Did you know Rosh HaShana is not the beginning of the new year? In fact, the Jewish calendar has four new years, and the beginning of the year in the Torah’s calendar is actually in the spring—the month of Nisan, when Passover happens.

The four different new years are first explained in Mishna Rosh HaShana. The very first mishnahA collection of rabbinic teachings edited in Israel around 225 CE. Organized in six sedaraim by subject matter and dealing with both ritual and civil law. Both the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmud are expansive discussions of the Mishnah. Read more calls Nisan “the new year for kings and festivals.” This already raises several questions for us—what does the new year have to do with kings, and what does any of this have to do with Nisan?

What are the Four New Years in Judaism?

The mishna explains that the four new years are:

• Nisan: the new year for kings and festivals
• Elul: the new year for animals
• Tishrei: the new year for the calendar and for planting
• Shevat: the new year for trees (think of Tu BiShvat!)

The New Year for Kings

The mishna describes Nisan as “the new year for kings and festivals.”

The festival part is easy to understand. Pesach is considered the first festival, which makes sense—it’s the beginning of the harvest period, when the barley is ripe.

But what does “the new year for kings” mean? 

When the mishna says that Nisan is the new year for kings, it’s describing our relationship to the government. We count the number of years a king has been on the throne based on how many Nisans they’ve passed. So if we said “the second year of the reign of King Omri,” we’d mean “the second Nisan since he was crowned king”—even if he was only crowned last Adar (a year and a month ago).

Why does it matter when we start counting the reign of a king? 

The gemaraThe discussion portions of the Talmud based on the quoted Mishnah. Read more explains (Rosh HaShana 2a) that we need to know this in order to date documents. This reflects the ancient custom to write the year in terms of the reign of a certain king.

In fact, until well into the Middle Ages, Jews all over the world continued to count years based on the Seleucid Greek royal calendar. Today, we count from creation (according to the calendar, it has been 5786 years since the world was created). But we only started counting from creation relatively recently.

So that explains why it’s important to know how to count based on the reign of a king. But what does that have to do with Nisan?

Linking Kingship to the Exodus

The gemara (Rosh HaShana 2b) explains the connection to Nisan through the following verse: 

“In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites left the land of Egypt, in the month of Ziv—that is, the second month—in the fourth year of his reign over Israel, Solomon began to build the House of GOD” (1 Kings 6:1). 

The verse refers to two different calendars:

• The regnal year (the number of years of Solomon’s reign), and 
• The number of years since we left Egypt.

Since the verse juxtaposes these two calendars, the gemara infers that they must share the same new year. The gemara goes on to prove that the year since we left Egypt is counted from Nisan—the month of Pesach. Therefore, the king’s reign must also be calculated based on that same new year.

We tie the year of the king to the Exodus, our first moment of freedom after slavery. Ultimately, we are treating kingship as a story about the freedom of the Jewish people.

Jewish and Non-Jewish Kings

The gemara (Rosh HaShana 3a) goes on to distinguish between Jewish and non-Jewish kings. Although for Jewish kings, we count from Nisan, for non-Jewish kings, we actually count from Tishrei. The only outlier is the Persian king Cyrus. His reign was counted from Nisan because he was considered an exceptionally good king, due to the edict he issued which allowed Jews to return from exile to build the Second Temple in Jerusalem. However, later in his life, the rabbis determined that he became corrupted. After that point, his reign is again counted from Tishrei, like any other non-Jewish king.

Here we can see a difference between the new years of Tishrei and Nisan. Nisan marks our particular covenantal freedom. Tishrei marks our subjection to a foreign, corrupt power.

The Creation of the World

The difference between Tishrei and Nisan ties into a famous makhloket (disagreement) between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua about when the earth was created (Rosh HaShana 10b-11a). Rabbi Eliezer says Tishrei; Rabbi Yehoshua says Nisan. 

We can understand this disagreement as a question about the story we want our calendar to tell. Is it a universal story of creation? Or is it a personal, particular story of the creation of the Jewish people?

The rabbis source this makhloket to the biblical description of creation. Rabbi Eliezer reads “And God said: Let the earth bring forth grass” (Bereshit 1:11) as a reference to the beginning of the rainy season in Israel when everything becomes green after the dry summer. Rabbi Yehoshua reads “herb yielding seed, and fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind” (the end of that same verse) as a reference to the end of the rainy season, when grains and trees start to bear fruit.

Is the Calendar for Humans or for the World?

One way to frame their question is: Does creation begin with the natural cycle or the human cycle? 

In order to survive the winter, humans need the fruit from the previous year. From a human-centric perspective, when the world began, fruit would already be on the trees (the opinion of Rabbi Yehoshua), available for humans to pluck. From a universe-centric view, it would make sense to begin earlier in the vegetative cycle, when plant life first sprouts out of the ground.

Although in halakhic disputes we typically follow Rabbi Yehoshua, in this case, our practice resembles Rabbi Eliezer’s view. Today, we count the years from creation and the calendar begins in Tishrei, as Rabbi Eliezer stated. In other words, today our calendar begins with the universe.

Which Story Are We Living In?

Following Rabbi Eliezer here reflects our exile. In exile, we count according to the method used for non-Jewish kings. As humans and as Jews, we are subordinate to the powers around us, both natural and political. For Rabbi Eliezer, the fruit trees of creation are only a בְרָכָה לְדוֹרוֹת, a “blessing for future generations,” and not something we can consume now. We don’t live in gan eden, the Garden of Eden, where the trees always bear fruit. We don’t live in the age of the messiah, when we are free from the bondage of political corruption. Even if for a moment it may appear the king is a good king, eventually his rule is corrupted.

But there’s another reading. Rabbi Yehoshua believed that the world was created in a state of redemption, where fruit hung from the boughs ready to eat. But Rabbi Eliezer thought that only the potential for redemption was created by God, and we have to do the work to bring it about.

Our calendar makes space for both. The question each year is: which story are we living in now, and how might we move closer to the Nisan story of freedom even as we count our years in Tishrei?