Hebrew Calendar
Tishrei 5799

Tishrei is the month the Hebrew year opens in. The 1st of Tishrei is Rosh Hashanah, and from that morning everything is counted afresh: the Hebrew date takes a new year number, the school year is already under way, and even people who never look at a Hebrew calendar feel the switch. That is what this month brings with it: a starting point, a short glance backwards, and the wish to begin better than last time.

And straight after the opening comes everything else. No month in the calendar is as crowded as Tishrei: it opens with Rosh Hashanah, goes on to the fast of Gedaliah and to Yom Kippur, and reaches Sukkot with its seven days, and after them Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah. Thirty days that barely hold a single uninterrupted working week, which is why, in Israel, "after the holidays" is simply the name for everything pushed into the month that follows.

The seventh month that starts the year

The name Tishrei does not appear in the Torah. It came back from Babylon with the returning exiles, like every Hebrew month name in use today; in the Bible the month is simply "the seventh month".

Which is also the confusing thing about it: if it is seventh, how does the year begin in it? Because the Hebrew calendar runs two counts side by side. The count of months opens with Nisan, which makes Tishrei seventh; the count of years opens with Tishrei. The Mishnah says so outright: a year has more than one new year, and the 1st of Tishrei is "the New Year for counting years" ¹.

The Torah gathers the month's festivals into a single chapter, Leviticus 23, where the year's holidays are set out in order, and four of them fall inside that same "seventh month". The rabbis knew how crowded it was, too: back when the new moon was still fixed by witnesses, the court sent messengers out in only six months of the year, and for Tishrei they went "because of the arrangement of the festivals" ², not one festival. All of them.

The festivals of Tishrei, in order

Rosh Hashanah (1–2 Tishrei). Two days that open the year, and the only date in the calendar that is both a new moon and a festival. The shofar heard on it is the sound most associated anywhere with starting over.

The fast of Gedaliah (3 Tishrei). A short one-day fast, from dawn to nightfall, marking the murder of Gedaliah son of Ahikam: the event that ended what was left of Jewish settlement in the land after the destruction of the First Temple.

Yom Kippur (10 Tishrei). The quiet day of the year. A full twenty-five-hour fast that closes the ten days running from Rosh Hashanah, and the one day when even the roads in Israel come to a stop.

Sukkot (15–21 Tishrei). Seven days spent living in a temporary structure in the garden or on the balcony. This is the festival the liturgy calls "the season of our rejoicing", and the most tangible of them all, you build it with your hands.

Hoshana Raba (21 Tishrei). The seventh and last day of Sukkot, treated by tradition as the seal on the whole run that began at Rosh Hashanah: a longer day of prayer, at the end of the month's arc.

Shemini Atzeret (22 Tishrei). A festival day of its own that attaches to Sukkot and closes it, and from which the prayer for rain begins.

Simchat Torah. The day the annual cycle of Torah reading is finished and restarted from Genesis, with dancing holding the scrolls themselves. In Israel it falls on the same day as Shemini Atzeret; in the Diaspora, the day after.

And the next day Cheshvan begins, the only month of the year with no special day in it at all. After Tishrei, you notice.

The first time anyone described this day

The earliest detailed account of the 1st of Tishrei is not in the Torah but in the book of Nehemiah, and it reads like a scene.

The returnees from Babylon gathered in Jerusalem on the first day of the seventh month, and Ezra the scribe read the Torah aloud to them from morning until midday. Most of them were hearing the text for the first time in their lives, and when they grasped what they were listening to they began to weep. Then comes the unexpected part: Nehemiah, Ezra and the Levites neither join the weeping nor turn it into a sermon: they stop it. "This day is holy to the Lord your God: you must not mourn or weep" ³.

And instead of an explanation they give an entirely practical instruction: "Go, eat choice foods and drink sweet drinks and send portions to whoever has nothing prepared" ⁴. Go and eat well, and send food to someone who has none.

That may be the moment that explains the whole month in one line. The very first time this day was described, the conclusion drawn from it was not sorrow: it was a good meal, and a portion sent next door.

Why Tishrei feels like one story

What makes Tishrei a single month rather than a list of festivals that happen to land in the same thirty days is their order. It opens with a shofar, reaches the day on which nobody eats, drinks or works, and from there, in five days flat, moves to the festival the Torah describes in the plainest words it has for happiness: "you shall have nothing but joy" ⁵. Five days between a fast and a hut in the garden. There is no sharper transition in the calendar.

Its ending is not a climax either, but a small request. Rashi reads Shemini Atzeret as a moment of parting: after seven days of festival, when everyone is already starting to disperse, one more day is added: "like children taking leave of their father, who says to them: parting from you is hard for me; stay one more day" ⁶.

That is also the simplest account of the familiar end-of-Tishrei feeling. The month is not merely crowded: it is shaped like a story, with an opening, a still point in the middle, and an ending reluctant to let go.

Common questions about the month of Tishrei

When is Tishrei?
Tishrei falls in the autumn, usually spanning late September and October (this year, 30/9/38-29/10/38). The civil dates shift every year, because the Hebrew year is about eleven days shorter than the civil one. The grid above gives the exact dates for the year selected.

What month is Tishrei?
It is the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar, and also the month the year begins in, both are correct. The count of months starts from Nisan in the spring, making Tishrei seventh; the count of years starts from Tishrei, making the 1st of Tishrei the New Year.

When is Rosh Chodesh Tishrei?
On the 1st of Tishrei (30/9/38-1/10/38), and it lasts a single day, which is unusual. Rosh Chodesh runs for two days when the preceding month is full, but Elul always has twenty-nine. It is also the only Rosh Chodesh of the year that is itself a festival.

What are the holidays of Tishrei?
Rosh Hashanah at the start (30/9/38-1/10/38), the fast of Gedaliah the next day (3/10/38), Yom Kippur on the tenth (9/10/38), Sukkot from the fifteenth (14-20/10/38), Hoshana Raba on its seventh day (20/10/38), then Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah (22/10/38). Some of these festivals have their own pages with exact dates; the grid above shows how they sit together inside one month.

How many days are in Tishrei?
Thirty, always: its length does not vary between a full and a deficient year. It ends on the 30th of Tishrei (29/10/38), which is also the first day of Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan.

A Tishrei calendar: every festival of the month on one page

The grid at the top of this page shows Tishrei 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. It makes visible the thing that is otherwise hard to see: how close together these festivals actually are. The 1st in the corner, the tenth nine days later, the fifteenth five days after that, and Shemini Atzeret closing the run before the month is out.

Because Tishrei always falls between late September and early November, a civil calendar cuts it across two months, which is exactly why it is awkward to plan around. 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 festival with its own dates and candle-lighting times: Jewish holidays 2026
• The full printable calendar: printable 2026 Jewish calendar with holidays
• For a civil-month view, in which September and October appear separately: Gregorian month calendar

Related pages

• September 2038
• October 2038
• The Hebrew month of Tishrei 5799