“New Year” in the “Seventh Month”?! What “New Year”? (English only)
Channel: Yeshivath Sharashim
Date: 2015-09-05

Yeshivath Sharashim is a Web-based educational venture to engage users — both Jewish and Gentile seekers of God and His word — in a deepening understanding of the Hebrew Bible and other religious classics. It does so through live, interactive video sessions probing directly the meaning of the original texts. Besides live sessions, the website comprises archives of audio and video recordings and related source sheets. The founder, R. Chaim Eisen, has been stimulating audiences with his lectures on the Bible and Biblical commentary and Jewish thought and philosophy for thirty years.

The subject of today’s discussion is the upcoming holiday, Rosh Hashanah. And the obvious difficulties, we’ll see they’re pretty obvious. When we try to understand what the Bible has to tell us about them. In particular of course, as always I feel compelled to stress that while Rosh Hashanah and all the rest of the Biblical holidays are generally known as Jewish holidays, I prefer referring to them as Biblical holidays. Not because they’re not Jewish. Of course the Jews observe these holidays as given by God in the Bible. But we realize they have messages for everyone who believes in God’s Word, in the Bible, both Jews and non-Jews. And of course our mission is to try to pull out of the text as many of these messages as we can. So it is on that note that we embark upon considering what this holiday signifies, in particular by considering, of course, the passages in the Bible that talk about it.
Now in the Torah, the five books of Moses, this holiday appears exactly twice: in Leviticus chapter 23 and Numbers chapter 29. We’ll also consider one additional passage from much later in the Bible that is relevant here. But first the passages from the Torah. Leviticus chapter 23, beginning in verse 23: “And God spoke unto Moses, saying: speak unto the Children of Israel, saying: In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall be a solemn rest upon you, a memorial proclaimed with the blast of horns, a holy convocation.”
Now again, this is the first instance in which the holiday that we know as ‘Rosh Hashanah’, the New Year, appears. And of course, what is glaring in this statement, is both what it states and what it doesn’t state. What it does state is that this holiday takes place of course in the seventh month. What it doesn’t state is that it is a new year. And indeed, we would well question “how could it be a new year if it is taking place in the seventh month?”
Well, that’s one issue. And of course, inevitably, that issue is so central and so glaring; that’s going to be our initial discussion. Trying to understand what makes this day altogether into ‘Rosh Hashanah’, the ‘Beginning of the Year’, if it’s in the seventh month.
We also need to consider what the text tells us about the nature of this holiday. And of course the answer is: not a lot. All we’re really told is this central motif: the blasts of horns. That is, the blowing of the shofar. Except, the text doesn’t even refer to the ram’s horn. It doesn’t say anything about the shofar. It refers in the Hebrew to ‘teruah’. ‘Teruah’ meaning a blast, as in the blast of a horn. As this becomes a central theme of this holiday. And of course, besides trying to explicate what the word means, what is the theme, what does it teach, what’s the message, obviously there are additional questions were going to need to address. Now I noted that in the Torah, we have two passages. The second one is, largely, a reiteration of the same themes. In Numbers chapter 29:1 again: “in the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall have a holy convocation, you shall do no manner of servile work, it is the day of the blast of the horn unto you.”

“The blast of the horn.” Once again, ‘teruah’ in Hebrew. Once again, most glaringly it’s taking place in the seventh month and there is no reference at all to it being a new year. I already noted that there is one additional passage in the Bible that explicitly refers to this date. It is from much later on, indeed it’s from the Second Temple Period in the time of Ezra and Nehemia. In Nehemia chapter 8 we read at the beginning of the chapter: “All the people gathered themselves together as one man into the broad place that before the Water Gate and they spoke unto Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the Torah of Moses, which God had commanded to Israel.” And in verse 2, here’s where we see the date. “And Ezra the priest brought the Torah before the congregation, both men and women, and all that could hear with understanding, upon the first day of the seventh month.”

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