Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: (Part 1) Rosh HaShana The Secret of the Shofar

[Music] it's [Music] yeah you know i remember when i uh first came to eric israel and i visit 1979 so they told me two things about summers in ushalayam one they said not humid and the other they said at night it's cold and bring a sweater things have changed in many many ways i don't know what's going on and uh this is converting me to believe in global warming which i i didn't fully accept but uh this is such a henoy of the climate of yerushalayim i guess it's symbolic very deeply symbolic of the fact that the world is topsy-turvy the world is being turned upside down and this is being reflected in many many ways that covet and the in the united states the breakdown of law and order uh even the changes of climate which are really very very unusual in and of it uh self somebody sent me a video of animals taking over deserted streets very very scary like just wild animals just wandering big city streets so in a sense it's very reminiscent of a comment of the maharao the maharao writes that mashiach is called a seed we say in this money esray matsmiak karen yeshua that means he causes the salvation to grow to sprout we say in each those who say that's that eric israel or the state of israel is described as the beginning of the flowering or blossoming or growing of the goula so the morale says the reason why mashiach is called is because it's the nature of the seed that it totally disintegrates into the ground before it reconstitutes in other words the the old gets totally destroyed in order to create something new and that is the nature of in which all of the old foundations simply get destroyed and then out of that disintegration something new uh comes up and hazal also talked about birth pains of labor pains but smith is a bit of a different metaphor because simiha is focusing on the disintegration of our external realities to create the pay to pave the way for something new so if that's the case then maybe all that we have been through uh the past six months of course before that as well but it's got accentuated uh the past six months perhaps that should be very hopeful that we're approaching the disintegration point and perhaps this is the time for tsumicha this is the time for guru la zal have two parts and omashi can come every day of course except on shabbos and yamtif uh but hazal do identify two months that are most misugable for one is nissan nissan is number one okay we're not there yet but the other is tishrei tishrei is also an igger's man of goo's so we can hope and we can yearn that we should be zaika to the uh we are approaching of course the end of the year and there is a statement in ghazal everything follows the end everything follows the end there is even a year in which we did not achieve everything we hoped we could achieve even a year where we were not as faithful to hashem as we could have been we can redeem the year we can salvage the year even in the last few days in fact even the last minutes the kidushiren points out that the last minha of the year is going to be a week from friday right that'll be the last minha of 5780. so in a few minutes it's going to be shabbos and rosh hashanah so in that last amidah what do you say to hashem hashema lokeno please god bless this year this year this year is 57.80 there's five minutes left to 57.80 the answer is hashem could turn those five minutes even into a great great source of bracha but to a large degree it also depends on us because to us and if we do chuva masim tovim tefila schubert's villa stalker maviri and esro haxzera they take away the evil decrees so we can do it late in the year go to speak and kind of salvage the year and then be azerat hashem it'll be carried over into the into the new year um i want to talk tonight a little bit about the blowing of the shofar right because because obviously that is the one mitzvah rosh hashanah is a yamcha and of course many of the laws of rosh hashanah are simply the laws of yamtha okay that's that's a nice complicated area in and of itself but obviously the unique mitzvah that is connected to rosh hashanah is the blowing of the chauffeur so the first thing to point out is we're going to be a little short change this year that needs a little explanation as well the rosh hashanah cannot fall out the first they cannot fall out on sunday wednesday or friday so you can never have the second day of rosh hashanah on shabbis because that would make the first day friday but you can have the first day of rosh hashanah and shabbos which doesn't happen that often in fact i've been in eric israel for 10 years and this is the first time in my 10 years that british center is on shabbos which was last time was 11 or 12 years ago once it happened to then see that you'll have two or three of them in relatively close succession and then you'll have a big gap of 10 years or so and then it's going to repeat itself that's the way the jewish calendar works but all of you know and you may remember anyway from from 11 years ago that when rosh hashanah falls out on shabbos we do not blow the chauffeur at all and the gemara and this is really a missionary rosh hashanah which is a little more complicated than i stated it the mishna says when rosh hashanah falls out on shabbos the shofar was not blown except in the bay samikdash now that's interesting meaning when there was a basal mikhtash they did blow shofar in the basa mikdash but not outside of the basan mikdash now that itself is an interesting din because first of all there's a mach lokas rashi and the rambam what does mikdash mean according to rashi miktash means beta mikdash meaning the only place they blew the chauffeur on rosh hashanah was the basa mikdash mamesh that's rashi's understanding even in yerushalayim you could be in whatever it is in maya sharim or you can be in the old