Is the Day of Alarm the Biblical New Year?

The Day of Alarm, most commonly called the “Feast of Trumpets”, falls on the first day of the seventh month in the biblical calendar (Lev. 23:24). The actual biblical name for the feast, the “Day of Alarm”, can be found in Numbers 29:1, where it is commonly mistranslated as “a day of blowing the trumpets”. The Hebrew word tərūwʿāh (תְּרוּעָה) means “alarm” or “shout”, and does not imply that a trumpet is used to make the sound.

Today, many Jews call the Day of Alarm “Rosh HaShanah” or “Head of the Year” because they believe that it begins the new year. However, according to the Bible, the first month of the year for the Israelites should be the month of the Passover (Exod. 12:2), and not on the Day of Alarm, which falls on the seventh month of the biblical year (Lev. 23:24; Num. 29:1).

The influence of Post-biblical Rabbinic Judaism is so pervasive that most Jews—and even many Christians!—are unaware that the holiday which they call “Rosh HaShanah” or “Head of the Year” is actually called the “Day of Alarm” in their own scriptures, and that it is not in fact, according to their own scriptures, the beginning of a new year.