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Silence speaks volumes
The lack of a shofar this Rosh Hashanah has meaning.
RABBI SHLOMO RISKIN TORAH COLUMNIST
Rosh Hashanah Efrat
Rosh Hashanah without a shofar seems like Passover without matzah. And yet this is what always happens when the first day of Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat. The Mishnah in Rosh Hashanah couldn't be more explicit: "When the festival of Rosh Hashanah falls out on Shabbat, the would blow the shofar only in the Holy Temple. But not anywhere else in Israel — or the world." (Ch. 4, Mishnah 1).
The talmudic sages debate the reason for this and suggest it is a rabbinical decree to prevent the possibility an individual might carry the shofar to his teacher to learn more precisely how to blow it and carrying an object is forbidden on the Sabbath [B.T. Rosh Hashanah 29b).
I would suggest a more personal and perhaps existential reason for the silent shofar on Shabbat Rosh Hashanah. In order to deepen our imderstand-ing, we must remember that the fundamental commandment, "it is a day of the staccato [broken] sound of the shofar to you" (yom truah. Numbers 29:1) links the dominant theme of the ram's horn blasts to the sighing and sobbing sounds of shevarim (three sighs) and truah (nine sobs), as enunciated by the talmudic sages {B.T. Rosh Hashanah 33b).
At first glance, Rosh Hashanah, the birthday of the world, may not seem an appropriate time for weeping and wailing. However, a deeper look may reveal there is no better time in the year for giving vent to the frustration, pain and collective sighs about our continuing failure to have created an ideal society.
As we approach our 5,757th Rosh Hashanah, we remember how the Almighty created a world of exquisite beauty but not without cruel tragedy. God
Rabbi Shlomo RIskin is chief rabbi of the city of Efrat, Israel and dean of Ohr Torah Institutions in Israel.
awaits the perfection which He has charged His creature-partners to effectuate, but the task is far from completed. Hence on Rosh Hashanah we weep for a world still not perfected; for a messiah who has yet to arrive; for premature deaths and unmitigated suffering; and for a God who is hidden and a humanity which must still reach its potential.
And it is not only those who are praying who weep with the sounds of the shofar. God also
weeps for a world which is so far from His and our ideal.
We cry out on Rosh Hashanah, dream of redemption and our tears provide some comfort and release. But when Rosh Hashanah actually converges with the Sabbath, when we actually confront the day which is " a glimpse of the world-to-come, a taste of the ultimate perfection," then the contrast between what is and what is supposed to be only deepens our frustration and emphasizes our failure.
On such a day, our pain forbids us the possibility of being comforted through tears. Tlie ideal of the Sabbath seems to mock the cruel imperfections of the world ajid we find ourselves incapable of relating at all, even through tears, to the Creator who established such difficult ground rules for His universe.
The shofar, in its very silence, penetrates the innermost recesses of the pain, the lack of sound resonating with the deafening loudness of the tragic human predicament. The loudest and most tearful sobbing in a house of mourning is expressed
by those whose pain is beyond words and tears. Perhaps this is the reason that on a standard Rosh Hashanah we can not bring ourselves to even mention Rosh Hodesh (the new moon), symbol of ultimate renewal, restoration and renaissance.
But, as noted by Don Seeman in his magnificently poignant, sensitive essay. The Silence of Rayna Batya {Torah U-Madda Journal, Vol. 6,1995-96), there are times when silence is an expression of moral courage, self-control and an understanding that at certain junctures in life words may well destroy a relationship forever. Holding one's tongue is often a form of valor, of the profound strength of restraint.
Sometimes we have to keep totally silent to pro-serve human existence, to maintain the relationship with God and life, no matter how tenuous and precarious that relationship might be. Sometimes a word would destroy and only courageous, restrained silence can preserve.
The Bible knows of yet another silence, the silence which precedes and ever heralds the ultimate redemption, the silence of the stillness of the night before the emergence of the dawn.
"I have been silent for an eternity, [God says] I have been quiet, I held back, just like a woman about to give birth. And then after the silence, I will gasp and pant together...And I will make fix)ni the darkness light, and from the crooked roads straightness." {Isaiah, 42:14-16).
The silent shofar can represent the severance of a relationship, but it can also express the deepest desire to retain a relationship despite the enormous pressures on both sides created by pain and suffering. It can even enunciate the emergence of a new life and a new world. Since the second day of Rosh Hashanah sounds the shofar, and since the blasts herald God's kingship by means of His people and His Torah, may we all merit the shofar of Elijah and a more perfect world in the year to come. □