1 Tishrei · September or October
Yom Teruah
יוֹם תְּרוּעָה
also called The Feast of Trumpets, Rosh Hashanah
A day of blowing, opening the seventh month and the autumn feasts. The text gives it no explanation, which is unusual and has left a great deal of room.
The text, before anyone interprets it
What was commanded
A day of solemn rest, a memorial proclaimed with blast of trumpets, a holy assembly, no ordinary work. Strikingly, the law never says what is being remembered. Every other appointed time is explained; this one is announced.
Where it turns up
The shofar sounds through Scripture at the moments when everything changes: at Sinai when God speaks and the people beg him to stop, at Jericho, at the coronation of kings, and at the jubilee when debts are cancelled and land goes back to its family. It is the sound of an announcement that cannot be ignored.
What is on the table
The shofar
A ram's horn, not a musical instrument. It is deliberately hard to play, and the sound is closer to a cry than a note.
Tekiah, shevarim, teruah
One long blast, three broken ones, nine short staccato ones. Tradition hears them as a call, a sighing, and a sobbing.
Tekiah gedolah
The last blast, held as long as breath allows. It is the one people remember.
The books
In rabbinic tradition the books are opened on this day and sealed on Yom Kippur, which is where the greeting about being written in the book of life comes from. The image of opened books is biblical; the date attached to it is not.
In the New Testament
The trumpet is the New Testament's own image for the return. Paul writes of the last trumpet, at which the dead are raised, and of the Lord descending with the trumpet call of God. Whatever else is argued about those passages, the sound is a summons.
Not in the Bible, and worth knowing anyway
What tradition added
Much of what makes these days beautiful comes from outside Scripture, and some New Testament scenes are far harder to read without it. It is set out here with its source named, which is the only honest way to hold it: interesting, often very old, and not binding on anyone.
That the day is the anniversary of creation, and so the civil new year, Rosh Hashanah.
Where it comes from · Rabbinic. Leviticus calls it a day of blowing in the seventh month and gives no reason at all; the new-year identification is a later development, and one rabbinic opinion places creation in Tishrei while another places it in Nisan.
That the books are opened on this day and sealed on Yom Kippur, with ten Days of Awe between.
Where it comes from · Rabbinic imagery, which is where the greeting about being written in the book of life comes from. The image of books opened is biblical, in Daniel 7 and Revelation 20; attaching them to this date is tradition.
Apples dipped in honey, and a shofar sounded through the preceding month.
Where it comes from · Custom, and later custom at that.
Was, is, and is to come
The same appointment, three depths
An appointment on a calendar is not crossed off once. It comes round. Christians of every tradition read these events at more than one depth, whether they call it already and not yet, type and antitype, or near and far fulfilment.
It happened
A day of blowing at the head of the seventh month, with the reason left unstated, which is unusual enough that Jewish tradition has been filling the silence ever since.
It is happening
The sound still goes up every year, and the ten days that follow are still used for the repairs people have been putting off.
It is still coming
The last trumpet, at which the dead are raised. The New Testament reaches for this feast's instrument when it describes the return, and the sound is a summons rather than music.
How Christians have read it
A reading, not a statement of the text
In the framework that reads the spring feasts as answered at the first coming and the autumn feasts as still ahead, this is the wake-up blast: the King announced before he is seen. Jewish tradition already treats the day as the opening of the ten Days of Awe leading to Yom Kippur, a season for putting things right with God and with people before the verdict.
In the wedding reading: In the wedding reading, this is the shout that announces the bridegroom is on his way, and the moment the household that has been waiting has to be ready.
How it is kept now
Kept by Jews as Rosh Hashanah, the civil new year, with apples and honey and the shofar. Kept by Messianic congregations as Yom Teruah. Almost entirely absent from the Christian calendar, which is a strange gap given how much of the New Testament's language about the return is trumpet language.
If you want to keep it
Hear a shofar if you can, in person rather than through a speaker. It is not a pleasant sound and it is not supposed to be. Then take the ten days that follow seriously: this is the season for the conversation you have been avoiding.
Should Christians keep the feasts? Every view at its strongest →