Which month marks the Jewish New Year?

By Maayan Jaffe/JNS.org

Tishrei is among the most well-known months on the Hebrew calendar because it contains the High Holidays and marks the beginning of the year. Or so it seems.

Indeed, to modern-day Jews, Rosh Hashanah is considered the Jewish New Year. But traditionally, the Hebrew calendar actually has four “New Year” days: the first of Tishrei (Rosh Hashanah); the first of Nisan; the 15th of Shevat (Tu B’Shevat, or the New Year of trees); and the first of Elul, the New Year of animal tithes (taxation).

The Torah specifically names Nisan as the first month of the Jewish calendar. So where did Tishrei come from, and how did it gain New Year status?

Rabbi Donny Schwartz, Midwest regional director for the Orthodox youth organization NCSY, explains that Tishrei relates to the sun, which is connected to the solar year. In Hebrew, the word year is translated as “shanah,” which is related to the Hebrew words “sheni” (second/repeatable) and “yashan” (old).

“Tishrei represents a system that never changes,” says Schwartz. “You wake up on the morning and it is just another day. You know you drive on the right side of the street, put clothes on your body. You know who you are. It’s a ‘blah’ feeling sometimes, but there is a benefit to that.”

On the other hand, Nisan relates to the moon, which is changing daily, if not more frequently. Nisan is therefore the “head of the months,” and is “all about renewal” and change, Schwartz says.

Tishrei and Nisan also are tied to the seasons in which they fall. Schwartz believes that at different times of year, there are different energies in the world. Tishrei falls in the autumn, a time of great material beauty, namely the changing of the colors of the leaves. Nisan, on the other hand, falls in the spring, a time when beauty is only budding—renewing or resurfacing fresh off the winter.

Rabbi Jessica Minnen, resident rabbi of New York’s OneTable initiative, which brings together Jews in their 20s and 30s for Shabbat dinners, takes this idea a step further. She says Nisan is the planting season, and Tishrei the harvesting season. Minnen tells JNS.org that a recent course she was teaching examined the differences between the two creation narratives in Genesis 1 and 2, which many modern scholars believe are competing stories.

“In Genesis 1, God is breathing into Adam, into the Earth, the ground, the shape that is formed into a human being. In Genesis 2, God physically shapes Adam out of the ground,” Minnen says. “This is the planting and the harvesting, this is Nisan and Tishrei. We need both creation narratives, and we need Nisan and Tishrei to form a complete sense of who we are and who we can be.”

“God created the world in Tishrei. But when did God start thinking about creating the world? That was Nisan,” notes Rabbi Mendy Wineberg, program director of the Chabad House Center of Kansas City.

Wineberg says that while the first man was fashioned by God in Tishrei, the Jewish people became a nation in Nisan, when God took them out of Egypt and ultimately gave them the Torah and its mitzvot.

“God became king of the people on Rosh Hashanah. God became our personal king in Nisan,” says Wineberg.

Minnen says the main message of all the Jewish New Years—Tishrei, Nisan, Shevat, Elul—is one of continuity.

“You have these four opportunities to start over, to redefine who you are now and where you want to go,” she says. “Every day can be your New Year.”

7 stories to watch in Israel next year
By Ben Sales

(JTA) — Tired of hearing about Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians or the machinations of a certain Islamic Republic? There’s plenty of other news happening in Israel, from uproars over the country’s enormous natural gas reserves to a growing push to legalize marijuana. Here are eight newsy items you may have missed in 5775 — and stories you should watch out for as the new year begins.

1. Israel’s controversial gas drilling increases
Since the discovery of two huge offshore fields of natural gas in the Mediterranean Sea, Israel has turned from an energy importer to an exporter. Israel has signed agreements worth tens of billions of dollars to export gas to Egypt and Jordan, and in 2013, a conglomerate of two energy companies — Noble Energy and the Delek Group — began exporting gas from the Tamar natural gas field. In June, however, an agreement to let Delek and Noble also develop the much larger Leviathan field set off protests in Israel. Critics, including the head of Israel’s antitrust authority, called the deal a monopoly. But Prime Minister Netanyahu has vowed to move ahead with the agreement. Meanwhile, a massive gas field off Egypt’s coast was discovered recently.

2. Will new reforms solve Israel’s housing crisis?
Israelis are concerned about bombs and tunnels, but they’re also worried about another threat to their ability to live in Israel: skyrocketing housing prices. Since 2008, prices have risen nearly 60 percent. The prohibitive costs of housing were what ledhalf a million Israelis to take to the streets in protest in 2011. Promising to address the housing crisis, the upstart centrist party Kulanu won 10 seats in the March Knesset elections. Now Kulanu’s chairman, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, has advanced a series of reforms designed to curb prices, including raising taxes on the purchase of second homes and streamlining Israel’s housing bureaucracy, making construction and contracting more efficient. Time will tell if his efforts make it easier for young Israelis to buy a home.

3. Israel becomes more French
As antisemitism rises in France, Israelis have been hearing more and more French on the street over the past few years. Since 2010, some 20,000 French Jews have moved to Israel — and officials predict that 2015 will end up being a second straight record year for French aliyah. Parisians have filled the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and coastal cities like Netanya and Ashdod. Israelis already are feeling their effect; shwarma stands, for example, now offer the signature Israeli lamb dish in a baguette as well as a pita. As Israel’s French community continues to grow, we’ll see how else the French arrivals may shape their new home.

4. Israel grows closer to India and China
India’s new prime minister, Narendra Modi, wants to strengthen ties with Israel — he intends to visit the country, and will be the first Indian head of state to do so — and has had friendly words for Netanyahu. Israel, meanwhile, is looking to increase its trade with China. In 2015, Chinese investments in Israel reached $6 billion, and Israel and China are looking to establish a free-trade zone between them.

5. Haredim join the workforce
According to recent data from Israel’s Economy Ministry, 16 percent of Israeli businesses now employ haredim, up from 8 percent in 2008. The number of haredi employees in the business sector also doubled, from 48,000 in 2008 to more than 100,000 now. But haredi-secular relations still have a long way to go. A recent survey found that 45 percent of haredim had no interaction at all with secular Jews.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi

6. Marijuana legalization gets closer
Israeli cannabis growers are hoping to make the desert bloom. Medical marijuana is already legal in Israel, and Israel’s deputy health minister announced new regulations in July that will allow cannabis to be sold in pharmacies and prescribed by a wider range of doctors. Lawmakers from both right- and left-wing parties support marijuana legalization. Until 2015, the most outspoken advocate for legalization was the far-right Knesset member Moshe Feiglin. He didn’t make it into Knesset in the March election, but his cause goes on.

Sofia Mechetner, the new face of Dior.

7. A 14-year-old Israeli is the face of Dior
Move over, Bar Refaeli. Sofia Mechetner, a 14-year-old Israeli from the Tel Aviv suburb of Holon, was recently named “the face” of the French fashion label Dior. Mechetner, who had no prior modeling experience, is the daughter of Soviet immigrants and reportedly shared a bedroom with her two siblings — whom she often cared for, as her parents were busy working to make ends meet. She landed the Dior job, in part, by running into the brand’s creative director at a Dior store in Paris. Fashion insiders have cautioned that modeling young comes with dangers and pressures. But for now, says her manager, her family’s financial troubles are over.