city you can be in the jewish quarter the rova you would not vote chauffeur you have to go to the courtyard of the basa mikdash the rambam has a different sheet the rambam says that when the mishna refers to to to mikdash it includes the whole city of yerushalayim which at a minimum would include the old city and according to the way the rambam understands it any area from which you could see the old city without the buildings which is you know a lot of modern yusha lion now the interesting question is we passing like rashi and that's why we don't blow shofar today at all but there are some opinions that say that according to the rambam not only did you blow in yerushalayim when there was a basa mikhtash but you would blow in yerushalayim even when there's no base on mikdash [Music] well yeah i think so the question is does the the din of blowing in you shalom depend on the sanhedrin that's that's the question so as as you just said uh around 150 years ago there was a very interesting a man who came to usher i am from europe his name was rabi akiba yosef schlesinger he was a talmud of the hassam so fair and he was a very very zealous jew he had all sorts of very very firm very religious he was learned but a big big zealot so uh he was against like everything that it was not exactly al-tara sakodesh but he was also a creative person and he was convinced that we ought to blow shofar in yerushalayim when rosh hashanah falls out on shabbos because he said we should follow the rambam's view see this is a double jump you understand he's doing a two-step job first he's following the rambam that mikdash means you shall i am that's step one the second step is assuming that the rom bombs of you applied even when there's no mikdash that's a second jump that you don't see from the round bumps text but he's doing that two-step job and he went to the great rabbanim of yusuf nayam of small salads who had been the rav of yushanayam for over 60 years and the aderet who was rav cook's father-in-law uh leo david rabinowitz to um and uh they kind of said more or less well you know we hear your point but no we're not going to make any great innovation that is against the traditions of hundreds and hundreds of years but the story goes rumor goes it became kind of a story in you shalom that in the privacy of his home that rosh hashanah that star live in shabbos if you'd walk by his home you would hear the sound of a chauffeur that's a story i don't know if it's true but they say that he blew it privately and not only that but there's a rumor on top of her rumor that rav shmuel salant and the aderet stood outside of his home to hear it because they basically took the following argument the interesting argument listen you're not supposed to blow chauffeur when russian falls out on shabbos but if somebody does it they are fulfilling the torah's commandment so hey he's doing that he's doing it anyway why shouldn't i get the mitzvah of listening to chauffeur that by the way is is a little questionable because it could be that once the said don't do it you're not you know you don't have a mitzvah anymore that depends on how you understand the rabbinic enactment but be it doesn't matter let's go back to the main question putting aside rabbi akiva yosef schlesinger which is a very very fascinating story but the bottom line is we don't ask in that way and you're not going to hear as far as i know you're not going to hear shofar anywhere uh in the world in yerushalayim um in fact even the reform it's interesting the reform movement only keeps and only keeps one day of rosh hashanah they only keep the first day so they were debating in the reform movement there was kind of a debate well you know this is our only chance to hear chauffeur so maybe we should blow chauffeur or no should we keep the rabbinical that is kind of strange for form theology in some reformed congregations uh they do blow shofar when rosh hashanah falls out in chavez because that's the only chance they have okay but but you're not going to hear it in any religious congregation so let's go over the reason so there's an interesting mach lokis the babylonian talmud and the jerusalem talmud probably and your xiaomi the talmud babali says under torah law for sure you blow chauffeur and shabbos what forbidden activity is blowing a chauffeur it's not us or to blow a chauffeur but the rabbana and said not to because they were afraid that if i'm trying to blow chauffeur and i didn't learn how to do it i might inadvertently carry it for ammos where there's no aerith in a public domain and i would be transgressing the melaka of carrying so on yumtif it would be much error because i'm carrying for a yamcha mitzvah so we don't make the gizera and yamcha otherwise you should never blow rash hashanah but on shabbos you're not allowed to carry without an arif so they made it now listen to this this is such an unlikely scenario first of all most places have aravin so you're not carrying when you go outside uh with your chauffeur and even if you don't have an a river you don't rely on an are how likely is it that you're going to do you know a forbidden activity and yet the ghachamen were so concerned with the holiness of shabbos that they took away the precious torah mitzvah of blowing chauffeur and you can't even give me an answer well at least we'll get it the second day because keep in mind that the second day of rosh hashanah is a rabbinic holiday it is not the torah's holiday the torah's holiday of rosh hashanah is day one and not day two and the took away the precious mitzvah of taqiyya shofar and of course they'll also take away the precious mitzvah of lula vanessa because whenever rosh hashanah is on shabbos the first day of sukhos is also on shabbos and we're not going to take lula vanessa for exactly the same reason lest you come to carry now i'll go i'll mention to you xiaomi in a moment i'll get to the