The Shofar of the Heart - Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

was a great for me to introduce once again Maru [Applause] Hartz uh thank you Rabbi sh for the very kind words and also tremendous yashik kak uh both to you and to the whole U staff that's been working so hard to really bring Torah to the people whe whether it's these special programs in modin other places and T and may you go and may more and more more people participate in the tremendous tremendous haras Torah uh that the OU does both in terms of Live shorum And in terms of online uh presentations as well uh I was asked to talk a little bit uh about the inion of teia Chau for obviously the blowing of the chaur is the big Mitzvah of rosashana uh we've been doing it the whole month of el but that really is a Min hug to kind of awaken us to chuva and as most of you probably know we're not going to blow the chauffeur Wednesday on AR rosashana we do not blow the chauffeur to make a very clear demarcation between the optional chauffeur blowing of ell and the mandatory chauffer blowing of Thursday and Friday the meaning of chauffeur is not given in the Torah itself uh and yet we know that it's a very multifaceted idea rev sagaon enumerates no fewer than 10 different aspects of the Kat chauffeur it's the alarm clock that wakens up wakens us up to chuva it is the summons to judgment it is the coronation of the king it's reminiscent of the receiving of the Torah it is reminiscent of the future Gathering of the Exiles that will be bishar resurrection of the Dead in a sense it's connected to so many events in Jewish life both in the past and in the future and in the present there is chauffeur past uh that is the chauffeur of Matan Torah there is chauffeur present Caron of God and summons to judgment there is the show for future kutas and in fact if you look in the section of musaf that is devoted right the musaf has three uh sections one called malos which are verses of kingship one isonos that are verses of God remembering the good deeds of our forefathers and then the third and shortest section is chaar that deals with chauffeur but it's interesting although it is by far the shortest part of the mus fact some have speculated there are some lines that are missing from chauret because in some level it almost appears as if it was cut off at some point but it's interesting that in the themes of the verses it has the greatest diversity because it does pick up past present and future more so than the malos and zeronos that are kind of monochromatic dealing with a single aspect God's malus God's kingship and God's memory but I want to share with you uh maybe what might be regarded as off the Beaten Track aspects of chauff for going beyond the themes that are very very familiar to us you know the Ron themes which are very important and foundational uh virtually every moer has them the art scroll maer for example has the 10 ideas of ragon obviously it's very worthy of study but I want to talk tonight of some themes that were developed Inus and cabala that are a little different than the listing of RA the first interestingly enough is not a it actually is from ra uh which we normally would not call AIC thought but he makes the point that rosashana commemorates the anniversary of the creation of man right uh when we say today is the birthday of the world when we say the world we mean God actually began creating the world the 25th of Elo rosashana is the sixth day of creation how did God create at least the spiritual essence of man he breathes into Adam the Breath of God in fact in many many ways this is already a very cont iial theological issue uh but the argument has been made that God did not create the soul the human soul is not a created entity the human soul is part and parcel of divinity itself as the Zoar says when you breathe into somebody you are giving them your life force meaning God created cows and dogs and cats by theim Let There beim although that's not explicitly in the Kish but the human soul was not created by God saying let there be a soul the human soul was created by God breathing from his innermost Essence so on rosashana WE commemorate the creation of man so one way of looking at it is that the blowing of the chaar is hearkening back to that primeval breathing of a Divine Soul into man it's a reenactment so to speak of the creation story but then revs offers a startling and beautiful Insight let's look at the sounds of the chauffeur the first sound is a tea a tea is a long unbroken clear sound that represents the idea of the pristine beautiful radiant soul that God put into Adam Harish on that first day of creation the next sound is sharim that which is broken disintegrated that represents that as well as us we took a beautiful soul and we smashed it up we broke it but after theim comes the tra which is described as a crying sound that is the Cry of the Bal Chua who seeks to come back to God and what do you get after the tra you get a Teya because through that process of chuva you repair the damage and the soul is as pristine as it was when it first came into the world so this is kind of a deepening idea the idea that the chaar is the call to Chua is a very familiar idea but most of the time we look at it as an alarm clock I mean that's the standard way people interpret it this is a bit of a richer idea that you're reenacting all of these stages the pure Soul gets broken but then as one cries and one comes back to God it gets repaired and I think refers points out that uh at least at the very end the tea that is after the trua is longer at the very end than the tea before the trua that is what is called teia gadola it's interesting Tia doesn't have to be super long