Clocks in Israel turn back as daylight savings ends

With time change, people in Israel get an extra hour of sleep

By ToI Staff 31 October 2021, 1:01 am

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Illustrative photo of a clock. (Shutterstock)

Israel’s winter officially began overnight Saturday-Sunday as clocks turned back one hour, marking the end of daylight saving time.

At 2 a.m. overnight Saturday-Sunday, clocks shifted back to 1 a.m. again.

Daylight saving time will return on March 25, 2022.

In 2013, the Knesset passed legislation extending daylight saving 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.

As a result, the issue of the seasonal time transition became contentious and was caught up in political tensions between religious and secular parties before the 2013 change was implemented.