On Tuesday evening, September 24, Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz, Rav of Kehillas Ohr Somayach and well-known speaker, shared a fascinating shiur about shofar at The Yael Street Shul in Yerushalayim.
Rabbi Breitowitz began with a mashal. He was visiting his son in Baltimore, and he had draped his suit jacket over a chair. His son’s puppy somehow got a hold of his jacket and chewed the pocket, so it was badly torn. Rabbi Breitowitz was not optimistic about getting it repaired, but he thought he’d try a tailor in Meah She’arim. Feeling a bit sheepish, he brought it to the tailor and said, “I doubt you can fix this, but…” The tailor responded with a teaching of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov. “Anything that you can ruin can be fixed.”
This is the idea of t’shuvah, Rabbi Breitowitz stressed. Rosh HaShanah is about hope, optimism, and resilience.
The T’ruah sound is the sound of a broken heart. It must be blown from the narrow end. Rav Kook zt”l taught that blowing the shofar from the narrow part represents thinking first of our own needs and our family and then the sound moves to the wider part of the shofar as our prayers then move on to the needs of the community and klal Yisrael.
Hashem said to Avraham: I’ll bless those who bless you. The shofar blowing d’Oraisa was originally just nine blows. He shared in detail how it moved into being 30 blows and then eventually 100 or 101.
T’kiah is a long steady blow that symbolizes happiness. T’ruah is a broken blow that symbolizes a broken heart, and Sh’varim is sobbing. Why was the requirement to blow each of these three times? The Zohar said that each set elicits power from the Avos.
The Sages wanted to connect the Musaf blessings to shofar blowing. The first section is Malchiyus, the second is Zichronos, and the third section is Shofaros. Each one incorporates ten p’sukim. The verses are from the Torah, the K’suvim, the N’viim, and again the Torah.
Shofar blowing is crying out to Hashem to accept our t’filos.
Rabbi Breitowitz explained that “TSRT” is the acronym for the shofar blowing. T’kiah, Sh’varim, T’ruah (starting with second letter to differentiate from T’kiah) and then T’kiah.
He shared that in chasidic, Chabad, and Sephardic shuls they blow the shofar during the silent Amidah so at the end of davening they blow only ten more blasts. If the person blowing during the silent Amidah has difficulty blowing, he has to pass it to someone nearby, as he can’t walk around during the Amidah.
He told a story that Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski zt”l shared. When he was eight years old, the shofar blower was having difficulty during the silent Amidah and the shofar was being passed around. Everyone was covered in a talis, so they didn’t see who was blowing. It was passed to a few people who couldn’t blow it, and then he got the shofar. He was able to blow it. At the end of shul, everyone wanted to know who blew it. They discovered it was him. Of course, he couldn’t be motzi everyone. This was an example, Rabbi Twerski quipped, of when a parent could be proud and annoyed at the same time.
He then spoke about the concept of the satan in Judaism. In Christianity, they believe “Satan” was an angel who fought against Hashem and was exiled, and that “Satan” a separate evil entity.
In Judaism, satan is one of the mal’achim of Hashem. “Satan” is the prosecutor. When we daven, we should have in mind that we accept with love and faith whatever Hashem gives us, and that acceptance is a great z’chus.
Next, he shared a reason why some blow the shofar 101 blasts. It is tied to the mother of Sisera’s mother who sat by the window waiting for him to return from war. She was not crying out of worry for her son, but rather waiting for the spoils of war. Rabbi Breitowitz explained that a mother’s cry always elicits a certain amount of mercy. Hashem doesn’t ignore a mother’s pain. So, we blow the shofar 101 blows to push back against the mothers of evil people.
He then shared how Hashem created man by blowing life into him. Thus, we blow out with the shofar to symbolically blow out our life. We show that we are giving our life over to Hashem.
Just as Avraham used the ram for the Akeidah – and we remind Hashem of this with the shofar – the shofar is in a sense our personal akeidah.
This shiur can be viewed on TorahAnytime.com.
By Susie Garber