Tia can be just a little bit longer but in some places for some reason uh they make a whole forget forget forgive my mixing the metaphor whole Milla about it where somebody blows the show for like five minutes it's unbelievable you know the doesn't have to be five minutes but whatever it is the Remis of teia gadola the standard explanation once again is it's a Remis to the chauffeur of that's the simple but in terms of this chuva metaphor it's a remise to the to the principle that the place where the balua stands is even greater and stronger than that saduk who didn't sin so that's shot number one again a little different than we we usually think about it in which the blowing of the chauffeur is a metaphorical reenactment of the the creation story coupled with the potentialities of chuva and restoration and rectification and tikon to make something even stronger than it was before the sin okay so that shot number one then I want to share with you upot number two from ref hutner and ref hutner starts off with an opposite premise if rev Hur views the initial blowing as a reenactment of God blowing into US R hutner Points out it's really the opposite God blew something into US chauffeur we blowing it out so R hutner actually says the chauffeur is a symbolic death experience what is going on so some of you might remember in the days before computers when you would rent a car for five days and you wanted to extend it by one day you would have to there was like a whole ceremony for some reason you couldn't even do it on the phone you had to personally show up you had to hand I don't know why you had to hand them the keys and they would sign a new contract and then they gave you the keys again there was like a ceremony that before you could get a new term you have to kind of terminate and end and cancel the old term probably comes from uh 18th century English law or something something like that you can't make a new contract till you formally cancel the old contract and the like rashash Shana is very much that way God gives us life in onee increments that's how it works rashash yipper God decides will have life but it's one year at a time because next rashash is going to be a new yaden so essentially what the chauffeur is doing is the chauffeur is returning the car I'm giving back my life to God and I'm asking for a renewal but now thear TR would be the chuva process in which I'm making the case for my renewal that would be similar uh to refes so on one level it's a symbolic death experience which is very important for us because because we do have to realize that our prayers in rashash Shana are very very significant again without bringing up I don't want to bring up depr depressive and sad things but what the tragedy of October 7 or sherat whichever date you want to call it that was decreed that was the cre on rosashana and yum Kipper of 5784 we didn't know that we didn't suspect it but in retrospect you could see how absolutely pivotal those days were imagine had we known last rashash Shana that a tragedy was in the offing and we had some mechanism who knows that we could have converted how much we would have done how much we would have tried so the notion of understanding that we're giving our lives to God is very important because it gives a person a sense of the reality of what is in stake on rashash now now I hasten to that I do have to add just as a little bit of a counterbalance that it's true that one cannot deny what is called aad The Fearsome din of rosashana this is certainly a major theme in nanf nanf is probably the most famous prayer in the rasher makur uh there's a very famous story connected to ra amnon who uh through a he tried to tell a uh a a Catholic uh Bishop that he would talk to him and just to get him off his back and when he realized he was creating the wrong impression he refused to go and he had his arms cut off and all sort of things and in his last moments uh he composed this prayer as he was dying whether the story of raon is true or not true is a very very interesting issue and we can that's really a talk for another time it may not have been true factually but it did represent uh kind of a paradigm of the spiritual m nees that existed over Jewish history but whatever it is Natan toef certainly uh communicates very very graphically the aadin but I also want to point out that rashash is also a joyous day look in the book of nya the one of the first rashash shanas after they came back only a few only a minority came back after the 70 years of the Babylonian exile and they come back to a land that is desolate that is empty they are impoverished they have no source of parnasa they are still under the rule of the Babylonians I'm I'm Sorry by that time the Persians they're under Persian rule they don't have freedom or autonomy they don't have an economy and they thought in spite of the fact that they're back in aric Israel they thought God rejected them God is not pleased with them and they were sobbing and weeping on that first rashash Shana and asra neia circulated among the people and Ezra neia said have a good meal and be sure to share with those who don't have Rejoice do not cry do not mourn for this day is Holy unto God it is important to counter maybe the over nervous over anxious reactions that we have I mean obviously amaden is a truth that I cannot deny and I cannot obscure we have to deal with it but at the same time we have to have B in God's compassion in God's goodness in God's love for the Jewish people to be optimistic to be hope ful tragedies do happen and each tragedy should rip our hearts and we should pray in DAV with all of our kabana but we also know that am Isel will live and er Israel Will Survive so although