Rosh Hashanah: The Day of the Shofar and the Coronation of the King

Yom Teruah: the day of the shout in the Torah

Leviticus places the day among “the appointed times of Hashem” (Leviticus 23:2):

Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall you have a sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation. You shall do no servile work therein: but you shall offer an offering made by fire unto Hashem.

Numbers repeats the command and lists the offerings:

And in the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall have a holy convocation; you shall do no servile work: it is a day of blowing the trumpets unto you.

A few observations from the Hebrew:

• The date. The day is a new moon. Its offerings come “beside the burnt offering of the month” (Numbers 29:6), so it is both rosh chodesh and a festival in its own right.
• The names. Leviticus calls it shabbaton zichron teruah (שבתון זכרון תרועה), “a rest, a remembrance of teruah”; Numbers calls it yom teruah (יום תרועה), “a day of teruah.” Hence the liturgical names Yom HaZikaron (“Day of Remembrance”) and Yom Teruah.
• The sound. Teruah (from rua, “to shout, raise a cry”) names a kind of sound, not an instrument. It is the alarm of war (Numbers 10:9), the shout at Jericho (Joshua 6:20), and the acclamation of a king: “Hashem his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them” (Numbers 23:21). “Trumpets” in the King James Version is a translation choice. Jewish tradition has always understood the instrument to be the shofar, and the Talmud derives this from the Jubilee, proclaimed with a shofar in the same seventh month (Leviticus 25:9).¹

In the Temple, silver trumpets sounded beside the shofar, but the Mishnah is clear which mattered: the shofar was prolonged and the trumpets short, “because the commandment of the day is the shofar.”²

Psalm 81: “in the time appointed”

Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn feast day. For this was a statute for Israel, and a law of the God of Yaakov.

“In the time appointed” is bakeseh (בכסה), which the sages read as “when the moon is covered.” “Which festival falls when the moon is covered? Rosh Hashanah,” says the Talmud. The psalm calls the day a mishpat, a “judgment,” and the rabbis heard in that word the theme of divine judgment.³

Ezra, Nehemiah and the first of Tishrei

When the exiles returned from Babylon, “from the first day of the seventh month began they to offer burnt offerings unto Hashem,” before the Second Temple’s foundation was laid (Ezra 3:6). A generation later, on the same date, the people gathered “as one man” at the Water Gate, and Ezra read the Torah from morning until midday while the Levites “caused the people to understand” (Nehemiah 8:1–8). The people wept at the commandments they had neglected, and their leaders stopped them:

This day is holy unto Hashem your God; mourn not, nor weep… Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared… for the joy of Hashem is your strength.

This scene is the template for Rosh Hashanah ever since: a day when the word of God searches the heart, and also a festival with festive meals, sweet food and gifts to the poor.

Which new year? Tishrei and Nisan

The Torah calls the spring month of the Exodus “the first month of the year” (Exodus 12:2). How can the seventh month be the “head of the year”?

The Bible knows two counts. Months are numbered from Nisan, the month of redemption, but the agricultural year turns in autumn: the Feast of Ingathering falls “in the end of the year” (Exodus 23:16), and the Sabbatical and Jubilee years run from autumn to autumn (Leviticus 25:8–10). The phrase rosh hashanah appears in the Bible only in Ezekiel 40:1, and scholars debate which calendar it reflects there.⁴ The tenth-century BCE Gezer Calendar begins its list of farming seasons with the autumn ingathering.⁵

The Mishnah gives the classic synthesis:

There are four new years. On the first of Nisan, the new year for kings and for festivals. On the first of Elul, the new year for the tithe of cattle… On the first of Tishrei, the new year for years, for the Sabbatical years and for the Jubilees, for planting and for vegetables. On the first of Shevat, the new year for the tree, according to the House of Shammai; the House of Hillel say, on the fifteenth of it.

