Iyar אייר

In the Tanakh it is called "the month of Ziv"—radiance: in it Solomon began building the Temple. Through all of Iyar runs the counting of the Omer; on the eighteenth is Lag baOmer, the day the students of Rabbi Akiva ceased dying. In modern history Iyar became the month of the state: on the fifth of Iyar 5708 the independence of Israel was proclaimed; on the twenty-eighth of Iyar 5727 Jerusalem was reunited.

The month names now in use are Babylonian: "the names of the months came up with us from Babylon", says the Jerusalem Talmud. In the Torah months are counted—"the first", "the seventh"—from Nisan, the month of the Exodus.