When is The Jewish New Year? - Tehila Gimpel: The Land of Israel Fellowship

hey guys i hope you're all doing well and had a good rosh hashanah and shabbat um you guys know me pretty well by now so you probably already know that i love when the torah portion and the time of the year that we're in come together and i always think it's so cool to feel how the torah portion is directly speaking to something that's happening to us and our specific time so i want to ask a question that comes up in this week's tour that comes up for me in this week's torah portion and the question is when is the new year according to the torah now you guys might be looking at me a little funny because we've been studying together for rosh hashanah which is the new year and that's kind of duh right rosh hashanah is the new year that's so obvious and that is the intuitive answer but this week's portion makes us question that a little in this week's portion it talks about the mitzvah of reading the torah at the end of for all the people at the end of the seventh year in chapter 31 verse 10 it says at the end of seven years at the time of the sabbatical year during the sukkot festival you have to do this commandment now there are so many things that are confusing about the timing in this verse that i have to read it again at the end of seven years at the time of the sabbatical year during the sukkot festival that's a head scratcher right because if it's the end of seven years how is that even the sabbatical year we know the seventh year is the sabbatical year just like we've just started right now this year's the sabbatical year started on rosh hashanah it's gonna finish at the end of the year so if rosh hashanah comes after the seventh year by sukkot it's already not defined as the sabbatical year right here's something even more weird how can sukkot be considered the end of the sabbatical year or any year for that matter right it says at the end of seven years during sukkot but sukkot always comes after rosh hashanah so if rosh hashanah is the first day of the new year definitionally sukkot that comes after rosh hashanah has to be in the beginning of the year can't be in the end of the year how could it be defined as marking the end of the sabbatical year in the verse in this week's portion so to understand this i want to share something i learned many many years ago from rabbi you'll be noon who's considered one of israel's leading biblical scholars and i had the privilege and pleasure of getting to study in his weekly tour classes many years ago before i even got married so rabial points out that this isn't the only verse in the torah that kind of shakes our certainty about rosh hashanah being the new year he says there are tons of other verses that put this whole thing into confusion here's just a few examples how about leviticus 25 verse nine it says in leviticus 25 verse nine on the seventh month which we know is tishrei right on the tenth of the month which we know is yom kippur the day of atonement you shall sound the shofar throughout your land you shall sanctify the 50th year and proclaim freedom throughout the land and it should be the jubilee year for you so according to leviticus we know that the 50th year is the jubilee year everyone goes back to their ancestral land and heritage but it says that it starts on the 10th day of the month now things are really confusing we always think that rosh hashanah is the beginning of the year but our portion makes us think that maybe it's in the end of sukkot but then in leviticus it sounds like the jubilee starts on yom kippur so it's not either of the other likely suspects for the beginning of the new year this is really weird now check this out ezekiel seems to be part of the confusion too in ezekiel 40 verse 1 he says at 25 years to our exile on rosh hashanah it actually says in hebrew in the hebrew says rosh hashanah on the 10th day of the month huh that's really confusing did he just call yom kippur rosh hashanah like rosh hashanah meaning the new the head of the year the new year so maybe we're looking at this totally the wrong way maybe we've been colored by western culture that looks at the new year as this really specific point in time like we're all kind of used to this idea that at midnight make sure to kiss the ball is gonna drop on times square three two one woo right new years but maybe that's not the biblical way of looking at things and maybe it's not the godly way of looking at things let's look at nature at the creation that hashem made there's no midnight in creation that doesn't exist in the natural world think about sunset when you sit and watch a sunset is it an exact moment like imagine like you're sitting with your spouse watching a beautiful sunset and you're like well sunset just happened let's get up it's done no it's like this process they're the colors and the sun is dipping and we call all of that sunset and yes there's the moment that the sun dips below the horizon but you still see the light over the horizon and maybe from a different vantage point you would still see the sun think about even shabbat there's a reason shabbat is 25 hours and not 24 hours it's because it's really hard to pinpoint that exact time that shabbat should start an exact time that shabbat should finish so our sage is set for us times but it's always with a sort of um like extra safe safety you know to to make sure that you don't cut into shabbat so we start shabbat a little bit before the sunset and we finish it after the stars come out because we're not exactly sure how to pinpoint and nail down a precise singular 24-hour day in the natural world same as with the seasons humans made