What is the hebrew year for 2022

The Jewish holiday calendar for the Hebrew year 5783 is here! Totally new and updated for Rosh Hashanah for the year 2022 / 2023.

It’s a beautiful and easy to reference one-page Jewish calendar available as a DIGITAL DOWNLOAD.

Keep it on your phone or desktop or print it out and display it beautifully in your home. Holidays include all major Jewish holidays from Rosh Hashanah and Hanukkah to Purim and Passover.

The calendar also includes descriptions of each of the holidays and is new for Rosh Hashanah 2022! The calendar covers the whole Jewish Year 5783 which goes from Rosh Hashanah 2022 to Rosh Hashanah 2023.

Jewish communities around the world use the Jewish or Hebrew calendar to determine the dates of religious observances and rituals. In Israel, it is also used for agricultural and civil purposes, alongside the Gregorian calendar.

Scroll of Esther.

©bigstockphoto.com/Olexandr

Sun, Moon, and Holy Scripture

Jewish time reckoning is lunisolar, which means that the calendar keeps in sync with the natural cycles of both the Sun and the Moon. Featuring a body of complex regulations, exceptions, and mathematical rules, it is also designed to satisfy a number of requirements conveyed in the Jewish Holy Scripture.

The Hebrew calendar is a comparatively imprecise system in terms of reflecting the duration of a solar year, which is the time it takes Earth to complete a full orbit around the Sun. In comparison with the timing of the astronomical seasons, it is off by 1 day every 216 years.

Calendar Structure

Months in the Jewish Calendar

A year in the Hebrew calendar can be 353, 354, 355, 383, 384, or 385 days long.

Regular common years have 12 months with a total of 354 days. Leap years have 13 months and are 384 days long. Months with uneven numbers usually have 30 days, while months with even numbers have 29 days.

In addition to these regular (kesidrah) year lengths, both common and leap years can be a day shorter (cheserah or deficient year with 353/383 days) or a day longer (shlemah or complete year with 355/385 days).

These alterations are designed to prevent Rosh Hashana and other holidays from falling on certain days of the week. In practice, a day is added to the 8th month (Marcheshvan) or subtracted from the 9th month (Kislev).

In civil contexts, a new year in the Jewish calendar begins on Rosh Hashana on Tishrei 1. However, for religious purposes, the year begins on Nisan 1.

Months in the Gregorian calendar

When Was Year 1?

According to Hebrew time reckoning we are now in the 6th millennium. The Hebrew year count starts in year 3761 BCE, which the 12th-century Jewish philosopher Maimonides established as the biblical Date of Creation.

Years in the Jewish calendar are designated AM to identify them as part of the Anno Mundi epoch, indicating the age of the world according to the Bible. For example, the beginning of the year 2022 in the Gregorian calendar converts to year AM 5782 in the Jewish calendar.

Leap years in the Gregorian calendar

Leap Year Rules

Like in the Islamic calendar, months in the Jewish calendar are based on the phases of the Moon. Each month begins with the appearance of a Crescent Moon after the New Moon phase and lasts for a full lunation, a Moon cycle encompassing all phases of the Moon.

Moon phases in your city

Since the sum of 12 lunar months is about 11 days shorter than a solar year, a leap month is added every 2 to 3 years, or 7 times in a 19-year cycle. Leap months are meant to keep the calendar in step with the astronomical seasons and make sure that the religious observances occur at the correct time of year, as mentioned in the Torah.

History and Background

The Jewish calendar is based on a history of time reckoning efforts dating back to ancient times. Both Israelite and Babylonian influences played an important role in its development. According to the account of Persian astronomer al-Khwarizmi (c. 780 – 850 CE), most of the features of its modern-day version were in place by the 9th century CE.

In parallel with the modern Islamic calendar, the timing of the months in the early forms of the Jewish calendar depended on actual sightings of the Crescent Moon. However, this practice was gradually changed, and by 1178 CE the calculation of the beginning of a new calendar month had been fully replaced by the mathematical approximation of the moment the Crescent Moon begins to appear (Molad) rather than actual sightings.

Rosh Hashanah is the beginning of the year according to the traditional Jewish calendar. In 2022, Rosh Hashanah begins at sunset on Sunday, September 25. Learn more about how Rosh Hashanah is celebrated with traditions and sweet symbolic foods—and listen to the sound of the shofar!

What Is Rosh Hashanah?

Rosh Hashanah, literally “Head of the Year” in Hebrew, is the beginning of the Jewish new year. It is the first of the High Holidays or “Days of Awe,” ending 10 days later with Yom Kippur.

This two-day festival marks the anniversary of human’s creation—and the special relationship between humans and God, the creator.