insomnia but i just want to talk about the pavli first of all you see the extraordinary power of the sages to even unknow a torah commandment because of a gazette because there is a concern don't do x because maybe you'll transgress why but there's an interesting problem with this chauffeur is not mitzvah chauffeur has a special potentiality to open the gates of heaven the gemara says in massachusetts rosh hashanah any year where we don't blow a shofar in the beginning of the year is going to be a year of poverty now poverty is africa economic poverty but spiritual poverty deprivation there will be so many things that are lacking in our spiritual lives because the chauffeur opens up and we'll talk about why that's so the chauffeur opens up the gates of heaven so when the reminds hashem kavyakal of the arcade of course you understand when we say remind hashem which is a common phrase we don't mean oh hashem said oh sure i forgot about that thanks for reminding me obviously hashem is always aware but it means hashem will be actively involved in giving us merit right that's what it means god remembers remembering rashi says is leif paying attention when hashem chooses when and where and what he pays attention to and the shofar causes barco to pay attention to the akaidat yitzhak so when the take away shofar this is a big deal so one of the commentaries on massachusetts rosh hashanah the oracle in there the earthlinger was actually a famous person 19th century godol ravyakov etlinger he was actually the rebbe of ruby simpson of walhers so he was the rebbe of uh refursh in germany and juvia cavendi wrote a lot of commentaries on gemara called the oracle in air and he gives the following muscle he says there was a person who was a servant of the king and he offended the king's honor he did not behave in a proper way he was mavazo the king so the king was going to execute him but the king happened to be very friendly with his wife not in an improper way but the king really liked his wife so the wife came to plead for her husband and even though the king was prepared to kill the husbands but in the merit of the wife he would forgive the husband but then he notices that the wife has a bruise on her arm or a scratch on her face in other words her husband said hit her and he asks her what it is and she said it was nothing etcetera but but he realized the husband had abused us so the so the king said to the guy i would forgive you because of your wife but if you treat your wife this way then you're not entitled to get any mercy from her so the earthly there says marshall he says when we don't have the shofar we are in trouble meaning we don't have that vehicle that could get us out of prison so to speak we're in big trouble but shabbos is considered to be the bride of the jewish people remember remember the famous madrid where shabbos complained every day of the week has a z book has a pair sunday monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday shabbos has no pair so says the jewish people will be your zivak in a sense we kind of have a hermaphroditic relationship because in a sense with respect to shabbos shabbas is the bride and we're the groom visa v hashem hashem is the groom and we're the bride to talk about transgender right it's already alluded to in the multiple identities of the jewish people that we are called female vis-a-vis the almighty and we are called male vis-a-vis the shabbos malkasa the shabbos queen so the arklin air says even though we don't have shofar shabbas becomes our wife that the king loves and shabbos comes to god and pleads for mercy from israel but if we didn't treat shabbos with respect if we abuse shabbos then shabbos can no longer be a source of mercy so the arc lenaire claims i i can't verify this statistically that you will find that when rosh hashanah falls out on shabbos the year will either be exceptionally bad or it might be exceptionally good that's what he says because he says it all depends on how good an advocate shabbos kaidish is for the jewish people now there are simpler simpler approaches that simply make the point that shabbos is a time of love a time of mercy so we don't need the shofar as much on shabbos because shofar counteracts the forces of din the forces of judgment the forces of mishpat shabbas is a time of love and when that great love suffuses the world so the meda sadin by definition is sweetened so in effect shabbas takes the place of the blowing of the chauffeur but be it as it may whatever the theological underpinning or the mystical underpinning of this is it's important to know that according to the talmud babali the not blowing of the chauffeur is a rabbinic enactment it is not a torah law so now i want to go to the talmud you shall me has a totally different approach the tell me just wants to say that the non-blowing of the chauffeur on shabbos is a torah law not a rabbinical where do you get it from uh yeah we get it from the fact that the mitzvah of chauffeur and rosh hashanah is written in two places parshas emor in and parshas pinchas the first day of the seventh month counting from nissan is tishrei zikra in trua you shall have a remembrance through the blowing of the shofar so it calls it a remembrance in parshas pinchas it says yom trua a day of blowing the shofar so in one place it is called a remembrance of shalfar and in the other place it is called a day of shofar and the talmud ushami interprets it this way when rosh hashanah falls out during the week then it's yom trua you actually celebrate it by blowing the shofar when rosh hashanah falls out on shabbos it is only a zikron we remember the show for but we actually don't don't blow it so according to the talmud you show me and really for the same reasons i gave him the bobbly ultimately the non-blowing of the chauffeur and rosh hashanah is a torah law not a rabbinic law so now the question is this the the