The festival cycle

1–2 Tishrei

The Torah does not call this day Rosh Hashanah or ‘new year’; its own name for the first of Tishrei is Yom Teruah, ‘a day of horn-blowing,’ a day of rest marked by the shofar (Numbers 29:1; see also Leviticus 23:24). The titles ‘Day of Judgement’ and ‘new year’ are later tradition, not the Tanakh’s own language for the day.

10 Tishrei

‘Yom Kippur’ is the everyday shorthand for the day the Torah itself calls Yom HaKippurim (see that entry) — the tenth of Tishrei, on which Israel was commanded to ‘afflict your souls’ in a fast of self-affliction (Leviticus 23:27; 16:29). The themes of confession and repentance associated with the day are also scriptural, but the shortened modern name is not the Torah’s own.

10 Tishrei named in Leviticus 23:27

The Torah’s own name for the tenth of Tishrei, the day of national fasting and atonement, commanded in Leviticus 23:27 and detailed at length in Leviticus 16, the chapter of the high priest’s service in the Holy of Holies. It is also the day on which the Jubilee year was proclaimed by the blast of the shofar (Leviticus 25:9).

15–21 Tishrei named in Leviticus 23:34

Seven days beginning the fifteenth of Tishrei, commanded in Leviticus 23:34, during which Israel is to dwell in booths so that later generations will know that God made their ancestors dwell in booths when He brought them out of Egypt (Leviticus 23:42-43). It is one of the three pilgrimage festivals on which the Torah requires every male to appear before the LORD (Deuteronomy 16:16).

22 Tishrei

The eighth day, immediately after the seven days of Sukkot, which Leviticus 23:36 calls simply ‘a day of solemn assembly’ (atzeret) with its own holy convocation and offering. The Torah does not give it the compound name ‘Shemini Atzeret’ as such — that title combines the chapter’s own words ‘eighth’ and ‘assembly’ into the name tradition uses today.

22–23 Tishrei

The custom of completing the annual cycle of Torah readings and beginning it again the same day. It is entirely a later practice, unknown to the Tanakh, kept together with or immediately after Shemini Atzeret depending on the community; no verse commands it or names it.

25 Kislev – 2/3 Tevet

Eight days of lights beginning 25 Kislev, commemorating the rededication of the Second Temple after its recapture in the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid Greeks. Its story is told in the Books of the Maccabees, which lie outside the 24 books of the Tanakh altogether — no verse in the Hebrew Bible narrates or commands it.

15 Shevat

The ‘new year of the trees,’ the date from which a tree’s fruit is counted for tithing purposes. It is a rabbinic reckoning, first set out in the Mishnah rather than the Tanakh, which contains no festival by this name or date.

14 Adar named in Esther 9:26

The deliverance of the Jews of Persia from Haman’s decree, told in the Scroll of Esther and read aloud on the day itself. Esther 9:26 explains that the days are called Purim after ‘pur,’ the lot Haman cast to fix a date for their destruction (Esther 3:7), and Esther 9:21 fixes its observance to the fourteenth of Adar.

15–21 Nisan named in Exodus 12:11

The seven days beginning 15 Nisan that commemorate Israel’s hurried departure from Egyptian slavery; the Torah calls the offering itself ‘the LORD’s passover,’ eaten in haste with loins girded and staff in hand (Exodus 12:11). It is the first of the three pilgrimage festivals, kept with seven days of unleavened bread because it was in this month that Israel came out of Egypt (Exodus 23:15).

16 Nisan – 5 Sivan

The Torah itself commands this count: fifty days from the bringing of the omer, the sheaf offering, to the festival that follows (Leviticus 23:15-16). Only the modern compound name, Sefirat HaOmer, is not the Torah’s own wording — Scripture calls for the counting itself, not this title for the period.

18 Iyar

The thirty-third day within the fifty days Leviticus 23:15-16 commands Israel to count. Unlike the count itself, the day carries no significance or name in the Tanakh; its observance is a later custom.

6 Sivan named in Deuteronomy 16:10

The Torah itself describes this day only in agricultural terms: the festival of weeks, marking the wheat harvest and first fruits, kept fifty days after the omer count begins (Exodus 34:22; Deuteronomy 16:9-10). Its association with the giving of the Torah at Sinai — which Exodus 19:1 places in the third month, without naming this festival — is a later, traditional identification rather than something the festival passages themselves state.

17 Tammuz

This fast is kept on 17 Tammuz for the breaching of the Second Temple’s walls before Rome’s destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, an event entirely outside the Tanakh’s own history. The First Temple’s wall was breached earlier still, and Scripture itself dates that breach to the ninth day of the fourth month, not the seventeenth (Jeremiah 39:2; 52:6-7); Zechariah 8:19 mentions ‘the fast of the fourth month’ kept in mourning, without naming the specific day.

9 Av

This fast mourns the destruction of both Temples: the First, which 2 Kings 25:8-9 dates to the seventh day of the fifth month (Jeremiah 52:12 gives the tenth), and the Second, destroyed by Rome in 70 CE, an event the Tanakh does not narrate at all. The ninth of Av kept today falls between Scripture’s own two dates for the first Temple’s burning; Zechariah 8:19 refers to ‘the fast of the fifth month’ kept in mourning for it.

15 Av

A day of joy and matchmaking remembered from the late Second Temple period, when unmarried women would dance in the vineyards, by later rabbinic sources rather than the Tanakh. Scripture assigns 15 Av no observance of any kind.

1st of each month

The new moon that opens every Hebrew month, marked in the Torah by silver trumpets sounded over the burnt offerings (Numbers 10:10) and by its own added sacrifice (Numbers 28:11). The Torah’s own phrase for new moons collectively is רָאשֵׁי חָדְשֵׁיכֶם, ‘the heads of your months’ (Numbers 10:10); David’s household kept a feast at the new moon as an ordinary social occasion as well (1 Samuel 20:5).

Every seventh day named in Genesis 2:3

The seventh day, on which God rested from the work of creation and which He blessed and hallowed above the other six (Genesis 2:2-3). At Sinai it became a direct commandment — ‘remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy’ — grounded explicitly in that same act of creation (Exodus 20:8-11).