This week is Parashat Shemini in Chutz La’Aretz, and Tazria-Metzora in Israel.
The Android and iOS editions of my app are both able to handle the difference, by means of a parameter in the Settings tab (called “Resident”, or “Parasha Scheme”). Yet, this did not prove to be intuitive enough to many users.
After receiving a good number of questions and feedbacks about this issue, I decided to simplify the configuration of this parameter, and make it depend solely on the location.
Yet, the location, alone, is not enough to decide whether a user should observe one, or two days of Yom Tov for instance. An Israeli citizen on a trip abroad might do a one-day Shavuot (although there are halachical restrictions when he’s out in public on the local second Yom Tov), and the other way around: a French family on tour in Israel would have to keep Yom Tov the day after (Israelis’) Shavuot.
One could argue that the Parasha issue is different, because you would probably follow the local cycle when abroad, in particular if you’re attending a Minyan. So this parameter could be based on location, as far as Parasha is concerned.
However, I have decided to keep it simple in the app. We can reasonably assume that a traveller (no matter what direction) would configure both departure and arrival locations in his CalJ app, so he would be able to switch between them should he need to check the Home or Local Shabbat portion.
I am releasing right now an update (2.2) for Android. I will work ב’ה on the iPhone edition another time.
Shabbat shalom,
Gabriel