Rosh Hashanah Trivia
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80 free Rosh Hashanah trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, the day tradition says the world was judged and humanity was created, and it comes wrapped in more customs than almost any other holiday. This quiz has 80 questions on all of it: why the shofar is a ram's horn and not an antler, how many blasts a congregation hears in a day, why apples go into honey and challah goes round, what people throw into the river at tashlikh, and what the greetings mean before and after the holiday. The questions run from easy openers (what does the name mean, which month is it, how many days of repentance follow) to genuinely hard ones about the Talmud's four New Years, the calendar rule that keeps the holiday off Wednesdays and Fridays, the legend behind Unetanneh Tokef, the Breslov pilgrimage to Uman, and the year Hank Greenberg hit two home runs on the holiday. It works for a family table, a Hebrew school class, a synagogue quiz night, or anyone curious about the Days of Awe. Every answer has been checked against a source, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you answer.
30 of 80 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does the name Rosh Hashanah literally mean in Hebrew?
Head of the year
Rosh means head, ha is the definite article and shana means year, so the phrase points to the top of the calendar rather than to any of the day's rituals.
Q 02By what name does the Torah refer to the festival now called Rosh Hashanah?
Yom Teruah
The phrase means day of blasting, and Leviticus 23 also calls it a memorial of blowing; the name Rosh Hashanah in its modern sense never appears in the Torah at all.
Q 03Rosh Hashanah begins on the first day of which Hebrew month?
Tishrei
The month name is Babylonian in origin and the Bible itself calls it Ethanim, or simply the seventh month.
Q 04Rosh Hashanah falls in which month of the Hebrew religious calendar that counts from Nisan?
Seventh
Nisan, the Passover month, is the first month for numbering purposes, so the New Year arrives on the first day of the seventh month.
Q 05According to tradition, Rosh Hashanah is the anniversary of the creation of whom?
Adam and Eve
Because it marks the birth of humanity rather than of the universe, one Talmudic view holds that the world itself was created a few days earlier.
Q 06Rosh Hashanah opens a period of repentance lasting how many days and ending on Yom Kippur?
Ten
During these days observant Jews make amends with people they have wronged, since Yom Kippur is said to atone only for sins against God.
Q 07Which festival follows Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur later in the same month?
Sukkot
The autumn season then closes with Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, when the annual Torah reading cycle ends and starts again.
Q 08In most communities, how many shofar blasts are sounded in total on each day of Rosh Hashanah?
100
Sixty of them come during the Mussaf service, ten after each of the three central themes, and a final ten are added at the end.
Q 09On which day is the shofar not sounded, even when Rosh Hashanah falls on it?
Shabbat
The rabbis worried that a shofar blower might carry the horn through a public area, which is forbidden work on the Sabbath.
Q 10Which shofar sound begins and ends each of the required blast sequences?
Tekiah
The three required sequences are tekiah-shevarim-teruah-tekiah, tekiah-shevarim-tekiah and tekiah-teruah-tekiah, each repeated three times.
Q 11What is the minimum number of shofar sounds required to fulfil the obligation?
30
Because the horn's hollow is irregular, its harmonics can wander from a pure fifth to anywhere between a fourth and a sixth.
Q 12What title is given to the person who sounds the shofar on behalf of a congregation?
Ba'al tekiah
The name means master of the blast, and the Shulchan Aruch requires the holder to be learned in Torah and God-fearing.
Q 13Per the Talmud, a shofar may be made from the horn of any Bovidae animal except which one?
Cow
The traditional explanation is that a cow's horn recalls the sin of the golden calf, hardly what you want to bring before the judge on the day of judgment.
Q 21Carrots are eaten on Rosh Hashanah partly because the Yiddish word for carrot also means what?
Increase
The Hebrew word gezer does double duty too, sounding like g'zar, the word for a decree one hopes God will cancel.
Q 22The blessings recited over symbolic foods at a Rosh Hashanah seder all begin with which words?
Yehi ratzon
The phrase means may it be Thy will, and many of the foods are chosen because their names pun on the wish being made.
Q 23Which Talmudic sage taught eating gourd, beans, leek, beets and dates at the new year?
Abaye
He prefaced the advice by saying that an omen is a significant thing, which is the classic justification for the whole symbolic-foods custom.
Q 14A traditional Yemeni shofar is made from the long spiralling horn of which animal?
Kudu
Ashkenazi and Sephardi shofars use a domestic ram, while a Moroccan shofar is flat with a single broad curve.
Q 15Why can a deer's antler never be used as a shofar?
It is solid bone, so it cannot be hollowed
A true horn is a sheath of keratin, the stuff of fingernails, around a bony core that can be removed to leave a hollow tube.
Q 16The Temple's Rosh Hashanah shofar was straight and gold-tipped, made from which animal's horn?
Ibex
On fast days the arrangement flipped: silver-tipped rams' horns flanked trumpets in the centre.
Q 17Which rabbi famously sounded the shofar at the Western Wall after the Six-Day War in 1967?
Shlomo Goren
The moment prompted Naomi Shemer to add a verse to her song Jerusalem of Gold about a shofar calling from the Temple Mount.
Q 18Dipping apples in honey for a sweet new year joined the Rosh Hashanah customs in which era?
The medieval period
Far older is the Talmud's list of symbolic foods, which includes gourds, fenugreek, leeks, beet leaves and dates.
Q 19The Rosh Hashanah prayer to be 'the head and not the tail' comes from which book of the Bible?
Deuteronomy
Sephardic families may serve a whole fish with the head intact, and in earlier centuries a lamb's head did the same job.
Q 20Why is the challah served on Rosh Hashanah typically baked round rather than braided long?
To symbolise the cycle of the year
Raisins are sometimes worked into the dough as one more wish for a sweet year.
Q 24Many Sephardic and Mizrahi families avoid which kind of food at Rosh Hashanah, for fear of a gloomy year?
Dark-coloured foods
Ashkenazim take the opposite route and load the table with sweet things such as honey cake and teiglach.
Q 25What is the Yiddish name of the honey cake traditionally baked for Rosh Hashanah?
Lekach
Its Hebrew folk name means lesson cake, a nod to the old link between teaching and honey, and it is traditionally never frosted.
Q 26The tashlikh ritual takes its name from which prophet's verse about casting sins into the sea?
Micah
The passage is read at the water's edge, along with psalms and personal prayers.
Q 27Where is tashlikh traditionally performed on the afternoon of the first day?
Beside a natural body of flowing water
In dry cities like Jerusalem people make do with a fish pond, a cistern or even a mikveh.
Q 28What do many people throw into the water at tashlikh, even though a number of rabbis say it is forbidden?
Pieces of bread
The objection is that feeding wild animals, and carrying unneeded items in public, are both prohibited on a holiday.
Q 29Most sources trace tashlikh to the 15th-century work Sefer Maharil, written by which rabbi?
Yaakov ben Moshe Moelin
He explained the custom as a reminder of the binding of Isaac, when a midrash says Satan blocked Abraham's path in the form of a deep river.
Q 30Tashlikh is normally done on Rosh Hashanah, but it may be performed as late as which day?
Hoshana Rabbah
Some Hasidic communities deliberately wait and do it on the day before Yom Kippur.