Nisan remains the head of the festival cycle; Tishrei is the head of the count of years. The month names themselves came “up with them from Babylon,” as the Jerusalem Talmud says; before the exile this month was called Ethanim (1 Kings 8:2).⁶

The birthday of the world and the Day of Judgment

“This is the day, the beginning of Your works”

The Talmud records a dispute between two first-century sages. Rabbi Eliezer said the world was created in Tishrei, Rabbi Yehoshua in Nisan. Both agree that on Rosh Hashanah Sarah, Rachel and Hannah were “remembered” and that Yosef went out of prison. Then comes a line that matters for the prophetic meaning of the day: according to Rabbi Eliezer, “in Nisan they were redeemed, and in Tishrei they will be redeemed in the future”; Rabbi Yehoshua holds that the final redemption, too, will come in Nisan.⁷

The liturgy follows Rabbi Eliezer: “This is the day, the beginning of Your works, a remembrance of the first day.” A midrash explains that creation began on 25 Elul, so Adam was formed on the first of Tishrei. In the twelve hours of that day he was created, sinned, was judged and was pardoned, and Hashem told him this would be a sign for his children: they too would stand in judgment on this day and go out pardoned.⁸ Rosh Hashanah is the birthday of humanity, and of human accountability.

Judgment and the three books

On Rosh Hashanah all who come into the world pass before Him like benei maron, as it is said, “He fashions their hearts alike; He considers all their works” (Psalm 33:15).

The Talmud offers several explanations of benei maron: sheep (which Rashi explains as sheep counted one by one for the tithe), travellers in single file on the narrow ascent of Beit Maron, or the soldiers of the house of David passing in review.⁹ On every reading, each person is seen individually. The Talmud also gives the image that shaped the season:

Three books are opened on Rosh Hashanah: one for the completely wicked, one for the completely righteous, and one for those in between. The completely righteous are written and sealed immediately for life; the completely wicked are written and sealed immediately for death; those in between are held in suspense from Rosh Hashanah until Yom Kippur.

From this come the greeting ketivah vachatimah tovah (“a good writing and sealing”), the Ten Days of Repentance, and the sense that the door stands open until the closing prayer of Yom Kippur. The books are biblical: Moshe speaks of “Your book which You have written” (Exodus 32:32), Malachi of “a book of remembrance” (Malachi 3:16), and Daniel sees that “the judgment was set, and the books were opened” (Daniel 7:10).

Judgment does not cancel the festival. Asked why Hallel is not sung, the Talmud answers with a scene in heaven: “Is it possible that the King sits on the throne of judgment, with the books of life and death open before Him, and Israel should sing?”¹⁰ Yet the same tradition has Jews eat, drink and dress well, trusting that the Judge is also their Father.

The shofar: sound, law and meaning

The ram’s horn

Any kosher animal’s horn may be used except a cow’s; a cow’s horn would recall the golden calf, and “an accuser cannot become a defender.”¹¹ A ram’s horn is preferred. Rabbi Abbahu taught: “Why do we blow with a ram’s horn? The Holy One, blessed be He, said: Blow before Me with a ram’s horn, so that I may remember for you the binding of Yitzchak son of Avraham, and I will account it to you as if you had bound yourselves before Me.”¹²

Tekiah, shevarim, teruah

The Torah does not describe the teruah. The Targum renders yom teruah as “a day of wailing,” and the Talmud connects this with the mother of Sisera, who “cried through the lattice” (Judges 5:28) for a son who would never return. Was the wail a groan or a sob? Because the tradition was in doubt, Rabbi Abbahu in Caesarea instituted a sequence that covers both.¹³ Three sounds are used:

• Tekiah (תקיעה): one long, unbroken blast, framing the others.
• Shevarim (שברים, “breaks”): three medium, broken blasts, like groaning.
• Teruah (תרועה): nine or more short notes, like sobbing.