specific days of well today is the first day of winter you know today is groundhog day in reality the seasons don't don't change all at once we know that in our life right they change in a process it could be you know you slowly start seeing the temperatures getting a little colder a little warmer they change in a process so maybe the jewish year doesn't start in like a precise moment but in a period of time like a season of renewal that has a lot of different aspects maybe rosh hashanah is the beginning of the beginning of the new year and sukkot is the end of the new year and that space in between is like the overlap of the past year and the coming year it's like twilight where it's not daytime not nighttime so it's not yet it's not anymore really like fully the old year and it's not fully the new year it's kind of this place where they meet it's a different way of looking at time than what we might be accustomed to in western culture we think of it as like okay midnight it used to be 2021 now it's 22 you know 2022 goodbye 2021 see you later in the torah we have this period of time that brings together all of the aspects and processes that we need to be going through spiritually in order to end one year and begin another it's kind of like a chain think about a chain like one link in the chain closes over the other one and they overlap we don't say goodbye to the new year all at once and go you know into the new year saying we say goodbye the old year and hello new year and that's it we go through this reflection that's backwards facing and forward facing you could see it in the names of rosh hashanah right in the bible it's called a day of sounding the shofar when do you sound a horn blast when like a king is coming right it's considered the day of setting hashem as king in our lives for the coming year like you know welcome the king but in the writing of the sages and in all the prayer books rosh hashanah is also called yamazi-karon a day of remembering and it's hashem remembering our past year and us remembering our past year reflecting on our year it's so different than what we expect because we're used to people saying hey what's your new year's resolution you know only forward-facing our new year is you can even see in the names it's this combination of the old year and deciding what we're going to do in the new year this reflection and forward facing then we have 10 days of repentance and yom kippur these are the big days of forgiveness and shiva isn't it interesting like let me ask you a question if you were hashem how would you have set up the calendar wouldn't you have put i think about this for a second wouldn't you put the day of memory and the day of repentance in the month of elul right in last month the last month of the past year what did you want to just start the new year all clean and fresh and forgiven like if it was me i would do remembrance day let's say you know like rosh hashanah remembrance day the day of you know thinking back on the last year on the 20th of elul then 10 days of repentance to finish off the year say sorry for all the things i've done in the past year the last day of the year yom kippur and then start the new year with sukkot celebrating the agricultural season celebrating the rain that's about to begin happy dancing seem hot to us starting all the torah portions all over again like i don't want to tell hashem how to do his business but you know that kind of seems like a way smarter way to do things you remember everything the past year finish it and then start the new year happy but that's precisely the secret there is no beginning in the biblical way of looking at things without including in it the reflection on the past and you can't reflect on the past without also contemplating the future there's no value to just looking at your past if it's not tied together with how you're planning your future so hashem gave us this time that's not just one point in time but at this overlapping time not here or there it's the end in the beginning at the same time now it's also important in this context to remember that the biblical way of counting time is so unique if we look at the western christian way of counting time we have the gregorian calendar which is entirely solar it's giving no attention to the moon no attention to the cycle you know of the of the lunar months it's just 365 days what the time that it takes to rotate around the sun finish the cycle of the four seasons and that's it when you look at the muslim calendar it's the opposite entirely lunar ignores the season their holidays come out at different times of year like the ramadan can sometimes be in winter and sometimes be in summer because the solar year and the lunar year are different lengths and they don't match up only the torah both calendars the torah teaches us that nissan the month of passover is always set to be in the spring that's why we have leap years in order to make sure that the lunar and solar years always match up the torah weaves together all the elements into nate of nature into one unified vision of time so in our version of the new year we have rosh hashanah which is the first lunar day of the year and sukkot which is the beginning of the solar seasonal time of the seasons changing from the dry season to the rainy season and all the you know fruitfulness that comes with the rain we tie them together to recognize that hashem rules all the aspects of nature that all the elements of our world and existence are integrated and tied together so instead of thinking about this new year as one day that happens why don't we think about looking at this entire time that we're in between rosh hashanah and