the the emma says the babali itself it's interesting the babali was written was compiled after the usher me so the bubbly this is the whole argument among historians but the babali may have been aware revainu navashi may have been aware of the ushemi and the bravley actually uses the zikran and yamcha as a habamina an initial assumption but then asks akasha and that is wait a second here it says that they blew the shofar in the bay samik whether we mean it like rashi only the basa mikhtash or whether we mean it like the rambam even yerushalayim makes no difference but they blew it somewhere now if you say that dull rise so you do blow it and it's only a rabbinic law so the rabbis didn't want to make the law for the temple or for jerusalem okay but if you say the torah itself says when rosh hashanah falls out on shabbos you don't blow chauffeur so the kasha is what's the hectare to blow the shofar in the basal mikdash itself so that is why the bavali rejects this dresha and the bhavli goes with the gezera of the but the ushami asks the same question and the usami's answer is that in parashat pinchas where the torah describes rosh hashanah as yom trua right right afterwards is a description of the corbanos of rosh hashanah which were brought in the base of mikdash the implication being that in the basal mikdash it's always yom trua and the zikran trua is only when it's not in the basa mikdash now i don't want to get into too many technicalities but we all know that whenever there is an argument between the babylonian talmud and the jerusalem talmud the halacha always follow well not all not always but 95 percent of the time the does follow the talmud bavli the talmud bavli is considered to be authoritative if you want to be cynical i mean who who lay down who laid down the rule that the talmud bob lee is more authoritative than the ushami like who says well this was a rule that was laid down by the onim in bavel so if you want to be cynical you can kind of say it's a bit of a circular rule because it was the gonam in baval who established the primacy of the babylonian talmud nevertheless nevertheless whatever the origins of this rule is it is a well-established principle of halacha so it would appear therefore and that's how the shelton arrived brings it and how the rambam brings it that we go with the gazebo that the reason we don't blow shofar is the rabbinic decree lest you carry it and yet in our filat there's actually an allusion to the talmud you shall me because you will notice when we say in the amidah every amidan rashojana vatiz hashema lokenu you should give us hashem like every yamchav has this biava so normally say yes yo this day of chauffeur blowing mikra kodesh a holy day zechariah commemorating the exodus of egypt but if you look in your moxor you will see that when rosh hashanah is on shabbos instead of saying yom to rua we say which is exactly the yu shalmi's interpretation that zechron is referring to not blowing the chauffeur that it's only a z kharon so it's interesting that even though the halacha is in accordance with the babylonian talmud the nusakh follows the ushami which is not so problematical really because those tephilos were authored in eric israel and they incorporated those that so it is interesting that we're not blowing chauffeur this year on the first day of rosh hashanah and we have locus the babylonian and jerusalem talmud as to what the reason is but now let's move to the second day of rosh hashanah when oh by the way it's brought down that on the first day uh even though we don't blow chauffeur if you have some time you should learn either the laws of shofar or some ideas of the silver because just as with carbon notes we don't have a base of mikdash today but when we learn about the karba note it is we brought the karba note so too and rosh hashanah that falls on shabbos by learning about the shofar learning the meaning of the chauffeur the laws of the chauffeur you get on some level a fulfillment of that mitzvah uh just as you get that fulfillment with the korbanot so that's another thing to learn about on the first day of rosh hashanah but let's go to the second day because i want to talk about chauffeur generally we have this mitzvah of the kia chauffeur now it's a very mysterious mitzvah because the torah does not give you any reason whatsoever by the way it doesn't even say the word chauffeur if you think about it means crying sobbing how do i know it's a chauffeur maybe it means i i yell or i sing or i cry it's only because by yeovil the 50th year the torah says tabiru shofar you should blow a chauffeur on yom kippur of the jubilee and have a gazebo meaning similarity of wording so not only is there no reason given for the mitzvah but it doesn't even explicitly say that it's a chauffeur you have to learn it out from another place so the whole thing is shrouded in mystery in fact the whole description of resistance is mysterious the torah does not say anywhere shown as beginning of the year it's very odd to have the beginning of your year on the first day of the seventh month the torah says on the first day of the seventh month you shall cry out which we interpret by shofar first day of the seventh month why is it seventh month because yukon nissan nissan er sivan thomas of ello tishrei it's pretty odd to call that a new year first day of the seventh month and the ramban points out indeed nissan is really the first of the months but rosh hashanah is the beginning of the year so very odd we begin our year in the middle of the year so the whole thing about rosh hashanah is shrouded in mystery and the only way we understand it at all is through the various traditions that our sages had in the torah shabbat the oral law and one of the great great traditions was that tishrei the al of tishrei was the day that adam harishan was created that god began creating the world on the 25th of ello and