"Torah Lights"
 
Video Insights on the Parsha
 
 by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin

Efrat, Israel: According to its biblical description, Rosh HaShanah is “…the day of the sounding of the shofar” (Numbers 29:1).  However, the shofar (ram’s horn) is not exclusive to Rosh Hashana because Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and Forgiveness, also includes shofar blasts which follow the poignant Neilah [closing] prayer, dramatically announcing the conclusion of the fast.

What is the biblical basis – if any – for the shofar sound on Yom Kippur, and how does it differ from the shofar sounds on Rosh HaShanah? 

Let us first explore the significance of the Rosh HaShanah shofar. The Sages of the Talmud teach that the biblical “…day of the sounding of the shofar” refers to the straight (tekiyah), broken (shevarim, teruah) and straight ram’s horn blasts linked to the Mussaf Amidah [additional standing prayer]. Indeed, the initial custom was to sound the shofar even during the silent amidah –the common practice in most Sefardi and Hassidic synagogues, but considered too confusing for most Ashkenazi synagogues (B.T. Rosh Hashanah 33). 

Logic would dictate that if the shofar blasts are not considered an “interruption” (hafsakah) of  the Amidah prayer, they must be seen as an integral part of the prayer.  Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik, based upon the rulings of Maimonides and the explication of Rav Haim Brisker, explains the true significance of the shofar sounds as prayer by means of sounds. We pray with words – the verbal formulations of G-d’s Kingship (Malkhuyot), G-d’s Remembrances (Zikhronot) and G-d’s rams’ horn blasts (Shofarot) – and we pray with sounds: the exultant, victorious tekiyah shout, the sighing and sobbing shevarim-teruah cries, and the concluding exultant, victorious tekiyah once again for added, final emphasis.  

The experience of the crafted verbal formulation interconnected with the primal shofar sounds provides a powerful message:  G-d is King not only of Israel but of the entire world – and this causes me to shout exultantly with the knowledge that there is an architect to creation, that life is not “…a tale told by an idiot, filled with sound and fury, signifying nothing.” But if G-d is truly King, then He rightfully holds us mortals accountable – especially for the fact that His ethical monotheism has not yet been accepted by the world, and not even by the majority of Israel. Hence we express sighs and sobs at our individual failings. Nevertheless we conclude with an exultant shout, since repentance holds out the possibility of forgiveness, reconstruction and repair.  

The same is true regarding remembrances. The axiom that there is also a Divine plan for history, with a specific function set aside for nations as well as for individuals, deserves an exultant shout, engendered by the knowledge that history is not happen-stance, that there is a more perfect society towards which we are heading; however, this too occasions sighs and sobs lest we fail to fulfill our particular mission and, as far as one’s life direction is concerned, end up on the wrong track, in the wrong ball-park.

And finally shofarot, the ram’s horn blast which emanated from atop Mt. Sinai at the time of the Divine Revelation at Sinai. Here too, we express the consummate joy of the tekiyah upon realizing that we have been blessed with the Torah, given to us by G-d Himself, His formula or recipe for a proper and satisfying moral, ethical and spiritual life, His credo of values and societal norms which we must learn ourselves and then communicate to the world. Herein lies the means through which we can become a “holy nation and a kingdom of priest-teachers” to the rest of the nations. However, sighs and sobs still emanate because all too often we are found wanting; how can we teach others what we ourselves have failed to learn to live by? 

In all of these instances, the sound of the shofar is the sound of the Jew, a primal sound emanating from the most essential aspect of his inner “divine portion,” his exultant prayer of gratitude and his beseeching request for strength and discipline to fulfill his mission and potential. Indeed, we pray with words and we pray with sounds. 

However, there is one crucial difference between the first two instances of Malkhuyot and Zikhronot – wherein the sounds emanate from the individual at prayer – and Shofarot, wherein the shofar’s sound initially emanated from G-d Himself: “G-d rose up through the sound of the teruah, the Lord was in the sound of the shofar” (Psalms 47:6). Similarly, at the time of the redemption “All the inhabitants of the world and the dwellers on earth will see, when the banner on the mountains is held aloft; and they will all hear, when [G-d] will blast the shofar” (Isaiah 18:3), and then again, “And it will happen on that day that the great Shofar shall be sounded [by G-d], and those who are lost in the land of Assyria and scattered in the land of Egypt shall come up, and they shall bow down before the Lord on the holy mountain, in Jerusalem” (Isaiah 18:30). 

Now we can begin to see the difference between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur: the shofar blast on Yom Kippur is not derived from the Biblical “.day of the broken, staccato sound which is unto you,” because the Biblical text there relates to the people (“unto you, lakhem”) who  sound the shofar at prayer and since on Rosh HaShanah, the major emotion of fervent individuals on this first of the Ten Days of Repentance is that of human inadequacy, sighing and sobbing, teruah, the very day is Biblically defined as a “day of teruah.”  

The shofar blast on Yom Kippur, on the other hand, is derived from the straight and exultant t’kiyah of Yom Kippur on the Jubilee year, the majestic declaration of “freedom throughout the land,” the glorious announcement of redemption. (Leviticus 25:9-11, utilizing the Hebrew word shofar, signifying a beautiful, joyous straight sound rather than a broken sound). This is proper for Yom Kippur, the day when G-d promises – and guarantees – forgiveness and purification after five prayers in which we affirm (and request) that our Temple be a House of Prayer for all nations. And even though the Yom Kippur blast nowadays is only a rabbinical reminder of the Jubilee, every traditional Jew awaits the final shofar blast by G-d with its inherent vision of universal Divine Revelation –when “He will enable us to hear again (the Decalogue) before the eyes of all living beings,” the redemptive shofar call of G-d to the entire world in the days of the Messiah. 

Shabbat Shalom

Enjoying Rabbi Riskin's Shabbat Shalom commentaries?