----message from Ilan Vardi---------------
From ilan@ihes.fr Tue Apr 20 09:23:42 1999

Dear Doron,

I mentioned your calendrical computation to Offer Gabber then
eventually forwarded him your mail. He confirmed my suspicion that you
cannot have good accuracy for the period of the moon.  In particular,
he looked up 3 references all of which gave different periods of the
moon, and all of which were closer to each other than to the value you
qoted. He computed the continued fractions of the other 3 values, and
none of these corresponded with the cycle you suggest.

He also noted that the error between the Jewish year and the actual
tropical year goes in the opposite direction than the one you claim,
i.e., Passover is going towards summer not winter.

Anyway, he didn't seem motivated to send you e-mail directly, so 
maybe you can mail him to see exactly what he got: gabber@ihes.fr

Best regards,

-ilan

P.S. I have also given some thought to your Notices opinion.
     Mostly, I thought about what you said about Morley; versus
     Connes proof. My point is the following (actually similar
     to my opinion about computer chess): Since you do not claim
     that the computer wrote Morley; what you are really saying 
     is that you believe that that *effective algorithmic mathematics*
     will replace standard mathematics. Until computers start coming
     up with the algorithms and programs, they only remain tools.

---------end message from Ilan Vardi

---message from Ofer Gabber------
From gabber@ihes.fr Sun May  2 08:45:40 1999

Dear Zeilberger,
I saw your April 1 article.Your continued fraction expansion uses values for
the tropical year and the synodic month that differ slightly from values in
other references.Moreover these are not constant.See section 1.1 of Calendars
by L.E.Doggett,reprinted from the Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical
Almanac in  http://astro.nmsu.edu/~lhuber/leaphist.html                  .
Sincerely,
Ofer Gabber

------end message of Ofer Gabber------