Hebrew Calendar
Nisan 5789

Nisan is the month the Torah counts from. It stands first in the order of the months, even though the year itself opens in Tishrei, and that standing is not a technicality: this is the month Israel left Egypt in, and the rest of the calendar is measured outward from it.

Nisan always lands in spring, across late March and April, and that is not luck either: the whole leap-year machinery of the Hebrew calendar exists mainly to stop Nisan drifting out of the season. Thirty days holding the eve of Passover, the seven days of Passover, the seventh day, and at the end of the month Holocaust Remembrance Day. And across all of it: no penitential prayers, no eulogies, no fasting.

The first month, and why it stays in spring

The first commandment given to Israel as a people was handed down in Egypt, before they had left it, and it was a calendar instruction: "This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you" ¹. Before there was a land, and before any other law, the first thing settled was which month you count from.

The Torah never gives this month a name. It is "the first month", or "the month of Abib", of ripening barley. And from that comes the rule that still shapes the structure of the Hebrew calendar: "Observe the month of Abib and offer a passover sacrifice" ². The Hebrew year is a lunar year, about eleven days shorter than the solar one, and left alone it would slowly walk Passover backwards into winter. To prevent that, seven years in every nineteen get an extra whole month, Adar II, an entire intercalation system built largely to hold one month in place.

The name Nisan itself came back from Babylon with the returning exiles, like every Hebrew month name in use today. It first appears in the book of Esther, where the text still has to explain it to the reader: "in the first month, that is, the month of Nisan" ³.

The festivals of Nisan, in order

Rosh Chodesh Nisan (1 Nisan). The day the count of months starts from, and by tradition also the day the Tabernacle was raised in the wilderness, several beginnings landing on one date.

The eve of Passover (14 Nisan). The busiest day of the year: the last leaven is burned by morning, firstborn sons traditionally fast, and by late afternoon the whole house has been turned over to the festival.

Passover (15–21 Nisan; 15–22 in the Diaspora). The festival of freedom, and the source of the most widely read text in Judaism, the Haggadah. In the calendar it is built as a frame: a festival day at each end, intermediate days in between.

The intermediate days (16–20 Nisan). Days that are not quite festival and not quite ordinary. In Israel this is the big spring holiday week, when the entire country is outdoors.

The seventh day of Passover (21 Nisan). A festival day marking the parting of the sea: the day the exodus story closes, exactly a week after it opened.

Holocaust Remembrance Day (27 Nisan). The one modern date in the month, fixed by the Knesset in 1951, after Passover and before the memorial and independence days that fall in Iyar. The siren that sounds that morning is one of two moments a year when the whole country stops.

And the Omer count, which began back on 16 Nisan, runs straight on from here into Iyar.

In Nisan they were redeemed, and in Nisan they will be redeemed

A minor rabbinic disagreement produced one of the best-known lines about this month. Rabbi Eliezer held that the world was created in Tishrei; Rabbi Yehoshua disagreed and argued for Nisan, because this is the month when the earth is full of grass and the trees are just starting to fruit. He then lists a whole run of events he places in this month, and finishes with four words: "in Nisan they were redeemed, and in Nisan they are destined to be redeemed" ⁴.

The first half of that sentence is history. The second half is a bet. Which is exactly why it turns up in every spring sermon: this month has already demonstrated once that it is possible to get out of a closed place, and it has been credited ever since with the possibility of doing it again.

A month that refuses to mourn

What distinguishes Nisan beyond Passover is easiest to find in what is NOT done in it. The Shulchan Arukh rules that Tachanun, the penitential prayer said on ordinary weekdays, is omitted "through the entire month of Nisan", that no eulogies are delivered and no public fasts held ⁵. Thirty days taken out of mourning in advance, including the stretch with no festival in it at all.

And the most tangible thing in the month happens outdoors. The Talmud records a blessing said once a year, precisely here: one who goes out in the days of Nisan and sees trees coming into blossom says a blessing over the One "who has left nothing lacking in the world, and created in it good creatures and good trees, for people to take pleasure in" ⁶. Birkat ha'ilanot may be the simplest thing there is to say about Nisan: you walk outside, you look at a tree in flower, and you say a blessing.

That is also how the month feels. Nisan is not only the month of Passover: it is the month where the calendar, the weather and the liturgy briefly agree on the same thing.

Common questions about the month of Nisan

When is Rosh Chodesh Nisan?
On the 1st of Nisan, and it lasts a single day. Rosh Chodesh runs for two days only when the preceding month is full, and Adar always has twenty-nine, as does Adar II in a leap year. The civil date shifts every year; this year it falls on 17/3/29.

How many days are in Nisan?
Thirty, always. Nisan is one of the fixed-length months of the Hebrew calendar: it does not vary between a full and a deficient year.

Why is Nisan the first month if the year starts in Tishrei?
Because the Hebrew calendar runs two counts at once. The count of months opens with Nisan, as the Torah sets it, which makes it first; the count of years opens with Tishrei, which is where the year number changes. Both are true at the same time.

What month is Nisan in the civil calendar?
Late March into April. It never moves far, because the Hebrew leap month exists precisely to keep it in spring, but the exact civil dates change each year.

What are the festivals of Nisan?
Rosh Chodesh on the 1st (17/3/29), the eve of Passover on the 14th, Passover from the 15th (31/3/29-7/4/29), the seventh day of Passover on the 21st (6/4/29), and Holocaust Remembrance Day on the 27th (12/4/29). Each has its own page with exact dates; the grid above shows how they sit inside one month.

When does Nisan end?
On the 30th of Nisan, which is also the first day of Rosh Chodesh Iyar (15-16/4/29). The Omer count crosses into the next month mid-stride.

A Nisan calendar: the Hebrew and civil dates side by side

The grid at the top of this page shows Nisan as the Hebrew calendar sees it: the large numerals are the days of the Hebrew month, with the corresponding civil date printed beneath each one. You can see at a glance which civil date the 1st of Nisan falls on in the year selected and what weekday it is, and where the 14th, the 15th, the 21st and the 27th land.

Because Nisan always stretches from late March into late April, a civil calendar cuts it in half and you can never see the month whole. Here it appears as one unit. The button above the grid prints it to a single page, portrait or landscape, without the navigation or this text.

• Every festival and fast of the year in one table, and from there the page for each one with its own dates and times: Jewish holidays 2026
• The full printable calendar: printable 2026 Jewish calendar with holidays
• For a civil-month view, in which March and April appear separately: Gregorian month calendar

Related pages

• March 2029
• April 2029
• The Hebrew month of Nisan 5789