obviously when I talk about chauffeur a lot of it is but we also have to keep in mind theim aspect in facton himself B balances this because of saon says the chauffer is also coronation right coronation is joyous with trumpet and chaur we shout joyfully before God so rashishana is a bit of a hard holiday because it's a little bit schizophrenic in the sense that it incorporates two different modalities that have to exist simultaneously take the d seriously cha the end of the but at the same time feel the joy of God's love feel the reality of God's compassion and therefore as we do chuva we do our chuva with Sim as well but going back to R hoodner the chaur is the symbolic death of giving up the old life in exchange for the new life the hopefully new life that God's going to give you in fact the zorer explains this in a reciprocity when we blow the chauffeur below that elicits God blowing the chauffeur from above it's Mish what it is we're giving back the old car we're getting a new car so there are a number of things here number one this image of chauffer as death makes us realize number one the reality of divine judgment number two this is an optimistic Twist on it the idea of renewal everything's new new spiritual energy is revived the world the old energy is being given back things are new so everything can change sometimes it may be ominous but there's the potential for change in all positive ways it's a new deal it's a new game it's a new life in fact interestingly enough if you take the famous phrase that we recite after we blow chaar hay harass so every Mak translates it this is the birthday of the world birth Adam Harish the birth of Adam Harish problem is of course that harass comes from H harass means pregnancy or conception so how do you get birth from that so some of forum twisted around a little bit but there is an alternative way of understanding it instead of saying this is the birthday of the world it actually means this is the conception of the unfolding of a new reality that is coming into the world it's not past looking this is the birthday of the world is going backwards this is the conception of a new reality is looking forward and the truth of the matter is this may sound like a real innovative translation but the truth is it is extremely faithful to the literal meaning of harass which is connected toan so the death experience makes us realize the seriousness of rosashana but it also makes us realize the joy of new life and finally giving our life over to God is also a moral commitment in other words I'm basically pledging my existence to Hashem which is part of the coronation motif of pledging allegiance to the Creator okay so this is thought number two with a little elaboration right so revur was chaur as a reenactment of creation and the process of chuva R hutner Chau for as symbolic death of turning your life over to God explanation number three is based on thisas and here is an interesting point the mishna says in M that all Shau force all animal horns are Kosher for the Mitzvah of Chau our minog is we use a Ram at least ashm use a Rams Horn to remember the aradas but technically Antelope goats and as you know the big yemenite chauffers are from Wild uh wild goats or wild gazel but the one animal whose horn is not Kosher for a chauffeur it's a perfectly kosher animal the lowly cower bull all Chau are Kosher but not the Horn of a cow or a bull what's wrong with a cow or a bull so thear gives a few few answers but the answer that's brought is the idea that since a bowl or a cow is reminiscent of a calf golden calf so we have the famous phrase that's even entered modern Hebrew AAR n SAR which means a prosecutor who is trained to look for all of the flaws is not the best one to try to defend you because he sees all the negatives you don't go before before God on the day that you're pleading for mercy and shake before God reminders of the golden calf now obviously the issue is not that oh God didn't remember yeah I didn't remember that till I saw it I mean of course AEM remembers it but there's a certain arrogance in BL you know brandishing your ago reminder and that is why we don't use a cow or a bullhorn uh now it's interesting thear gives another analogy where this concept comes up again and that is anom Kipper normally the Coen gle's uniform the normal botam that the Coen GLE wears contains gold thread an yum Kipper when he goes into the kesim he only wears pure white linen he does not enter the kakim with gold why not so the gar says because gold is also a reminder of the Nar so now the gamar in rashash asks a very interesting question so we have two contexts where we invoke AAR Nar one is the P of a cow horn for chauffeur and the other is not wearing gold by the way that custom of not wearing gold is indeed even though it only applied in theota shakim but it is a fairly strong minel that gold jewelry is not worn on yum Kipper for that reason uh some people allow white gold because the agle was yellow gold um ask your local Rabbi you know what his Pak would be on that particular issue in fact the mcor of wearing white is the same reason as the whether men men wear K and women also again it's not a it's not a it's not a for women to wear white it's a very common custom uh that's connected once again to the K God all entering the Kash a sign of Purity now these two categories the chauffeur of the cow and the big day kahun of the Coen there they seem to be consistent but the gamar says actually it's not consistent because you know the Coen God switches his uniform five times on yum Kipper he goes from gold white gold white gold white whenever he's in the holy of holies it's white outside of The KES aashim he wears gold so wait