is Halacha, the Counting of the Omer begins immediately following the first Festival Day of Passover, which happens to be the Sabbath day of rest spoken of in , that is to say, Passover itself, and they begin the counting on the following day, on the 16th day of the lunar month Nisan, in which case the festival day known as the Feast of Weeks will always fall on the 6th day of the lunar month Sivan. When Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai prevailed over the Boethusians at this time, the days were commemorated as a semi-holiday; Shavu'ot being restored to its former time of observance.] "On the twenty-third day of the same (i.e. the lunar month of Iyar), the inhabitants of the Citadel (Acra) departed from Jerusalem" [Original Aramaic: ] [Excursus: The appended date recollects an event that happened in the second year of the high priesthood of Simon Thassi, son of Mattathias, in the year 171 of the Seleucid era (141/140 BCE), in which the Jewish nation, by order of King Demetrius the son of Demetrius from Crete, evicted from the residential area of Jerusalem, known as the "Citadel" or Acra, those who had taken-up residence in that part of the city and who had been allied with the enemies of Israel, and who had long waged a cultural war with the Jewish nation, killing them, and rejecting Jewish mores and manners. After these had been evicted, among whom were Jewish apostates, the residential area known as the "Citadel" was resettled by Torah-abiding citizens. The event is mentioned in the First Book of Maccabees (13:49–52): "... And they entered into it on the three and twentieth day of the second month, in the year 171 [Seleucid era] with thanksgiving, and branches of palm trees, and harps, and cymbals, and psalteries, and hymns, and canticles, because the great enemy was destroyed out of Israel."] "On the seventeenth day of [the lunar month] Sivan, [they took] possession of Migdal Ṣur" [Original Aramaic: ] [Excursus: The event is alluded to in the Babylonian Talmud (Megillah 6a), as well as detailed by Josephus (Antiquities 13.12.4; 13.15.4.), referring to the time when the nation of Israel captured Straton's Tower (Caesarea), "the daughter of Edom, which is situated among the sand-dunes," and which city along with Dor had, formerly, been under foreign rule and had been compared to a "peg driven into Israel," until the