Come Blow Your Horn
In this week's parasha, Numbers 29:1, we read about we read about yom teruah, or a "day of sounding" which takes place on the first day of the 7th month, which, today, is called tishrei, but in the Torah it is simply called "the 7th month".
In Joshua 6:5, teruah is an expression for a "great shout". In the Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 33b, and in the Targum, it is treated as an "alarming shout".
And in Leviticus 23:24 we are told to have a day of zicharin teruah, of a "remembrance [through] shouting" on the 1st day of the 7th month. Interestingly enough, some translations use "blast of horns" instead of "remembrance through an alarming shout" or anything similar. The text never mentions horns there either.
And nowhere in the text is this day called "Rosh Hashanah". And nowhere does it speak of blowing a shofar, an animal's horn, in either Leviticus or Numbers, and certainly not the 100 blasts that the Rabbis require today.
So what's the deal with this holiday?
Horn Blowing
If there is no mention of horn blowing on Rosh Hoshanah, where did this idea come from?
There is a Midrash (Midrash Sifra) a pre-Talmudic collection, which reinterprets Leviticus 25:9, which speaks of the Jubilee Year, which speaks of blowing a shofar on that day, once every 49 years, and then, only on Yom Kippur.
In the Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 34a, it gets the idea from Psalm 81:4, which speaks of blowing the shofar for the new moon.
In both of these cases, it is quite possible that people simply liked to make noise on yom teruah and the Rabbis looks for rationale to make it part of the holiday, given that the reasons that they give are very tenuous at best.
It's About Sevens
In the Torah, the number "7" is repeated a lot. You have mentions of 7 days, 7th month, 7 years, and 70 years. Some holidays last 7 days (Sukkot and Passover), Jews rest on the 7th day, there were 7 days of creation (actually, six, but we include the resting day), and many more.
There is on school of thought that the 7th month is used in order to bring to mind the other sevens, such as the 7 days of creation, the day of rest, and of the Creator behind it all.
But the Talmud indicates that it wasn't so clear when the year was to begin. Nowhere in the Torah do we have a new year to commemorate creation indicated in the text. In order to have such a concept, the sages argued if this was to be the new year, or if the first day of the first month, nissan, which is when Passover is, should be declared the beginning of the year. After all, the Torah calls for a commemoration of the "first of the months" (Exodus 12:2). Could that be the actual New Year?
In the end, the first day of the 7th month became the official new year. And interesting side discussion was connecting that date to the day that man was created. But in chapter 1 of Genesis, man was created on the 6th day, which makes it a bit difficult to really connect it, and chapter 2 of Genesis which had man created on a different day and in a different order was completely ignored.
In any case, the Rabbis voted and decided that Tishrei would be the month of the beginning of the year, and added the name "Rosh Hashanah" to what was originally yom teruah, a term that is found in most Holiday prayer books, even though most people simply refer to it as "the New Year" or "Rosh Hashanah".
But was the New Year always celebrated on the 1st of tishrei? Probably not. In fact, we read in Ezekiel 40:1 - "In the twenty-fifth year of our exile on the New Year on the tenth of the month".
In other words, we have an earlier source telling us that New Year was observed on Yom Kippur! (the 10th of tishrei).
Summary
The Rosh Hoshanah that we celebrate today is purely Rabbinical. The date was selected by them, the manner of worship (post-Temple) was invented by them, the blowing of the shofar 100 times was a Rabbinical invention, and having it be two days long...yes, that's Rabbinical as well.
It is mind-blowing to someone who is raised in an environment where he or she is told that "this is what God demands of us".
No it isn't.
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