a second here even on yum Kipper the rule of ner only applies in The KES aashim so how come it applies to chaur I'm not blowing Schauer in the kesak dasin if the Coen godle could wear gold when he's not in the kakim why can't I blow a cow horn for chauffer the gamarra asked the Kasha so where the gamarra gives quite an amazing answer the gara's answer is essentially that when you blow the chauffeur and you are remembered by God it is as if you are standing in the kashim that moment and therefore the aashim rules apply at the moment of chauffeur blowing can you imagine what that's saying the kashim was a place in the basa mikdash where only one person was allowed to enter only one day a year Co God only onum And yet when thousands of Jews come together to hear the chauffeur the moment of that Chau we are in The KES and that's why the gamorra says the aano rule which normally does not apply when you're not in the holy of holies will apply to teas Schauer that's thear Russ sh all of this is the gamorra so now the MS Builds on this gamorra if it is true that the moment of chauffeur blowing we are in the kesim and if it is true that in the kesim you can only bring the pure part of yourself you don't bring any sins in with you that's why we have to blow a chauffer and not verbalize our prayer the chauffeur says theas is a prayer without words it is a prayer that emanates from the gut it's a prayer that emanates from my insides my kishkas meaning a verbal prayer is not acceptable in the holy of holies because our very speech is filled with hypocrisy with hidden agendas with insincerity Because by the time it gets to our mouth our verbalization it no longer has the fullest Integrity we say to God I'm sorry and I did that are we really sorry not always so in the Kash you don't bring your speech you don't bring your words you don't bring your hypocrisies yes Hashem will listen to us the rest of the day and we try our best but in the kashim you got to bring that which is pure and good and untainted and that is the innermost depths of your soul because the soul of a Jew is Holy the soul of a Jew the pinit does not get contaminated by sin it's gets covered up with dirt Schmutz it gets covered up but it's essential it's like a diamond being covered with all sorts of Filth but the diamond itself does not absorb that filth in fact that is why Chua works the reason Chua works if somebody was really broken there might be no way to fix it but if we understand that n sha remains pure that is the basis of all recovery to clean off the layers you know I had a memory of something that I remembered when I was six or seven and for many many years I said to myself I'm sure you have this experience my memory must just be wrong because it's impossible when I was six or seven I normally D in a young Israel with my parents in in westart in well Hartford not westart Hartford but one year for whatever reason my parents went to a yui sh a German sh and you know at listen I was six or seven so being in these long sh things were not the most pleasurable experience even today I have to admit sometimes it's not the most pleasurable experience um but one thing that I was curious about is when they said the ales of yum Kipper the ales the list of all of the AOS they sang it to a very jaunty Melody a happy Melody I'll this I'll ha this and I said to my and I remember this but as the years went on and I experienced so many other yum kippers I said H can't be it can't be I mean maybe you must have been thinking of something else maybe one of the slos after kidre or something they couldn't have sung the ales to a JY Melody but then I read his his adaptation of RAV salic shiora manua again a wonderful book Hebrew or English uh it's worthwhile to get in which R salv was describing his yum Kipper in Berlin Berlin and he said he was surprised that in Berlin they sang the alates to a joy memory and I read that and I felt Vindicated yeah I was right and he explained Kad Darko with beautiful eloquence that you know when you clean off the dirt when you have a beautiful diamond and you remove all of the filth even though it might be very uncomfortable dealing with unpleasant things but you're exposing the beauty of the diamond so Al can be a joyous experience I'm cleaning everything up I'm fixing everything I'm making everything beautiful again so even the can be now I don't know if they do this in Washington Heights Washington Heights is the Min of Frankfurt which isil this both when when Connecticut and Sal was the Min of Berlin which are actually two different Yaki minhag but at least in Berlin the Minag was that they sang uh the the the El so it turns out that the chauffeur is a prayer to God but it's a prayer without the hypocrisies without the insincerity of speech it's a prayer that comes from a deeper place than speech it comes from the essence of Holiness that is the pinto lead and why do I need that type of prayer because in the holy of holies you don't bring in the ago you don't bring in any sin you got to give God what is pure and good and that is your essence that is your essence again those of you that have learned the Tanya no again R zman was not the first person but again with great eloquence and depth and detail he describes the intrinsic Holiness of the Jewish soul in how sin might create an incrustation yeah and that may separate you from God until you remove the encrustation but it does not affect the essence of that Nish and that is the basis of chuva so so far uh three ideas the chofar as reenactment of creation culminating in chuva the chauffeur as symbolic death the chauffeur as wordless prayer emanating from the purity of the Soul a final interesting thought is from another