NEW YEAR
Nisan starts the counting of the months of a year even though the 1st of Nisan is not set to be New Year’s Day. No other feasts are held in that day according to the Torah, except if weekly Sabbath falls on the 1st of Nisan.
Counting of months starts from Nisan so that the agricultural feasts would be held at proper times. Barley is ready for Pesach (Passover) and first wheat harvest is gathered on Shavuot (Pentecost). The second wheat harvest and fruit harvest do fall on Succot (the feast of Tabernacles). Leaping months are added regularly to adjust proper times of feasts.
Either is the day of the blowing of the Trumpet (1st of Tishri) named to be the New Year’s Day in the Torah. It got this meaning only during the time of the second Temple and along with Chanukah it is the other feast started during that period of time.
This passage in Torah is hard to adjust to be in spring: “And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering AT THE YEAR’S END.” (Exodus 34:22). Not even this can be in spring: “And [keep] the feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field; and the feast of ingathering, which is IN THE END OF THE YEAR, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.” (Exodus 23:16). Wheat is harvested both at Shavuot (Pentecost) and at Succot (Tabernacles). Shavuot is not a week long feast as is the feast of Succot in Tishri.
When translated Shavuot means “weeks”, so as by its name it is “a feast of weeks” but only Succot and Pesach are week long feasts and Shavuot is not held at either of these New Year Days.
In light of these two verses of the Torah is this feast which was started during the time of Ezra and Nehemia not unbiblical. Evidently it has its foundation in a proper interpretation of the Torah made by men who lived at that time.
“In the five, and twentieth year of our captivity,
IN THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR, in the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after that the city was smitten, in the selfsame day the hand of the LORD was upon me, and brought me thither.” (Ezekiel 40:1)
This happened to Ezekiel 10th of Tishri, which is Yom Kippurim, the Day of Atonement.
The following verse seems to clearly state that New Year is in Tishri: “Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants and ye shall return every man untoh is possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family. A jubile shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed. For it is the jubile; it shall be holy unto you; ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field. In the year of this jubile ye shall return every man unto his possession.” (Lev. 25:9-13)
Also the Year of Jubilee starts in Tishri.
Moshe Zew