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Home Tips > Tips By Category > Tips you can implement daily In Hebrew, Rosh Hashanah means, literally, "head of the year" or "first of the year." Rosh Hashanah is commonly known as the Jewish New Year. This name is somewhat deceptive, because there is little similarity between Rosh Hashanah, one of the holiest days of the year, and the American midnight drinking bash and daytime football game.
Rosh Hashanah is literally translated as "head of the year", and idiomatically refers to the Jewish New Year. The term first appears in the Tanakh, in Ezekiel 40:1.
In fact, Judaism has four "new years" which mark various legal "years", much like 1 January marks the "New Year" of the Gregorian calendar. Rosh Hashanah is the new year for people, animals, and legal contracts. The Mishnah also sets this day aside as the new year for calculating calendar years and sabbatical (shemitta) and jubilee (yovel) years.
The Torah refers to the day as "The Day of the Blowing of the Shofar" (Yom Terua, Leviticus 23:24), and rabbinic literature and the liturgy itself describe Rosh Hashanah as "The Day of Judgment" (Yom ha-Din) and "The Day of Remembrance" (Yom ha-Zikkaron). Some midrashic descriptions depict God as sitting upon a throne, while books containing the deeds of all humanity are opened for review, and each person passing in front of Him for evaluation of his or her deeds. All of these names are also referenced in the holiday's extensive liturgy.
This holiday is the first of the Yamim Noraim (Hebrew, "Days of Awe"), the most solemn days of the Jewish year; the Yamim Noraim are preceded by the month of Elul, during which Jews are supposed to begin a self-examination and repentance, a process that culminates in the ten days of the Yamim Noraim known as Asseret Yemei Teshuva - The Ten Days of Repentance, beginning with Rosh Hashanah and ending with the holiday of Yom Kippur.
Rosh Hashanah extends over the first two days of the Hebrew month of Tishrei, even in Israel where most Jewish holidays last only one day. Since days in the Hebrew calendar begin at sundown, the beginning of Rosh Hashanah is at sundown the end of the 29th of Elul.
The second day is a later addition and does not follow from the literal reading of the Biblical commandment, which states that the holiday should be celebrated on the first day. The two days of Rosh Hashanah are considered "Yoma Arichtah" (Aramaic: "one long day"). There is some evidence that Rosh Hashanah was celebrated for only one day in Jerusalem as late as the thirteenth century. In Reconstructionist Judaism and Reform Judaism, some communities do indeed observe only the first day of Rosh Hashanah, while others observe two days. Orthodox and Conservative Judaism observe both the first and second days. The Karaites Jews who do not accept the "oral law" but rely only on Biblical scripture, observe only one day on the first day of Tishrei, since the second day is not mentioned literally in the Torah.
Rosh Hashanah occurs 163 days after the first day of Pesach (Passover). In the Gregorian calendar at present, Rosh Hashanah cannot occur before September 5, as happened in 1899 and will happen again in 2013. After the year 2089, the differences between the Hebrew Calendar and the Gregorian Calendar will force Rosh Hashanah to be not earlier than September 6. Rosh Hashanah cannot occur later than October 5, as happened in 1967 and will happen again in 2043. The Hebrew calendar is so constituted that the first day of Rosh Hashanah can never occur on the first, fourth, or sixth days of the Jewish week; the popular mnemonic is "lo be-adu rosh" ("Rosh [Hashanah] is not on adu"), where adu has the numerical value 1-4-6 (corresponding to the numbering of days in the Jewish week, in which Saturday night and Sunday daytime make up the first day).
The following table lists the two days of Jewish Rosh Hashanah for some years. Rosh Hashanah begins at sunset on the evening on the first day listed in the table.
This holiday is characterized by the blowing of the shofar (as per Leviticus 23:24), a trumpet made from a ram's horn. In fact, the shofar is blown in traditional communities every morning for the entire month of Elul, the month preceding Rosh Hashanah. The sound of the shofar is intended to awaken the listener from his or her "slumber" and alert them to the coming judgment (Maimonides, Yad, Laws of Repentance 3:4). Orthodox Judaism and some Conservative Judaism communities will not blow the shofar on Shabbat (There is an exception. Jewish Law permits the Shofar to be blown in the presence of a rabbinical court called the Sanhedrin, which had not existed since ancient times. A recent group of Orthodox rabbis in Israel claiming to constitute a modern Sanhedrin held, for the first time in many years, an Orthodox shofar-blowing on Shabbat in for Rosh Hashana 2006.)
In the period leading up to the Yamim Noraim ("Hebrew, "Days of Awe") many penitential prayers (called selihot) are recited, and on Rosh Hashanah itself, religious poems (called piyyuttim) are added to the regular services. Special prayer books for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, called the mahzor (mahzorim pl), have developed over the years. Many poems refer to Psalms 81:3: "Blow the shofar on the [first day of the] month, when the [moon] is covered for our holiday".
Tishrei (or Tishri) is the first month of the civil year and the seventh month of the ecclesiastical year in the Hebrew calendar. The name comes from the Talmud. In the Bible it is called Ethanim (Hebrew: àÅúÈðÄéí ; I Kings 8:2). It is an autumn month of 30 days. Tishrei usually occurs in September–October on the Gregorian calendar, and coincides with either the eighth or ninth month of the Chinese calendar, though the Chinese calendar starts the day at 11:00 pm rather than at sunset.
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