Alain Silberstein Hebraika Hebrew Calendar Watch

The image you see of the rear of the watch has a year indicator - it is right over the gold rotor for the automatic movement. There are 40 years on the disc, and another 40 years are displayed on a second disc that supposedly came with the watches. 80 years later, you'll have to get new discs made. Sorry! Did you notice that the crown on one of the watches is made to look like the Star of David? For me, these are just one more reason to be impressed with Alain Silberstein and his watches - from a design, creative, and technical standpoint.More interesting are some other watches that Alain Silberstein is apparently at work on. We are talking about hybrid or multi calendar watches. These will be timepieces that have more than one calendar on them. Such as the Gregorian calendar and Hebrew calendar. One watches that is apparently due sometime in 2010 is a triple calendar watches (not that type of triple calendar), that had the Gregorian, Hebrew, and Chinese calendar all on one watch. Probably perpetual calendars at that. Wow! That will be some complex looking (and functioning) timepiece. It just isn't that important unless you are a Rabbi - and even then this might be a little showy as a watch for a pious man right? Not for me to say I guess.Seen above are two models that take on the challenge. Both are part of the Alain Silberstein Hebraika collection. A very hard to find watch with extremely limited publicity around them. I believe the watches came out around 1994. The complications where developed together with watch maker Svend Andersen. You'd probably have to contact Alain Silberstein directly for more details. As you can see, the calendar read out is similar to Gregorian calendar in that it shows you the day and date. On the models those are written in Hebrew. The calendar is not that different really. It is based on the lunar, rather than solar calendar more than the Gregorian calendar. Weeks have seven days, but the months are a bit different in length (due to the lunar cycles). For that reason each month typically has 29-30 days. So there is sometimes an extra month to the year - on leap years. I believe the year is 354 days long.The Hebraika watches are able to take into consideration the complex leap years and months with different lengths.