Rosh Hashanah 2025 (Hebrew year 5786)

Begins sundown on Monday, September 22, 2025, and ends at nightfall on Wednesday, September 24, 2025.

Rosh Hashanah Meaning

The Jewish New Year (the Head of the Year) –  Rosh Hashanah, is a celebration of the New Year. (The Jewish calendar is lunisolar and different from the mainstream Gregorian (solar) calendar.)

Yom Teruah (The Feast of Trumpets) – The blowing of the Shofar is of precious significance as it is a call to attention, a cry of warfare and victory, and that the Shofar is a ram’s horn relates to Genesis 22:13 when Abraham took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son, foreshadowing of the greater sacrifice to come in the Messiah.

The Day of Remembrance – According to Jewish belief, Rosh Hashanah is the day when Adam was created. Creation reminds us of the absolute sovereignty of God, who created all things for His glory. We also remember God’s covenants, our purpose, and our deeds.

The Day of Judgment (Yom Ha-Din) –  the day we stand in judgment before God. On Rosh Hashanah, the religious Jewish belief is that this is the day/time period we are inscribed in the Book of Life (but for just one year…). (For clarification and further study, please click here.)

Rosh Hashanah Celebration

Rosh Hashanah is celebrated by Jewish people worldwide through synagogue attendance and services. Several at-home traditions are deeply meaningful, beautiful, tasty, and fun, part of the way my family remains connected to our Jewish heritage. There may be other traditional foods and activities, but these are the ones of my family.

Honey is a primary food theme! Honey is spread on challah, on apples, and baked into honey cake. Honey symbolizes physical and spiritual refreshment; cleared sight (1 Samuel 14:24-27). Honey is an honored gift (Genesis 43:11). Eating the sweet honey also symbolizes the hope and desire for the year ahead to be filled with sweetness and joy, spiritual sight/deepening understanding of the significance of the holiday and its traditions.

Round Challah and honey: Challah is a traditional Jewish braided white bread. Most of the year, it is braided into regular loaves. On Rosh Hashanah, it is round, recalling the cyclical nature of the year as well as being highly symbolic of a crown, as God is the King.

Apples and honey: Apples are references to being under God’s protection (Psalm 17:8, Zechariah 2:12 [2:8 OT], Proverbs 7:2).

Honey cake: For more sweetness for the new year, honey cake (or lekach) is another treat.

Taslich: From the Hebrew word meaning “to cast,” referring to casting our sins into a body of moving water. Whether at the ocean, a river, creek, lake, brook, stream… graphically and symbolically taking small stones or pebbles and throwing them into the water is a reminder of the true depth and breadth of the holiday and the Book of Life.

“He shall return and grant us compassion; He shall hide our iniquities, and You shall cast into the depths of the sea all their sins.” Micah 7:19

“For I will take you from among the nations and gather you from all the countries, and I will bring you to your land. And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you will be clean; from all your impurities and from all your abominations will I cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the heart of stone out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My spirit within you and bring it about that you will walk in My statutes and you will keep My ordinances and do [them].” Ezekiel 36:24-28 

Rosh Hashanah in the Bible

The first mention of Rosh Hashanah in the Bible is in Leviticus 23:24-25.  What became Rosh Hashanah was an unnamed minor festival held on the first day of the seventh month, serving primarily as a precursor to the major harvest celebration of Sukkot two weeks later. Rosh Hashanah, as we now know it, comes from the oral traditions compiled and organized in the extra-biblical book, the Mishnah. By then, the holiday was regularly celebrated over two days, although biblically it is a one-day observance. The two-day observance emerged because of the uncertainty of predicting which day was the new moon.  The new moon signaled the start of the new month and would be announced by the Sanhedrin, the central Jewish religious court.

Other scriptures regarding Rosh Hashanah are: Psalm 47, Numbers 29:1, Nehemiah 8:1-12.

May you be blessed by the realization of the intensity of God’s love and grace!

Shanah Tovah U’metukah – For a good, sweet year! Shalom!

With love,
Diane