The minimum obligation is thirty sounds in three patterns. The common custom is one hundred, which the medieval Arukh links to the hundred cries of Sisera’s mother.¹⁴ The last is the tekiah gedolah, the “great tekiah,” held as long as the blower’s breath allows. Many congregations first recite Psalm 47 seven times: “God is gone up with a shout, Hashem with the sound of a trumpet” (Psalm 47:5). A midrash teaches that when Israel takes up the shofar, Hashem rises from the throne of judgment and sits on the throne of mercy.¹⁵

The shofar is not sounded on Shabbat. The Mishnah records that in Temple times it was blown on Shabbat only in the Temple, and that after the destruction Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai allowed it wherever a court sat. The Talmud explains the restriction as a safeguard against carrying in public, and notes that Leviticus says “a remembrance of teruah”: on Shabbat the blasts are remembered in words.¹⁶

“Awake, you sleepers”

Rambam, after ruling that the shofar is a scriptural decree, adds: “There is a hint in it, as if to say: Awake, you sleepers, from your sleep; you who slumber, arise from your slumber; search your deeds, return in repentance, and remember your Creator.”¹⁷ The commandment is obeyed because Hashem commanded it, but the meaning Rambam names has shaped how Jews hear it.

The prayers of the day

Malchuyot, Zichronot, Shofarot

The Musaf Amidah of Rosh Hashanah has nine blessings. Three central blessings each gather at least ten verses on one theme, in the order the Mishnah fixes: Kingship (Malchuyot), Remembrances (Zichronot) and Shofar blasts (Shofarot).¹⁸ The Talmud explains:

The Holy One, blessed be He, said: Recite before Me Kingship verses, so that you will make Me King over you; Remembrance verses, so that your remembrance will rise before Me for good. And with what? With the shofar.

1. Malchuyot opens with Aleinu, which tradition attributes to the third-century sage Rav (some scholars think it older), and builds to Zechariah’s vision: “And Hashem shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Hashem, and His name one” (Zechariah 14:9).¹⁹ Israel accepts the yoke of the kingdom of heaven and prays for the day when every nation will.
2. Zichronot proclaims that God remembers: Noach, the covenant with the fathers, “the kindness of your youth” (Jeremiah 2:2). It ends with the Akedah, asking God to remember how Avraham suppressed his compassion to do God’s will, and to let His compassion overcome His anger toward Avraham’s children.
3. Shofarot recalls the shofar at Sinai and the shofar of the future: “the great trumpet shall be blown” (Isaiah 27:13) and “the Lord Hashem shall blow the trumpet” (Zechariah 9:14). The story of redemption is framed by two shofar sounds, at Sinai and at the end.

Unetaneh Tokef: legend and history

The best-known poem of the High Holy Days is Unetaneh Tokef (“Let us declare the mighty holiness of this day”). The great shofar sounds, “a still small voice is heard” (1 Kings 19:12), and every creature passes before the Shepherd like sheep under his staff. “On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on the fast of Yom Kippur it is sealed… who shall live and who shall die.” It ends: “But repentance, prayer and righteous giving avert the severity of the decree.”

Many prayer books introduce it with a story. The thirteenth-century Or Zarua of Rabbi Isaac ben Moses of Vienna reports, from a manuscript of Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn, that Rabbi Amnon of Mainz was mutilated by a bishop for refusing to convert, was carried into the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, recited this prayer and died, and later taught it in a dream to Rabbi Kalonymus ben Meshullam.²⁰

The story has given worshippers courage, but it should be read as legend. There is no independent record of a Rabbi Amnon of Mainz, and the poem is older than the story. A copy survives in the Cairo Genizah, and its style and its triad of repentance, prayer and charity (found in Land of Israel midrash) point to composition in the Land of Israel in the Byzantine period; some scholars attribute it to the poet Yannai (around the sixth century). Scholars debate the exact date, but nearly all agree the poem predates the legend.²¹ The legend tells how persecuted Ashkenazi Jews came to love the poem, not who wrote it.

