What is the biblical name for Rosh Hashanah?

The biblical name for Rosh Hashanah is Yom Teruah, meaning the “Day of Blowing” or “Day of Shouting.”

The name comes from the Torah’s descriptions of the first day of the seventh month. Leviticus 23:24 calls it a memorial marked by trumpet or horn blasts, while Numbers 29:1 describes it as a day of blowing the horn. The biblical passages do not use the later rabbinic name Rosh Hashanah in the modern holiday sense.

Yom Teruah is closely associated with the shofar, traditionally made from a ram’s horn. In later Jewish tradition, this day became Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year and the opening of the Ten Days of Repentance leading to Yom Kippur.

A common mix-up is treating Yom Teruah and Yom Kippur as interchangeable. Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement, observed ten days after Rosh Hashanah. Pesach is Passover, and Shabbat is the weekly day of rest.