the sixth day of creation is the creation of adam and therefore it is the birthday not of the world it is the birthday of adam and that's the phrase alam this is the birthing of the world but not the world really but but since adam is the purpose of the world okay so this is an interesting idea uh every sinner translates harat as this is the day of the birth this is the birthday of the world problem is of course that hey rayon harat does not normally refer to birth it refers to conception so it's a much lower before some abortion point out can mean birth and that's what it means here and rosh hashanah is the day of judgment because it's the beginning of the fiscal year so to speak the anniversary of our creation god judges are we deserving of life which means heratolam is a description of the past this was the birthday of the world but some offer a very different interpretation it's quite beautiful and striking and grammatically it's actually better harat does not mean birth but it means conception and it's future looking rather than past hayyom this day is the conception of the future reality that will unfold in the coming year that's a very powerful statement that's not simply saying this is the world's birthday rather this is the conception of the reality that's going to unfold and that's why we have to take it very very seriously because this determines our future as we go out so there's a maclocus among mufashim what is sarat alam but the significance of rosh hashanah is that it's yomadin it is the day of judgment because god evaluates are we worthy of life uh health all of the good gifts that that we crave peace and and the like yo now again i want to point out the torah does not make that point explicitly but ghazal kind of worked backwards it was the creation of adam it's the yomadin and they connect the shofar to the din of rosh hashanah and the most famous treatment of shofar is from ravsajagon who gives 10 different reasons 10 different symbols of the shofar it commemorates the al-qaeda which also happened in rosh hashanah avraham was willing to sacrifice his only child yitzhak was willing to die and hashem allowed a ram to be a substitute so the ram's horn is the zeke the aketa the chauffeur connects us to matantora where there was the sound of the shofar the chauffeur connects us to mashiach it connects us to resurrection of the dead the chauffeur is an alarm clock that says wake up sleepyheads because we go through life sleepwalking and the chauffeur reminds us to think about life that's the famous reason the rambam gives so shofar is really and truly a multi-faceted symbol of so many basic ideas in judaism also it says hashem will resurrect the dead right a chauffeur could wake up wake you up from the dead right it'll wake you up so it's a call to chuva it is a summons to judgment it is also a carnation when a king was coronated they would be coronated with trumpets so to speak horns right so you're talking about coronation summons to judgment connection to al-qaeda connection to matantora connection to mashiach connection to triathlon alarm clock in fact because of this there's an interesting mach locus the vilnigan and the ariza what is the dominant emotion that you have when you blow the chauffeur should it be fear and trepidation or should it be jubilant joy and happiness so in reality it all depends on how you view the shofar if the shofar is that summons the judgment the call to judgment god is now going to be judging who will live and who will die and it's the alarm clock that says better do children before it's too late then the emotion would appear to be kind of a fearful one a trembling one i stand before hashem with ema if on the other hand it's the carnation long live the king so to speak it's the coronation of hashem then it would be jubilant that rosh hashanah is called in surprise the day of carnation or yom hakessa the day of enthronement and it's interesting though that the arizona says the dominant emotion of shofar is trembling the bill magon says it's almost the opposite this is like one time of year that a lichvac gets happy says that the blowing of the shofar is simbra that we shout joyously rav yoshi bear salavaichik a brisker the great brisker from you actually wants to make a compromise he wants to say that the kyoto that we blow before the musa the first group of blowing that's the dominant theme is fear and pakhat right you can see this because right after we blow shofar the shaliah sibor says the prayer before musaf he nani behold i am the impoverished of deeds well it's very very clear from that prayer that there's certainly an under occurrence of pakhad and fear in the southern token the same token rather yeshua then says when you're blowing after the verses in in the repetition after malchios proclaiming god as king and proclaiming the god remembers us and proclaiming the chauffeur of matantora the theme is joy all of that is coronation so he actually takes the arizal and the vilnigan and he differentiates them at certain points and the truth of the matter is this schizophrenic aspect of rosh hashanah is not only a schizophrenic schizophrenia of shofar it's the schizophrenia maybe i shouldn't use that word of the holiday of rosh hashanah itself because are we happy are we worried what exactly is going on with rosh hashanah yeah that's correct that's correct so on one hand number one rosh hashanah is a yamcha every empty if there's a mitzvah to be joyous to be happy that's why even though there was a custom at one time that people would fasten rosh hashanah is you're not allowed to fast on rosh hashanah unless you're sick or whatever it would be and as you pointed out this is actually bearish in the in the the books of the of the suvim that when the jewish people returned to eric israel in the days of ezra and after the 70 years of the babylonian exile and they were observing a rosh hashanah