The holy King

Through the Ten Days of Repentance the Amidah says HaMelech HaKadosh, “the holy King,” instead of “the holy God.”²² After the Amidah comes Avinu Malkeinu, “Our Father, our King,” which grew from a prayer of Rabbi Akiva in a time of drought (it is omitted on Shabbat).²³ Father and King together sum up the day.

The Torah readings and the Akedah

• First day: Genesis 21, “And Hashem visited Sarah as He had said.” Haftarah: 1 Samuel 1:1–2:10, Hannah’s prayer. Both women were “remembered” on Rosh Hashanah.
• Second day: Genesis 22, the binding of Yitzchak (Akedah). Haftarah: Jeremiah 31:2–20 (31:1–19 in Hebrew Bibles), Rachel weeping for her children and Hashem’s answer, “Is Ephraim my dear son?… I will surely have mercy upon him.”
• Maftir both days: Numbers 29:1–6.

The Talmud records these choices.²⁴ See the readings for Rosh Hashanah.

The Akedah ties together the ram’s horn, remembrance and hope. “Avraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns” (Genesis 22:13). A midrash says its left horn was blown at Sinai, and its right horn, the larger, will be blown in the age to come to gather the exiles, as Isaiah says: “the great trumpet shall be blown.”²⁵ The shofar of Rosh Hashanah stands between Moriah, Sinai and the final redemption.

Customs of the season

Erev Rosh Hashanah

The day before the festival, 29 Elul, completes the month described in our article on Leil Selichot and the month of Elul. Customs include a long early-morning Selichot service; no shofar that morning, to separate Elul’s voluntary blasts from the festival’s commanded ones; hatarat nedarim, the annulment of vows before three men; and, for some, immersion, charity and visiting graves. The festival begins at sundown with candles and the evening service. The calendar is arranged so that the first day never falls on a Sunday, Wednesday or Friday.²⁶

Simanim, apples and honey

The Talmud records Abaye’s advice to see, at the start of the year, foods that grow abundantly: gourd, fenugreek, leek, beet and dates.²⁷ From this grew the seder of simanim (“signs”), kept especially in Sephardi and Mizrahi homes. Each food comes with a Yehi ratzon (“May it be Your will”) prayer, often a pun: over leeks (karti) that enemies be “cut off” (yikartu); over pomegranates, that our merits multiply like its seeds; over the head of a fish, that “we be the head and not the tail” (Deuteronomy 28:13).

The Ashkenazi custom of apple dipped in honey, with the prayer for “a good and sweet year,” is recorded in the fourteenth-century Tur.²⁸ Many dip round challah in honey too. On the second night a new fruit is eaten so that the blessing Shehecheyanu applies without doubt.²⁹ Greetings include Shanah tovah (“a good year”), L’shanah tovah tikatevu (“may you be inscribed for a good year”), Ketivah vachatimah tovah, and among many Sephardim Tizku leshanim rabbot (“may you merit many years”).

Tashlich

On the afternoon of the first day (the second, when the first is Shabbat), many walk to a river, lake or sea and recite:

Who is a God like unto You, that pardons iniquity, and passes by the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He retains not His anger forever, because He delights in mercy… and You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.

Tashlich (“You will cast”) is not in the Talmud. Its first clear description comes from the circle of Rabbi Yaakov Moelin (the Maharil) in the German lands around 1400, and the Rema records it in the sixteenth century.³⁰ Some rabbis criticized it when people treated breadcrumbs as a magical disposal of sin. Rightly understood, the worshipper stands beside living water and confesses that only God can carry sin away.

