The prophet Daniel closed his book with two numbers that have tormented Bible scholars for more than two thousand years: 1,290 days and 1,335 days. A Torah blogger has now done the arithmetic from the morning Hamas terrorists poured across the Gaza border, and the dates land on two of the most charged days on the Jewish calendar, both just months away. Counted from October 7, 2023, the 1,290th day falls on April 19, 2027, three days before this coming Passover, which begins the evening of April 21. The 1,335th day falls on June 3, 2027, the eve of the 60th anniversary of Jerusalem’s reunification.
The calculation appears in a post published Wednesday on Yeranen Yaakov, a blog devoted to geula (redemption) that its author, who writes under the name “Yaak,” has maintained since 2005. He describes himself as a half-Sephardi, half-Ashkenazi Haredi Zionist who studied in yeshiva in Israel.
His post, titled “Daniel, October 7th, and 5787,” draws on two sets of numbers in the Book of Daniel and argues that the current Hebrew year, which began last month, sits at the end of both.
The 2,300 years
The first set of numbers comes from Daniel’s vision of a ram and a goat. An angel asks how long the Temple will be trampled underfoot, and receives a cryptic answer:
“And he said unto me: ‘Unto two thousand and three hundred evenings and mornings; then shall the sanctuary be victorious.'” (Daniel 8:14)
Yaak points out that the Hebrew phrase erev boker alpayim u’shlosh me’ot reads literally as “evening morning, two thousand three hundred,” and that “evenings and mornings” is a translator’s interpretation. He cites Rabbi Isser Weisberg, who suggested in an interview on Tamar Yonah’s radio program that the 2,300 years should be counted from the death of Shimon Hatzaddik, the High Priest whom the Mishnah in Pirkei Avot calls one of the last of the Anshei Knesset HaGedolah (the Men of the Great Assembly).
The dating of Shimon Hatzaddik’s death is disputed. The traditional chronology Seder HaDorot places it in the Hebrew year 3448. Another view, which Yaak concedes rests on a murky source but considers more logical, places it in 3488. Shimon Hatzaddik’s yahrtzeit (the anniversary of his death) is observed on 29 Tishrei. If he died in 3488, the 2,300th year since his passing began on 29 Tishrei 5787, earlier this month.
Yaak adds his own reading of “evening morning.” The era of the Men of the Great Assembly, he writes, was a twilight between two ages: the dusk of prophecy and open miracles, and the dawn of the Torah Shebe’al Peh (the Oral Law). In his view, Daniel was telling the Jewish people to wait for that evening, then that morning, and then 2,300 more years.
October 7 in Daniel’s vision
The most striking part of the post reads the verses leading up to the 2,300 years as a description of the current war. Yaak frames it explicitly as his own interpretation, acknowledges that many readers may reject it, and asks God’s forgiveness if he is mistaken.
Daniel describes a “little horn” that grows “exceeding great, toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the beauteous land” (Daniel 8:9). Yaak identifies the little horn as Ishmael, empowered by the spiritual merit of circumcision, spreading south through the Houthis in Yemen, east through Iran, and into the Land of Israel through Hamas and Hezbollah. The horn then casts down “some of the host and of the stars” and tramples them (Daniel 8:10), which Yaak reads as October 7, when Israeli soldiers were overrun for hours.
Daniel then describes the removal of the tamid, the daily Temple offering. Yaak reads the word as matmid, the full-time Torah scholar, and connects it to the national demand after October 7 that yeshiva students leave their studies and enlist. He sees the bitter fight over the Haredi draft as the transgression Daniel describes, in which truth is “cast down to the ground” and temporarily prospers (Daniel 8:12). The promise that the sanctuary “shall be victorious,” in his reading, means both Torah scholars and soldiers will be vindicated, the scholars in their learning and the army in finally defeating Israel’s enemies.
From October 7 to Jerusalem Day
The post saves its most concrete claim for last, drawing on the book’s final verses. What exactly is Daniel counting toward?
“And from the time that the continual burnt-offering shall be taken away, and the detestable thing that causes appalment set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days. Happy is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days.” (Daniel 12:11-12)
Yaak counts both numbers from October 7, which he describes as the day the abominations were set upon the Jewish people and which became the justification for removing Torah scholars from their learning. The arithmetic holds up. Adding 1,290 days to October 7, 2023, yields April 19, 2027, which is 12 Nisan 5787, three days before Passover. Yaak links the date to a midrash in the Yalkut Shimoni, which teaches that Eliyahu HaNavi (Elijah the Prophet) will arrive three days before the Messiah to herald his coming, though he notes that other opinions exist.
Adding 1,335 days yields June 3, 2027, which is 27 Iyar 5787. That evening begins 28 Iyar, Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day), marking 60 years since IDF paratroopers reunited the city in the Six-Day War in 1967. Yaak offers a second possible reading as well: 1,335 years from the construction of the Dome of the Rock, completed around 691 CE, which he and others identify with the shikutz shomem (the abomination that causes desolation) on the Temple Mount. That count also arrives at the present day.
Of the night of June 3, 2027, Yaak writes that Israelis will be celebrating Jerusalem’s 60th anniversary. “Or we may be celebrating something even greater,” he adds.
A year of calculations
The post continues a pattern on Yeranen Yaakov since the US-Israeli war on Iran began in February. In March, Yaak noted that Operation Roaring Lion began on 11 Adar, as synagogues read the commandment to blot out Amalek, and checked current events against a midrash in Pesikta Rabbati describing the king of Persia provoking an Arab king, who then seeks advice from Edom. He wrote that many were calling it “THE FINAL WAR.” In June, he applied the Vilna Gaon’s teaching that the 28 “times” of Ecclesiastes 3 correspond to 28 eras of world history, and calculated that “a time for war” gave way to “a time for peace” on June 3, 2026. Before Tish’a B’Av, he used gematria and a passage from the Zohar to suggest the resurrection of the righteous could arrive by Rosh Hashanah 5787, concluding that it is “an exciting time to be alive – for the first or second time.”
The warning against calculating the end
Jewish tradition treats such calculations with deep caution. The Talmud records a sharp warning: “Blasted be the bones of those who calculate the end, for they would say: since the predetermined time has arrived and he has not come, he will no longer come” (Sanhedrin 97b). The Sages’ concern was the despair that follows a failed prediction. Daniel himself was told that his words would remain sealed: “But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased” (Daniel 12:4).
The same verse carries the seed of the opposite view. Many of the classical commentators understood “the time of the end” to mean that the sealed words would become clear as the redemption drew near. Generations of Jewish scholars, among them Rashi, Abarbanel, and the Vilna Gaon, attempted to decode Daniel’s numbers precisely because they believed the book was meant to be opened eventually.
Yaak’s approach sits between those poles. He offers his calculations as possibilities, signs them with prayers rather than promises, and leaves the dates open to a God whose timeline no one knows. His numbers point to two specific days on the calendar: April 19, 2027, three days before Passover, and June 3, 2027, the eve of Jerusalem Day. The Jewish people have waited 2,300 years, by one count, and those who believe Daniel was writing about this generation have less than a year to see whether the prophet’s clock has reached its final hour.