Ketiva ve-chatima tovah

May You Be Written and Sealed for a Good Year

Rosh Ha-Shanah, the Jewish New Year, will begin as the sun sets on Monday evening (September 29).
This new year will be 5769. Jewish time begins, not with the first ancestors of the Jewish people, Abraham and Sarah, but rather with the beginning of everything. On Rosh Ha-Shanah, the liturgy proclaims: "Ha-yom harat olam." (Today is the birthday of the world.)

There are actually two other significant new years besides Rosh Ha-Shanah: the new year for months is in the spring, starting with the month of Nisan and the New Year for Trees. Rosh Ha-Shanah, literally, "the head of the year", which falls at the beginning of the seventh month, Tishri, as the year turns, is the New Year for years. Because, you know, nothing is ever simple.