Wikipedia readers turned to Rosh Hashanah at 70x the usual rate

What this article is

Rosh Hashanah is the New Year in Judaism. The biblical name for the holiday is Yom Teruah. It is the first of the High Holy Days, as specified by Leviticus 23:23–32, which occur in the late summer and early autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. Rosh Hashanah commences the Ten Days of Repentance, culminating in Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. It is followed by the festival of Sukkot, which is immediately followed by Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, ending the High Holy Day season.

Summary text from the Wikipedia article "Rosh Hashanah", available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the full article.

What changed that day

The article lost 4 characters on balance that day. See everything that changed on 2026-09-12 in Wikipedia's own diff view — that is where the reason for a surge is usually visible, written and sourced by the editors who were following the story.

How this was measured

Views are Wikimedia's own pageview counts for en.wikipedia, filtered to agent=user so automated traffic is excluded. The baseline is the median of the previous 60 days, which is used instead of the mean so that an earlier surge cannot flatten a later one. The multiple is the day's views divided by that median.