the temple was not yet built it was the process but they were observing a rosh hashanah in a very desolate land and they felt very unworthy and they realized there are they were sobbing and weeping and crying because of their sins and ezra nehemiah told them do not cry do not mourn rejoice eat good food share your food with others also very important meaning don't don't eat it for yourself but share it with others and the pasak says hashem he used means the joy of god is your strength now this is an interesting pussic because you can actually interpret it two different ways and i think both ways are correct both ways are emits one is the joy you have in serving god will be your strength serve hashem with joy not with fear not with trepidation i mean i don't mean you know you have your hashem but don't live a life of paralysis and terror but live a life in which you joyously serve hashem so khadwat hashem means the joy that you have in god will be your strength or the other interpretation is the joy that hashem has in you the joy of god in his people is your source of life see the two translations is it the joy you have in god so god is the object or the joy that god has in you god is the subject but be it as it may the passage says beferish no fasting no sadness joy so that's one side of the coin and yet on the other side of the koi known the son of tokyo not you know not the most happiest type of of piet who will live who will die even the angels in heaven are fearful with trepidation who could survive the scrutiny of god's judgments nobody although even the son of talkif does end with a bit of a hopeful note that uh ain kitzler right in fact the end of the son of tokyo is often sung in a very levitic way aim kits where there's no limit to your years and you have made us your nation etc it's kind of saying we're kind of worthless we're undeserving but you hashem have so much mercy and you will take care of us so you're going to find especially if you've ever spent time in a litvish yeshiva you will find that elo rosh hashanah are very heavy times and maybe maybe actually inappropriately so because it kind of creates a very somber heavy saddened atmosphere and i'm not saying that's totally correct it is not totally correct but it does represent an aspect of the hug that we cannot deny uh marshall the great marshall it said liked liked fish a lot he would not eat fish on rosh hashanah because he said and rosh hashanah you don't go all the way you kind of hold back a little bit on what you enjoy you're going to tell me well that seems to contradict the possibility but he says no yeah have us through that but you know uh don't go all the way we should be optimistic that god in his yeah so this this is it so this is kind of the the schizophrenia meaning we know we're being judged we know our life is on the line we know that if hashem would be strict with the standards of judgment and justice nobody would survive but we also know hashem is full of mercy hashem is full of love and if we try our best he will look at us favorably because he knows we're not perfect and we're not able to be perfect but he looks at our efforts he looks at our struggles and as the chivas alabama says there is no such thing as any type of achievement in spirituality that's so insignificant that it doesn't count so i call it maybe schizophrenia is not the right word but i say there's kind of a double mood that's why rosh hashanah is a heart infection is a hard jumper in many ways it's hard to put your finger on it yom kippur is much easier to deal with you know yom kippur is a totally spiritual day it's a spiritual i'm not involved in in the gosmius i'm with hashem i dive in all day even if there's a break maybe a short break or whatever it would be and that's kind of easy because i'm not zigzagging between the world of materialism and the world of spirituality rosh hashanah it's kind of difficult you're in show for like many many hours and then you've got to go back and eat a big meal and you want to be careful in that big meal not to do lush and hara or the things that you know we might do normally because you got to be in your best behavior and then you go back to show gosh me as rickney is you're missing a happiness seriousness you're going back and forth and this is reflected in the nature of the holiday and this is also reflected in the two ideas of shofar in which chauffeur is coronation and chauffeur is summons to din as well as all the other associations but i want to mention uh relatively quickly i may continue with this next week some other messages of chauffeur that are a little less obvious that later commentaries uh talk about the first is a thought of rabbi shimshin rafal hirsch in which he makes the point that the shofar the sound of the shofar is actually reminiscent of the human soul because the human soul god breathed into us a soul so when i blow the chauffeur it's kind of i'm re-envisioning the initial creation of adam when god blew into adam a neshama and based on that the different sounds of the shofar connect to the nature of my neshama the first sound of the shofar is a tequila a tequila is a long unbroken confident sound that's connected to joy tequila is connected to julie and that represents the idea that the soul that god gave me was pure was good the next sound is shivarim which is essentially a tequila that gets chopped up the word shever itself means breaking what have i done i've taken the precious soul that hashem has given me it's as if hashem gave me a beautiful crystal vase and i smash it i break it through hate i've broken all sorts of beautiful parts of myself so the tequila is the original purity that hashem has given us the sheve is the disintegration and breakage that comes from hate but then we get to the trua the true as the whimpering or the sobbing that's the whimpering that's the crying of the person who does chuva