What Does the Bible Tell Us About Rosh Hashanah?

Rosh Hashanah celebrates the beginning of the world, it marks the New Year; it is the beginning of the 10 days of judgment. It is the start of a solemn series of days in which our annual fates, our lives and deaths, are decided by judgment inscribed in a divine book.

Or is it?

It’s one of the two most important holidays on the modern Jewish calendar, a day treated with reverence and awe by the vast majority of Jews, whether they celebrate it or not.

And yet, in the Bible, Rosh Hashanah is largely an afterthought, mentioned sparingly – and not even with the name Rosh Hashanah.

So what gives?

The holiday we have come to know as Rosh Hashanah first appears in Leviticus 23 when G-d talks to Moses.

“Speak to the people of Israel, saying ‘in the seventh month, on the first of the month, there will be for you a rest day, a remembrance of a blowing sound, a holy convocation. All servile work you shall not do, and you shall offer a fire offering to the L-rd.”

It appears just one other time in the Pentateuch, in Numbers 29: “In the seventh month, on the first of the month there will be a holy convocation for you; all servile work you shall not do; there will be a day of horn blowing for you. You shall make a burnt-offering for a satisfying smell to the L-rd.”

In the Pentateuch (that is, the “Five Books of Moses,” the term “Rosh Hashanah” is not found. In the broader Hebrew Bible, it is found just one time, in Ezekiel 40:1: “in the 25th year of our captivity, at the beginning of the year, on the tenth of the month.”

It’s striking that a holiday that towers over almost all others in importance is mentioned so infrequently in the Bible.

It’s also curios why “New Year” occurs in the “seventh month” of the year.

For the Talmud, which devotes an entire tractate to the holiday, the first of Tishrei “is the New Year for counting years, for calculating sabbatical years and jubilee years…” It’s one of four “New Years” the Talmud describes, with the others being for kings, for animal tithes and for trees (the holiday you know as Tu Bishvat). Hence the tradition by which we count the Jewish calendar with Rosh Hashanah.

In fact, the Bible is quite clear that the first of Nisan is the beginning of the year.

Exodus 12:2: “This month shall be for you the beginning of months ,it shall be the first month of the year for you.” This is the beginning of the biblical description of the Passover observance, from the lamb offering to putting blood on one’s doorpost.

What did ancient, pre-Talmudic sources have to say about this holiday? Our best bet is to look to Josephus, who was writing in the first century CE, several hundred years before the Talmud was published.

Josephus doesn’t mention the term Rosh Hashanah or consider it a notable holiday, merely recounting the offering of animals in the seventh month.

For Josephus, the major holidays,were those that involved a pilgrimage to Jerusalem: the big three of Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot.

Interestingly, with the destruction of the Temple, pilgrimage holidays simply could not be celebrated in the same way. The big change the Rabbis put into place was to shift the focus to “holy days that weren’t centered on the Temple,” as Goldberg writes. Hence, the repositioning of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

I don’t think that distinction is made by most Jews today. We place Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur on a pedestal, followed oh so closely by Passover, Sukkot and Shavuot.

But what does Rosh Hashanah’s relative invisibility in the Bible mean for the way we should celebrate it? And if it’s not really this massive, heavy, judgment-and-sin-focused holiday, then how are we supposed to think about it?

I think the secret is in its simplicity.

In the Bible, all of the traditional literature and obsession with sin, judgment and repentance simply isn’t found.

What we have is a very simple holiday with one proscription and two prescriptions: do no work, hear the shofar, and make a burnt offering.

I’m not urging everyone to rush to make a burnt offering on their backyard altar, but the idea of taking a day off of work and listening to the sound of the shofar should seem an accessible, feasible observance for modern Jewry.

Think about G-d as you stay home for the day with your family. Think about G-d as you stop your life for a moment and listen to the powerful blast of the shofar.

Many Jews, especially more secular Jews, think of Rosh Hashanah observance as this complicated, severe, challenging thing. But if you read the Bible, it really isn’t. We’re often put off by the idea of being faithful to the Biblical text. In the case of Rosh Hashanah, being literal actually makes the holiday easier to celebrate.

But go ahead and eat the apples and honey, just in case. They’re delicious.