Here is your problem:
new Java("java.text.SimpleDateFormat","EEEE,
I'm unaware of any sort of object called "Java" on PHP that you'll get out of the box by simply installing Java. I think you're trying to execute the Java Bridge integration which means you'll need to download the Java Bridge distribution and execute the Java Bridge server before executing your PHP page.
Java is different than PHP because it is compiled. PHP is interpreted which means you don't compile it. The PHP interpreter reads the source code at runtime and interprets the source code to make it execute instructions the computer really understands. This means you deploy the source code to the production servers. It also means you can simply change the source code and rerun the file and it will change its behavior.
Java is different. The source code is parsed at compile time when the developer is writing the code. Compiling translates the source code into instructions prior to deployment. That means the source code isn't deployed. Therefore, Java doesn't spend any extra time at runtime to convert source code into instructions. That's done prior to deployment. Java also converts the bytecode (java instructions) into native instructions using something called the JIT (just in time compilation). The JIT is crazy fast. Java is much faster than PHP in execution time. But, if you want to change the behavior you have to change the source and recompile it. Ant is a tool that helps compile, package, and deploy Java code. There is also Maven, but it has a higher learning curve. Much of this is the same story for C# too. It is also a compiled language.
Java support structure is massive. There is tons of tooling and libraries for Java that just aren't available to other stacks. Things like Lucene, Spring, Hadoop, Tomcat, PDF generation, etc. What Java brings to the table is access to lots of code that isn't always possible with PHP only. For example, I have a PHP website that I'm generating barcodes and PDF files of those barcodes. I have to use Java to generate this and have PHP call it remotely through Tomcat. Generating barcodes, PDFs, are easier in Java because libraries exist for this. Working with Java is easier than using C (and safer). PHP is great at fast integration because it will run anything.
If you wanted to do quick integration with Java you can execute the java executable from the command line. PHP can exec() any program, and Java is not different from the view of the OS. It's just an executable. The upside is you don't need extra tooling like Tomcat, Servlets, etc. The downside is the Java VM can take up a fair amount of memory and time to startup. If you are exec()'ing lots of Java VMs you could easily eat up memory on your server. That's where something like Tomcat can help because it would run a long running program within a single Java VM that you can interact with either through sockets, HTTP, etc. That single program can serve lots of requests at once. There are plenty of options for integration.
http://php.net/manual/en/function.exec.php