Ask almost any Jew when the Jewish year begins and the answer will be immediate: Rosh Hashanah, 1 Tishrei.
Ask which is the first month of the Jewish year and many will probably answer Tishrei.
Yet that is not what the Torah says.
The Torah could hardly be clearer. As the Children of Israel stand on the threshold of freedom from slavery in Egypt, G-D commands Moshe and Aharon:
“This month shall be for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first for you of the months of the year.”
— Shemot 12:2
The month is Nisan.
According to the numbering established explicitly by G-D in the Torah, therefore, Nisan is the first month. Iyar is the second. Sivan the third. And Tishrei — the month in which we celebrate what we call Rosh Hashanah — is the seventh.
Indeed, the Torah itself calls it precisely that.
What Does the Torah Call 1 Tishrei?
When the Torah commands the observance of 1 Tishrei, it does not call the day Rosh Hashanah.
In Vayikra 23:24, G-D commands:
“In the seventh month, on the first of the month, you shall have a rest, a remembrance of sounding, a holy convocation.”
The Hebrew expression is זכרון תרועה | zikhron teruah | a remembrance of sounding.
Then Bemidbar 29:1 again identifies the date:
“In the seventh month, on the first of the month…”
And calls it:
יום תרועה | Yom Teruah | a day of sounding.
The Torah commands a holy convocation, cessation from ordinary work, offerings to G-D and teruah. Through the Oral Torah we understand the central mitzvah of the day as the sounding of the shofar.
But there is no ambiguity about its position in the calendar.
It is day one of month seven.
Nor does the Torah call that day “Rosh Hashanah”.
So Where Is Rosh Hashanah?
The words ראש השנה | Rosh Hashanah | head of the year do appear in the Tanakh. Yechezkel 40:1 uses the expression berosh hashanah. Remarkably, however, the verse immediately says “on the tenth of the month”. It is therefore plainly not simply naming 1 Tishrei in the way we now use “Rosh Hashanah”.
It is Chazal who give us the familiar calendrical framework.
Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 1:1 begins with an illuminating statement:
“There are four New Years.”
It identifies 1 Nisan as the New Year for kings and festivals, while 1 Tishrei is the New Year for years, Shemittah, Yovel and other calculations.
I am not suggesting that we abandon that tradition. I shall continue to wish people Shanah Tovah and to call the festival Rosh Hashanah.
But we should understand the distinction rather than obscure it.
Nisan Tells a Different Story
There is another distinction which our familiar language can sometimes blur.
We commonly use “Pesach” to encompass the whole extraordinary sequence of our liberation: the Pesach offering, G-D's protection of the Children of Israel when He struck Egypt, the death of the Egyptian firstborn, Pharaoh's capitulation, and Israel's departure from slavery.
The Torah presents these as connected events, but not as one indistinguishable event.
On the night of the fifteenth of Nisan, G-D passed through Egypt while the Children of Israel remained protected in their homes. During that night Pharaoh summoned Moshe and Aharon and ordered Israel to leave (Shemot 12:29–32).
Israel's actual departure followed. Bemidbar 33:3 is particularly precise: the Children of Israel journeyed from Rameses on the fifteenth day of the first month, on the morrow after the Pesach, going out openly before the eyes of Egypt.
This distinction matters because Nisan itself had already been declared the first month before they departed.
G-D was not merely giving Israel another festival.
He was giving a nation emerging from slavery its own calendar.
Time itself was being reordered around freedom.
The First Month of a Free People
That makes Shemot 12:2 extraordinarily powerful.
Israel had lived according to the demands of Pharaoh. A slave does not truly possess his own time. His labour, movements and future belong to his master.
Then G-D says, in effect: this month is yours.
Before Israel even walks out of Egypt, G-D gives Israel mastery over sacred time.
Nisan therefore becomes month one — the beginning of the calendar of a people whom G-D is bringing from servitude into freedom.
Seen in that light, Pesach and Nisan should not simply be collapsed into one idea. Pesach commemorates G-D's protection and the events surrounding our deliverance; our departure marks the transition from slavery into freedom; and Nisan stands at the head of the months of the nation that emerged from that deliverance.
Then What Are We Celebrating on 1 Tishrei?
Something different — and something no less profound.
The Torah gives us a Yom Teruah, a sacred day in the seventh month. Chazal reveal its character as a day of judgement and establish the significance of 1 Tishrei as the New Year for the reckoning of years.
These teachings enrich the Torah's command.
But we lose something if we allow the familiar expression “Jewish New Year” to make us forget what the Torah actually says.
Tishrei is not month one.
It is month seven.
And Rosh Hashanah is not the name by which the Torah introduces its first day.
Were we constructing our terminology solely from the Written Torah, we might well call 1 Tishrei Yom Teruah rather than Rosh Hashanah. I am not proposing that Jews change two thousand years of established language and practice. I am proposing something much simpler:
We should know what the Torah says.
We should read the Tanakh.
There is no need to make Nisan and Tishrei compete for the title of “real” New Year. They express different dimensions of Jewish time.
Nisan tells us when our months begin.
Tishrei tells us when years are reckoned.
Nisan speaks of liberation.
Tishrei calls us to judgement, remembrance, renewal and the voice of the shofar.
And perhaps there is something deeply appropriate about entering Rosh Hashanah knowing that the Torah calls it the first day not of the first month, but of the seventh.
Before we hear the shofar this year, it is worth remembering its original Torah name:
יום תרועה — Yom Teruah — a day of sounding.
And before we call Tishrei the beginning of the Jewish year, it is worth remembering the first commandment given to Israel concerning its calendar:
Nisan is the first of our months.
That first month marks something that should never become obscured by familiarity.
It is the calendar of a people whom G-D brought from slavery into freedom.