to standard time as much as a month and a half before most other countries, where daylight savings time ends on November 1.

As a result, the issue of the seasonal time transition became contentious among Israelis, and was caught up in political tensions between religious and secular political parties.