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In this episode of Hebrew Voices #225 - Yom Teruah: Now That You Mention It, Nehemia and Lynell invite everyone to a special Yom Teruah Live Teaching for a Biblical investigation into the purpose of this appointed time that commences the seventh Biblical month, paying particular attention to a series of verses that share a common denominator.

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Nehemia: “Thus shall you say to the children of Israel: ‘Yehovah, the God of your fathers, the God of Avraham, the God of Yitzchak, and the God of Yaakov has sent me to you. This is My name forever. This is My…’” and that’s usually translated something like memorial, because remember, zekher is “to remember”, and it’s also “to mention”. But in this verse, indisputably it means “this is my mention for every generation.” Because throughout the Tanakh, zekher, or zikhri, my zekher… zekher means the way you refer to someone, the way you mention them.

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Nehemia: Shalom and chag sameach. I’m really excited today; it’s both Shabbat and Yom Teruah. The moon was sighted yesterday in Israel. And Lynell and I, we do these morning Bible studies, and she asked me in one of the studies, “Let’s talk about Yom Teruah. What’s Yom Teruah all about?” And we eventually did this study, and… let me do share screen here. And she said to me, “Why isn’t this on your website?” I’m like, “No, I’m sure it’s on my website.” We did a quick search, and we found that… I actually, later on my own, found that there are references to some of these things, but you have to find kind of like things here and there to get all this information. I just kind of assumed it was there. There are bits and pieces of it there, and then I will say like a very short, short statement like, you know, “See these verses,” and I assume everybody goes and looks them up and sees what the significance of them are.

So, let’s get into Yom Teruah. And there’s a lot of things about Yom Teruah; I don’t have time to get into everything today. I was going through this with Nelson Calvillo, my research assistant at the Institute of Hebrew Bible Manuscript Research, and I said, “Oh, we’ll have to save that for next year. That’s for next year. That’s for next…” There’s too many things! So, this is kind of just the tip of the iceberg, but I think this is some of the main points.

Yom Teruah is in two different places in the Torah. Numbers 29:1 it says, “In the seventh month, on the first of the month, a holy proclamation shall be for you.” And we could do a whole study just on what mikra kodesh, “holy proclamation”, means. Some translate it as… like, the King James says, “Holy Convocation;” that is, a holy gathering. Then it says, “you shall not do any laborious work”. Laborious work; malekhet avoda. That’s a whole study, but don’t have time to get to that today. “It shall be for you a Yom Teruah,” a day of teruah.

And then in Leviticus 23:24 , which is the first place it’s mentioned… it’s only really two places, says, “Speak to the children of Israel, saying: In the seventh month on the first of the month, there shall be for you a time of rest,” shabbaton; again, a whole study about what’s shabbaton. “Zikhron Teruah,” “a holy proclamation.” So, what is Zikhron Teruah? That’s what I want to talk about today.

Zikhron Teruah is different than Yom Teruah. Meaning, it’s a different phrase. Why didn’t it just say both times Yom Teruah? And it’s interesting; if you go through all the passages, like for example, in Shavuot, you’ll see it’s called multiple different things. Sukkot, you know, you see in one place it’s called the Feast of Asif, feast of ingathering.

It says zikhron teruah; what is zikhron here, and what is teruah? Those are two different questions. First, we’re going to talk about teruah. So, the King James has “a memorial of blowing trumpets”. And then, the NRSV and NIV has “commemorated with trumpet blasts”. We’ll talk about the first phrase later. So, trumpets. Trumpet is a concept in the Torah, which is a silver trumpet. There were two silver trumpets in Numbers 10:1-10, and they were used for gathering the people and for mustering them for war. And then, the JPS translates “commemorated with loud blasts”, because the JPS is thinking, “Well, no, no, no, these Christians who translated this, these non-Jews, they don’t know that we don’t use a trumpet on Yom Teruah, we actually use a shofar.”

NET2, which is supposed to be a scholarly translation… it’s a really interesting translation, they have, “A memory announced by loud horn blasts.” So, now it’s not trumpets, it’s horns. And then it says in the note, “Although the term for horn does not occur here, allowing for the possibility that vocal shouts of acclamation are envisioned, the blast of the shofar is most likely what is intended.” And how is that most likely? They don’t really say, but then they say, “On this occasion, the loud blasts on the horn announce the coming of the new year on the first day of the seventh month.”

So, we just looked at all the verses in the Torah that introduce Yom Teruah or Zichron Teruah. Leviticus 23… there’s a few more verses afterwards about sacrifices, right? But that’s it. And there’s no mention anywhere in the Tanakh, let alone the Torah, about a new year. So, when they translate “announced by loud horn blasts”, what they’ve done is, they went and looked at modern Judaism, and then they read that into the translation of what was written thousands of years ago, anachronistically. And, you know, anachronism is like, if you’re in ancient Rome and you’ve got a telephone or something, right? Well, that doesn’t fit that time period. So, this loud horn blast is something that they saw in the 20th and 21st century, and they read into their translation of Torah.

What is teruah in the Tanakh itself? Meaning, what does it mean in ancient Hebrew? So, it can be blowing a trumpet; we see that in Numbers 10 and other passages. I had all these passages, but this was going to be a three-hour teaching, so… Number two, it can mean blowing shofar. It does mean that in Leviticus 25. It means shouting, as we’ll see. And it could be a noise, a noise made with something called mitzeltayim, which in Hebrew is either cymbals… it’s usually translated as cymbals, as in the things that clang, two metals. Or it could be maracas. And you might