Two days, even in the Land of Israel

Most festivals are kept one day in the Land of Israel and two in the Diaspora. Rosh Hashanah is kept two days everywhere, Jerusalem included. Because it falls on the new moon itself, even Jerusalem could not know in advance whether the witnesses would arrive in time for the court to declare that day 1 Tishrei. The Mishnah tells of a year when they arrived late and the Levites sang the wrong psalm. The Jerusalem Talmud calls the two days “an enactment of the early prophets,” and Rambam explains that the Land of Israel kept two days out of doubt.³¹ The sages treat them as one holiness, a single “long day” (yoma arichta).³²

Yeshua and the shofar: a Messianic reading in a Jewish key

What the Brit Hadashah says and does not say

The Gospels never name Rosh Hashanah. Yeshua and his disciples were Torah-observant Jews, and there is every reason to think they kept the first of Tishrei with Israel, but the texts do not describe it. John 5:1 mentions an unnamed “feast of the Jews”; commentators have proposed several, Rosh Hashanah among them. The text does not say, and nothing should be built on a guess.

What the Brit Hadashah (the New Testament) does contain is shofar language drawn from the Prophets and the Jewish prayers:

Behold, I show you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. — 1 Corinthians 15:51–52

For the Master himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Messiah shall rise first. — 1 Thessalonians 4:16

And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

The last trump and the great shofar

• The great shofar. Matthew’s “great sound of a trumpet” echoes Isaiah 27:13, “the great trumpet [shofar gadol] shall be blown.” Israel prays the same hope daily in the Amidah: “Sound the great shofar for our freedom, raise a banner to gather our exiles.” The Second Temple Psalms of Solomon already sings, “Blow in Zion the trumpet to summon the holy ones.”³³
• The gathering. “From one end of heaven to the other” echoes Deuteronomy 30:4: “If any of yours be driven out unto the outmost parts of heaven, from there will Hashem your God gather you.” It is the ingathering of the exiles, and Isaiah says where it leads: to “worship Hashem in the holy mount at Jerusalem.”
• The shout and the trump of God. These recall Sinai, where “the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud” sounded as God came down (Exodus 19:16), and Zechariah 9:14. Believers then “meet” the Master (1 Thessalonians 4:17); many scholars note that the Greek word (apantēsis) was used for citizens going out to greet an arriving king and escorting him back into their city. The picture is a royal arrival on earth, not an escape from it.
• The last trump. Paul does not explain what makes this trumpet “last.” Many Messianic teachers connect it with the tekiah gedolah of Rosh Hashanah; that is a homiletical association, not something Paul states. What the text plainly teaches is that the dead are raised at the sounding of God’s shofar, as Isaiah, Zechariah and the Amidah expect.

These texts do not describe a secret removal of believers. The shofar is public, the dead are raised, and the gathering is to the King in Jerusalem.

The coronation of the King

And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Messiah; and He shall reign forever and ever.

Rosh Hashanah crowns Hashem as King, and the Brit Hadashah places Mashiach within that kingship as the King’s anointed son. Psalm 2 shows the order: Hashem sets “My king upon My holy hill of Zion” (Psalm 2:6). Paul describes the end the same way: Messiah reigns until all enemies are subdued, and then “the Son also himself shall be subject unto Him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). Every tongue confesses that Yeshua the Messiah is Master “to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:11). When the congregation sings that “Hashem shall be King over all the earth,” disciples of Yeshua join in without reservation: his kingdom is his Father’s.

The appointed judge and the advocate

For the Father judges no man, but has committed all judgment unto the Son… and has given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man.

“Son of man” points to Daniel 7:13–14, where one like a son of man comes before the Ancient of Days and is given dominion. God “has appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He has ordained,” and has given assurance of it “in that He has raised him from the dead” (Acts 17:31). The Judge is a man appointed and raised by God, judging with the Father’s authority (John 5:30).

The same Messiah is an advocate: “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Yeshua the Messiah the righteous” (1 John 2:1). The Greek paraklētos is the word the Mishnah borrows as praklit: “One who does one commandment acquires for himself one advocate.”³⁴ The Rosh Hashanah prayers ask God to remember the binding of Yitzchak. Disciples of Yeshua add their trust in the son of Avraham who was “obedient unto death” and exalted by the Father (Philippians 2:8–9), and they remember his word that the merciful shall obtain mercy (Matthew 5:7).