and says i'm sorry hashem i want to be better and what do you get after the chua you get another tequila because chuva repairs miraculously it repairs the damage you started off with tequila you smashed it up but through the crying of trua you repair it and not only that but ghazal teach us it's in the gemara but the rambam saw poskins that the place where the balchuva stands is even greater than the place of the tsaddik who never sinned and that is why the last takiyah at the very end is longer and stronger than the earlier tikiyat because bamakum shabbale chuvaomdhim the place where the belchuva stands sadiquim gemurim anam yachal but that's even greater than the righteous who never sinned and therefore the shofar is symbolically auditorily representing the whole journey of mankind the journey of ourselves as individuals from purity to disintegration to repentance to renewal and therefore that's a very hopeful message at the end that yes there is a chevre and yes but through a true ah you can achieve the tequila again and that tequila may be stronger just as the analogy is a broken bone that heals can sometimes be stronger and thicker than the original bone so too the relationship with hashem that i get through each chuva can be much much stronger rav soloveijic used to explain this with the idea that absence makes the heart grow fonder a person who never wandered away from hashem hashem that's a wonderful thing we're not telling a person sin so you can become a bolshevik but the person who who never kind of wandered away from hashem may take that relationship for granted no i've always had it but the person who didn't have it and is now connected to it can feel much more strongly about that relationship because they know what life was like when they didn't have it an example would be i mean those of you that have parents that were not born in a free country they were either born in time in this country or they survived the holocaust or whatever it is they tend to be i've mentioned this a number of times i think they tend to be more patriotic whether it's to israel or america because they appreciate freedoms because they know what it's like to have a life without freedom machane came most of us who were fortunate enough to be born in relative freedom we don't necessarily appreciate it that much right so it's the same thing the balchuva whether he was religious and wandered away which is the real definition of a baltruva or someone who didn't have yiddish kite growing up they know what a life is without the torah without hash without connected to hashem and therefore they cherish it much more that's how rav salvation understands it and that is why the place where the baltruba stands even the perfectly righteous cannot be there so that's refresher's interpretation a very nice interpretation very simple interpretation this is one of those things that i think you can visualize even during the blowing of the chauffeur itself is kind of a an encapsulation of the power of truva and by the way i did say i did make the mistake i mentioned the word repentance again it's important to emphasize and i'll talk about this more that the real translation of chuva is returning and that's very very very important because when you think about repentance you think about sackcloth you think about ashes you think about breastfeeding but when you think about returning the concept is i'm returning to god i'm returning to the jewish people it's like i'd want to borrow from the new testament but the prodigal son which quite literally you're coming back to your father who is waiting for you with open hands and an embrace so thinking about shiva as returning rather than repenting is i think a very helpful way of understanding that shiva is joyous it should not be said rav cook talks about the idea of the joy of chuva i mean he's not the only one but this is a major theme in his book because really it's the gift of the second chance or the 100th chance it's the gift to make things good again that things don't have to be in the bad place or the negative place they are we can change things the realities can be different and that's a great great message of hope and according to our church that is the message of the shofar so that's one explanation let me mention another interesting explanation from the shame ishmael hasidis great was also the son of also a very very great guadal bhattara the avni nasir the sokka chaba rebbe who in turn was the son-in-law of the very great but very enigmatic kutskarebi now the cutscene rebbe himself was a i mean that is he he deserves a whole share of just just uh about the katsuki rebbe uh katsuki rebbe was very enigmatic uh the cut scrabby didn't want to be a rebbe and for 20 years he lived in virtual isolation and seclusion but again he was a phenomenally great talmud and this could be attested by the fact that the avene naser who unquestionably was one of the great godolyador unquestionably said that everything he knew in shas came from his father-in-law the katsuka rebbe so that shows you how great the katsuki rebbe himself was but the shame ishmael was the katsuka's grandson and the anthony nazer's son and he wrote a series of very beautiful hasidisha books on the torah and on the moa dim that are called the shame ishmael and for many people this is kind of their introduction to hasidis because it's a little easier than some other kassidish books but as it may he makes the following argument there are two situations in the torah we have the mitzvah of chauffeur and rosh hashanah and also yom kippur of yovel and that's a chauffeur that's an animal horn but in addition in the mid bar and in the basa mikdash there was another ritual of blowing and those are the khat so those are the silver trumpets that are blown on special occasions including yamim tovim in the base of mikdash so in the basal mikdash if you would be in the basement