great kic Master the Sham Mishu the son of the AER and he points out that although the Tyra does require a long sound and a broken sound the T itself does not assign any meaning for it meaning all the Dres we make are interpretations but the Kish itself does not give you a direct meaning but there is one place where the Tyra actually gives you the meaning of the sounds and that is not in the case of chaur but in the case of in the mishkan and later in the bikash in addition to the chaur that is sounded on rosashana there were silver trumpets that actually were were blown every shabas every y including rashash Shana this was part of the temple service only in the basam Mikes and in Paras sposa when Moshe was instructed to make the silver trumpets he was actually told what to blow depending on occasions so it says say when you want to gather the people to come together blow a tea and when it is time to Journey blow the tra blow the Broken Sound which includes Tru Etc so if we allow a little bit of poetic license that we can take the meaning the tah gives inos and apply it to chaar we get yet another meaning in the tea tea is gather together come together the Jewish people need AK the Jewish people need Unity you know those of you who remember I'm sure I'm sure everybody remembers before October 7 when externally things were relatively peaceful the state of Israel was undergoing a great crisis I mean we've forgotten it the the later servus are so much greater we forgot about the earlier servus but the earlier servus was bad judicial reform whatever whatever the issue was it was tearing apart the country religious secular within the secular world within the religious world people were threatening to pull Capital out of the country were saying they were not they would not report for Duty uh certainly meim reservists were saying they all did when that became necessary but who knows if that emboldened you know you know who knows so there was tremendous tremendous hatred tremendous polarization and then came October 7 and if we could talk about a tiny silver lining in such a devastating tragedy and maybe it's not proper for me to talk about it in those terms but there was a renewed commitment which often happens in the wake of tragedy unfortunately of unity togetherness all the MIM were put to side religious and secular embraced they walked together they work together even who normally might not have participated in the Army some some enlisted others were bringing food and medicine toim and helping out in different ways and there was tremendous tremendous unity in aat Isel unfortunately like an elastic band where even if you stretch it when you let go it comes back and as the mil lasts and goes on and on and on and on and then we have new problems from the north although we had a bit of Yeshua the other day with Nella we go back to our bad habits and a lot of the unity that we gained in the immediate aftermath of this awful Massacre we've kind of lost and that's a tragedy on top of a tragedy because the tragedy was of course October 7 and Kim and the war and everything else and the second tragedy is we didn't even grow from it we're back we're back to to where we were so tea as we see by kotos is come together as you face a new year as you face new challenges come together and when we have that teia we're ready for the trua which is the sign for traveling go forward come together Journey forth and the shamish says he has a nice canich he says the truest sound the schar sound I'm using them interchangeably because they are the Broken Sound can either be a laughing sound or a crying sound laughing and crying are closer than we sometimes think you laugh till you cry you cry till you laugh and confronting a new year isn't is a combination of laughing and crying we laugh because it's new the possibilities are infinite everything can change as I said before new spiritual energy comes in but it's also frightening I don't just mean in terms of the Very Bad Things things that can happen but anything all change is frightening a new job making alah whatever it is the notion of newness is frightening so the emotional idea that I I'm crying and I'm laughing very much describes the journey into newness that rosashana represents but you can't make that Journey without the tea which is Aus and unity and togetherness okay so these are some ideas to think about uh again just to summarize them as a list rev her reenactment of creation coupled with chuva rev hutner symbolically dying and giving your life back to God in exchange for God's new energy this FIS a wordless prayer from the Holiness of your essence in the holy of holies and the shame MMO the journey into newness which is a combination of laughing and crying but only after the tea which is coming together if we don't come together we will not be able to make that Journey that Journey requires that Claus shall be together 578 before was a hard year now I'm not going to say it was a singular year unfortunately we've had many many years of tragedies that even were much much greater but the point is not to compare tragedies it was a tough year a rough year and for those who are suffering it is not over yet and for those of us who feel the suffering of those who are suffering it's not over yet but there's an old saying May the year and its curses end May the new year begin with blessings May T Shin be a year of blessing and I just want to end with a very pointed V of the Ezra when Hashem promises us that if we're faithful to the Torah Shalom I will give peace in the land the ezzar adds one word shom the prayer is not only peace from andah of course we need that but the peace should be within all of us sh [Applause] [Music]