the end of sukkot is a special season as a gift that hashem gave us for this whole time this long time that we can renew ourselves in every aspect on rosh hashanah we remember and we choose to make hashem our king in the coming year on yom kippur we focus on repentance so we can begin the year spiritually with a clean slate on sukkot because it's an agricultural new year it's really i think symbolic of our sustenance how we how we make our physical existence how we how we set up our physical you know work and income and our jobs like it's a good time to thank hashem then for the abundance in our lives for the physical abundance for the blessings that we have how do we want to carry ourselves it's the time to think how do we want to carry ourselves in our work do we want to be honest charitable fair faithful right then we have seen the last day where we start the torah portions again we go back to genesis and we commit ourselves and think and contemplate about how we want to plan and be diligent in our torah study for the coming year it would be impossible to have all those different levels of reflection packed into one day so hashem gives us this long full rich meaningful season of contemplation and i find this personally comforting maybe you guys will identify with this a little sometimes when there is like this one moment jeremy kind of laughs at me about this i don't know if you guys also have this but i have this a lot where i am like waiting for this one climactic important moment i wait for it i wait for it i'm so excited and then it comes i'm like oh shoot i missed it oh i wasn't ready oh i wish i could do that again i need a do-over i have to tell you guys a really funny story we our family loves passion fruit okay this is gonna sound like a strange story but stick with me for a second we love passion fruit and i'm like okay we love passion for jeremy let's go to town let's go wild we're gonna buy three passion fruits but you guys know jeremy by now he's not a do things halfway kind of guy he's an all in kind of guy so jeremy is like and then comes home with like 20 passion fruit plants and our entire garden is plastered with passion fruit plants but we have some sort of like i guess i don't know climate issue that our roots at least it feels like they never get ripe and we're waiting and waiting and waiting for them to get right they never get right and then it's like they're teasing us and then we see on one of our trees three ripe passion fruits and we're looking at these passion fruits and fantasizing about them and thinking okay we're gonna save them for this perfect moment there's three ripe ones maybe we'll we'll save it for shabbat or we'll say that first through code everything okay we'll cut them open we'll give like a little bit to each kid because there's not enough for all of our kids and we're planning this moment and then the other day our friend and partner and neighbor at the farm roni uh he came over to talk to jeremy and he always has like a kid on his back and a kid on his front and he came with his three little guys and he's so nonchalantly walks by our passion fruit tree goes pluck tosses one to one kid one to the other kid one to the other kid they poke a hole in and goes slurp the fruit out and toss it on the ground and jeremy are like what just happened so for me that was like the classic thing that always happens to me when i'm planning this one perfect moment and then i miss it so i find this season this idea of the rosh hashanah season to be really comforting in that even if you didn't have like the perfect rosh hashanah that you planned mine wasn't perfect i wasn't able to go to synagogue my kids are all sick with kovid and i was busy running around taking care of them it wasn't exactly the prime uh religious moment of my life let's say but i find it comforting to know that it's not this one moment and if you miss it too bad wait till next year hashem is kind and merciful and he gives us an entire season to begin our new year so i wish you guys a beautiful new year season and i am so blessed and lucky to be able to go through this season for us to all be together and uh go through this rich season of contemplation and renewal together shalom my name is jeremy gempel a few months ago we started an online seminar teaching life-changing biblical wisdom revealed from the original hebrew and straight from the mountains of judea with global instability on the rise more and more people are turning to god realizing now they don't exactly know where to look for guidance the bible says the guidance will come from the land of israel what started as an online seminar has grown into a global fellowship with hundreds of members from over 30 countries we are participating and fulfilling prophecy as we learn the bible through the eyes of prophecy with a focus on what it's telling about us in our lives today what you will discover is that the wisdom transmitted thousands of years ago is speaking directly to us in our time right now instead of learning the bible as a religion it's the torah of israel the living guidance of god so please join us for our next online gathering and get access to the full library of teachings that the land of israel fellowship is offering join now and get an audio series on the prophecy encoded in the book of joshua absolutely for free just click on the link below or email fellowship at the land of israel.com i don't know how you found this video or what compelled you to click on that link but i don't believe in coincidence and i would encourage you to take the next step on your journey toward the land of israel i hope to see you at the land of israel fellowship shalom