The prophetic horizon: the great shofar and the Day of Hashem

The Day of Hashem

Blow the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in My holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of Hashem comes, for it is nigh at hand.

Zephaniah calls it “a day of the trumpet and alarm” (Zephaniah 1:16), and Amos warns that it is “darkness, and not light” (Amos 5:18). Yet the prophets end in hope. Joel’s alarm leads to the call to return, the outpouring of the Spirit “upon all flesh,” and Hashem dwelling in Zion (Joel 2:12–32; 3:17–21). Isaiah’s great shofar gathers the lost and outcast to Jerusalem (Isaiah 27:13). Zechariah’s shofar sounds as Hashem saves His people, who become “as the stones of a crown” upon His land (Zechariah 9:14–16). Rosh Hashanah rehearses that day year by year: judgment, return, mercy and the coronation of the King.

Resurrection

The shofar is also the sound of resurrection. “Awake and sing, you that dwell in dust” (Isaiah 26:19). “Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2). Every Amidah praises the God “faithful to give life to the dead.” Yeshua spoke of death as sleep (John 11:11), and Paul of those “asleep” who will rise at the shofar (1 Thessalonians 4:13–16). The dead sleep until that day. The hope is not escape from creation but its renewal: bodies raised, Israel gathered, the nations going up to Jerusalem “to worship the King” (Zechariah 14:16), and the age to come (Olam Haba). Reading Rambam’s “Awake, you sleepers” beside Isaiah 26:19 is a homiletical connection, but a fitting one: the shofar that wakes the conscience now will one day wake the dead.

No one knows the day or hour

Some have tried to predict the year of Messiah’s return by Rosh Hashanah. The Talmud answers: “May the bones of those who calculate the end rot away.”³⁵ Yeshua said, “Of that day and that hour knows no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father” (Mark 13:32). We set no dates.

A popular Messianic teaching links “no one knows the day or hour” to Rosh Hashanah, since in ancient times its date depended on sighting the new moon. That is a homiletical reading at most: the phrase is not documented as an ancient name for the festival, and Yeshua was speaking of his return. Rabbi Eliezer’s “in Tishrei they will be redeemed” is a beautiful hope, but one opinion in a dispute, not a timetable. Rosh Hashanah teaches readiness, not calculation: “Watch therefore: for you know not what hour your Master does come” (Matthew 24:42).

Keeping Rosh Hashanah

See our calendar for this year’s dates and times. Some general guidance:

• Prepare during Elul. Examine your life, make peace with others, and give to those in need.
• Hear the shofar. The commandment is to hear it. If you cannot reach a congregation, find someone to blow for you, and listen in silence as a subject hearing the King’s proclamation.
• Pray the day’s themes. Read the Malchuyot, Zichronot and Shofarot verses, Avinu Malkeinu, Genesis 21–22, Hannah’s prayer and Psalm 81.
• Keep the festival. Light candles at sundown, refrain from work on both days, make Kiddush, and enjoy festive meals with apples and honey and the simanim. Like Nehemiah, send portions to those with nothing prepared.
• Walk to the water. Say Micah 7:18–20 beside a river or lake and let it lead you to honest confession.
• Bless one another with Shanah tovah and ketivah vachatimah tovah.
• Keep the King’s coming in view. Pray “Sound the great shofar for our freedom” with fresh attention, and live ready without speculating about dates.

Rosh Hashanah opens the Ten Days of Repentance, which pass through Tzom Gedaliah and Shabbat Shuva to Yom Kippur and then the joy of Sukkot. The season begins with the shout of acclamation for the King and ends, in the prophets’ vision, with all the nations rejoicing in His presence.