Rosh Hashanah

does it not follow that one day should be counted [as a year] at the beginning? — What then? Will you say [that the passage quoted1 follows] R. Eleazar? [How can this be, seeing that] R. Eleazar requires thirty days and thirty days,2 as we have learnt: ‘It is not allowed to plant nor to bend over nor to graft in the year before the Sabbatical year less than thirty days before New Year, and if one did plant or bend over or graft, he must uproot the plant. So R. Eleazar. R. Judah said: If a grafting does not take within three days, it will not take at all. R. Jose and R. Simeon said that it takes two weeks’,3 and [commenting on this] R. Nahman said in the name of Rabbah b. Abbuha: On the view that thirty days are the period [for taking] we require thirty days and thirty;4 on the view that three days are the period, thirty-three days are required; on the view that two weeks are the period, two weeks and thirty days are required. Now even if [we accept the view of] R. Judah, thirty-three days are required? — The truth is [that the statement in question follows] R. Meir, and when it says thirty days, it means the thirty days of taking. In that case it should say thirty-one days?5 — He held that the thirtieth day counts both ways. R. Johanan said: Both of them [R. Meir and R. Eleazar] based their views on the same verse, viz., And it came to pass in the one and six hundredth year, in the first month, on the first day of the month.6 R. Meir reasoned: Seeing that the year was only one day old and it is still called a year, we can conclude that one day in a year is reckoned as a year. What says the other to this? — [He says that] if it were written, ‘In the six hundred and first year’, then it would be as you say. Seeing, however, that it is written, ‘In the one and six hundredth year’, the word ‘year’ refers to ‘six hundred’, and as for the word ‘one’, this means ‘the beginning of one’.7 And what is R. Eleazar's reason? — Because it is written, ‘In the first month on the first day of the month. Seeing that the month was only one day old and it is yet called ‘month’, we can conclude that one day in a month is reckoned as a month; and since one day in a month is reckoned as a month, thirty days in a year are reckoned as a year, a month being reckoned by its unit and a year by its unit. (We infer from what has just been said that both [R. Meir and R. Eleazar] were of opinion that the world was created in Nisan.)8 It has been taught: R. Eliezer says: In Tishri the world was created; in Tishri the Patriarchs9 were born; in Tishri the Patriarchs died; on Passover Isaac was born; on New Year Sarah, Rachel and Hannah were visited;10 on New Year Joseph went forth from prison from the profane on to the holy (Rashi). out that both might equally well hold that the ‘first month’ here means Tishri, it being so called as first month to the creation and he therefore rejects this sentence. But v. Tosaf. s.v. kkfn .