What is Yom Teruah (the Feast of Trumpets)?

Yom Teruah, the Day of Blowing or Feast of Trumpets, falls on the first day of the seventh month (Leviticus 23:23-25). It is a sabbath rest, a set-apart assembly, and a day marked by teruah, the loud blast of the shofar, the ram's horn. After the spring feasts of Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, and Shavuot, there is a long quiet stretch through the summer; then the shofar tears through it. Yom Teruah throws open the fall feasts and the holiest season of the year.

The meaning is awakening. A trumpet blast is an alarm, a summons, a call to attention. Yom Teruah wakes the soul from its summer drowse and begins the season of turning back to HaShem that climaxes ten days later on Yom Kippur. It is the sound that says: stop, listen, return; the King is near, set your house in order.

The Messianic note carries the same sound forward. Scripture ties the trumpet to the resurrection and the gathering of HaShem's people. The Lord himself will descend with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God, and the dead in Messiah will rise (1 Thessalonians 4:16). We will all be changed, in a moment, at the last trumpet (1 Corinthians 15:52). The shofar of Yom Teruah is a yearly rehearsal of the great trumpet that will one day raise the dead and gather the redeemed.

You may have heard the feasts dismissed as Israel's old calendar. But this is one of HaShem's appointed times, and He hung the resurrection's signal on it. Keeping it is not earning standing; it is letting the trumpet do its work in you.

How do you keep it, starting out? Hear the shofar, blow one yourself or listen to one, and let the blast jolt you awake. Rest, as the day commands. And begin a season of teshuvah, turning back: examine your life, make things right, draw near to HaShem in the ten days before Yom Kippur. Be Berean: read Leviticus 23:23-25 with 1 Thessalonians 4:16, and let the yearly trumpet teach you to listen for the last one.