Rosh Hashanah begins with the sounding of the shofar, an instrument made of a ram’s horn, proclaiming God as King of the Universe, just as a trumpet would be sounded at a king’s coronation. In fact, Rosh Hashanah is described in the Torah as Yom Teru’ah, a day of sounding (the Shofar).

The sound of the shofar is also a call to repentance—to wake up and re-examine our commitment to God and to correct our ways. Thus begins the “Ten Days of Repentance” which ends with Yom Kippur, the “Day of Atonement.”

When Is Rosh Hashanah?

In 2022, Rosh Hashanah starts at sunset on Sunday, September 25, and will run through nightfall on Tuesday, September 27.

Note that the Jewish calendar is different than today’s civil calendar (the Gregorian calendar). It is a “Luni-Solar” calendar, established by the cycles of the Moon and the Sun, so the lengths of days vary by the season, controlled by the times of sunset, nightfall, dawn, and sunrise. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, occurs on the first two days of Tishrei, the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar.

All Jewish holidays begin at sunset on the date listed.

Rosh Hashanah Dates

Rosh Hashanah Traditions

The traditional way to wish someone a Happy New Year in Hebrew is by saying “Shana Tova.” In Hebrew this means “A Good Year.”

There are many traditions associated with Rosh Hashanah, including the following:

• Attending synagogue and spending time with family and friends.
• Reflecting on the year before and repenting for any wrongdoings and then reflecting on the year ahead to start afresh.
• Wear white and new clothes, symbolizing purity.
• As mentioned above, there is the sounding of the ram’s horn (shofar) on both mornings.

If you’re wondering what a shofar sounds like, take a listen below.

• Every evening, candles are lit. Candles are often a symbol of remembrance.
• On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the Tashlich ceremony is performed. This involves visiting a body of fresh water to symbolically cast past sins away.
• Spicy, sharp, or sour foods are avoided in favor of sweet delicacies, representing wishes for a sweet and pleasant year (not a bitter year). Nuts are also avoided.

Rosh Hashanah Foods

Food plays a large role in Rosh Hashanah tradition. Some of the symbolic foods include:

• Apples dipped in honey (eaten on the first night)
• Round challah (egg bread) dipped in honey and sprinkled with raisins. Try our delicious challah recipe.
• A new seasonal fruit (on the second night).
• Pomegranates (as its many seeds symbolize the hope that the year will be rich with many blessings).
• The head of a fish (or ram) asking God that in the coming year we be “a head and not a tail.”

Apples Dipped in Honey and Nuts

Make this simple Rosh Hashanah dish of apples dipped in honey and nuts!

Rosh Hashanah Poem

The New Year, Rosh-Hashanah, 5643

Not while the snow-shroud round dead earth is rolled,
And naked branches point to frozen skies.—
When orchards burn their lamps of fiery gold,
The grape glows like a jewel, and the corn
A sea of beauty and abundance lies,
Then the new year is born.

Look where the mother of the months uplifts
In the green clearness of the unsunned West,
Her ivory horn of plenty, dropping gifts,
Cool, harvest-feeding dews, fine-winnowed light;
Tired labor with fruition, joy and rest
Profusely to requite.

Blow, Israel, the sacred cornet! Call
Back to thy courts whatever faint heart throb
With thine ancestral blood, thy need craves all.
The red, dark year is dead, the year just born
Leads on from anguish wrought by priest and mob,
To what undreamed-of morn?

For never yet, since on the holy height,
The Temple’s marble walls of white and green
Carved like the sea-waves, fell, and the world’s light
Went out in darkness,—never was the year
Greater with portent and with promise seen,
Than this eve now and here.

Even as the Prophet promised, so your tent
Hath been enlarged unto earth’s farthest rim.
To snow-capped Sierras from vast steppes ye went,
Through fire and blood and tempest-tossing wave,
For freedom to proclaim and worship Him,
Mighty to slay and save.

High above flood and fire ye held the scroll,
Out of the depths ye published still the Word.
No bodily pang had power to swerve your soul:
Ye, in a cynic age of crumbling faiths,
Lived to bear witness to the living Lord,
Or died a thousand deaths.

In two divided streams the exiles part,
One rolling homeward to its ancient source,
One rushing sunward with fresh will, new heart.
By each the truth is spread, the law unfurled,
Each separate soul contains the nation’s force,
And both embrace the world.

Kindle the silver candle’s seven rays,
Offer the first fruits of the clustered bowers,
The garnered spoil of bees. With prayer and praise
Rejoice that once more tried, once more we prove
How strength of supreme suffering still is ours
For Truth and Law and Love.
–Emma Lazarus (1849–1887)

If you observe Rosh Hashanah, please share your traditions below! 

Calendar

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