on rosh hashanah you would hear not only a chauffeur being blown but you would also hear two silver trumpets now these two silver trumpets were originally made by moshe rabbeno right we don't know if we we had them original in the basement or replacements and the torah does a sign when you blow them you blow them on yum toe you blow them when you go to war you blow them when you assemble the people you blow them when you journey when it's time to travel the torah tells you when you blow the khatsutras so the shame ishmael makes the following interesting claim even though we don't know the meaning of the chauffeur sounds in rosh hashanah but we do know their meaning in the context of khatso you'll see so he's making a legitimate homolytical leap that we could extrapolate from the assigned meaning of the khatso to see what it might mean by chauffeur you see what he's going to do in other words he's going to look at the parsha of kazotsros where we can infer a definition of the symbolic meaning of true and tikiya and he's going to take the khatsu throat's meaning and apply it to chauffeur and here's what the torah says the torah says that when you blow a te kiya that is a not the chauffeur the khat so that is a sign that everybody should gather together and when you blow a true which is any broken sound shivoham or true that is the time to travel which means the torah tells me tequila equals symbol of unity true equals symbol of journey and travel now granted that is not about shofar and it's not about rosh hashanah that is a general meaning of the symbol in khatsutras but the shame ishmael argues and i think logically that if that's the meaning of tequila true by sotros it could very well be the meaning of tequila including the shwarim by rosh hashanah so he says when we hear the taqiyya the message is we have to come together we have to be united we have to have avat we have to join with each other because nobody is capable of this journey in life without being connected to am israel and once we have it to kia we are then able to journey the true to journey and face the challenges of life he then goes on and says why is of journey so he says because a trua actually combines two sounds a true out again when i say trauma including the shivarim any broken sound does include the shwaryam trua sounds like crying sobbing weeping trua is also laughing and laughing and crying don't sound that different you can laugh until you cry you can cry until you laugh and the nature of the journey of life evokes two different responses within us on one hand there's fear and trepidation not only of the basic idea are we going to live this coming year but anything new a new job make aliyah a marriage being a parent one is scared one is worried you know we're used to familiar routines how does the saying go the hell that i know is better than the hell that i'm not i don't know even if something is bad at least we're used to it so when we confront something new like we're standing on the diving board we're going to jump into something it's scary it's worrisome a little bit so the chihuahua the journey to the new place causes a little bit of fear and trepidation but at the same time there's joy and exhilaration something's new things can change right it may be a little scary but there's so much promise and therefore the shame ishmael says says let's come together let's work together life is not a zero-sum game where if i gain you lose it's a life in which we can all gain by focusing on these basic goals even if each of us has a different way to achieve it and then we're ready to face the laughing and the crying of change and to reinforce the importance of you have to have the activists afterwards too so the journeying has to be bracketed with the unity before and after and this is a very very fascinating point because what he's basically doing is he is taking the explicit explanation of the symbolism of khatsu throats and he's extrapolating it to shofar where the torah does not give you that explanation terror gives you no explanation at all now i'll give you an interesting uh proof for them now this approved for his idea or at least say support for his idea and that is it's a little technical but i'll try to get it out relatively quickly in the musaf and we'll talk about this next week we have verses of kingship and then we blow the shofar and then verses of remembrance and we blow the show for and then we have verses about the show for and then we blow the shofar this is in the repetition malchiotz zucchro note shelf wrote and the pattern is all the same you have to have ten verses this is mandated by khazal and the way it works is three torah three ketuvim all from tehillim three in the vm and then the last pasuk is torah and you'll see this throughout maurios and chauffrost three three three one torah kituvim kingship and then for zechariah note remembrance and then for chauffeur okay so far so good but it's a little peculiar if you pay close attention you've got to look at your master carefully the last pasuk for shofar the number 10 pasuk which is from the torah is not talking about shofar it's talking about khatsu truth right on the day of your holidays us you shall blow throats look at it that's the no that's the number 10 pasek so you might ask why does that belong there the whole third section of musaf is sofa it's about shofar why is the tenth passage so it could be i'm just suggesting it could be that this may be a little bit of a support to the shame ishmael that we are permitted to borrow from khatsot's routes in order to understand the meaning of the shofar itself right so these are two supplementary ideas about shofar one from shimshon rafael hirsch and the other from the shemishma so next week i'll continue with some more ideas about shofar and the structure of the tv la so you all have a good a good week and [Music] uh [Music] yes [Music]