Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: A Broken Heart Can Open All the Doors in Heaven on Rosh HaShana

[Music] hi everybody shalom and thank you thank you for coming uh we do have a lot of uh people who have uh who are dedicating tonight's share first for the elevation of the nishamat of roving pinchas lomo leia louise and may all of their niche must be elevated by the torah that we are teaching tonight we have some york sites uh the grandmother of abrami fine on the sixth of tishrei nahama about zundal and then a grandfather of a vermifeine again a friend of mine who died in the holocaust and as is sometimes the case with these tragic deaths there is no date and he doesn't even know the father's name uh but he was reb shimon levy and uh he was known as the eloy from kiev that means a brilliant talmudic genius and he learned by one of the great great russia yeshiva of europe before the holocaust and that was robert bear lebowicz the shiva of kamenetz and then we have 24th of ello is a borough the art side of baruch ben davinsky and this is being contributed by his brother arik and finally a reforest leima blooming israel and a special mention of sponsorship in honor of the rabbit and all of the bonnet does by again a friend of mine from new york joseph kalimi and the final announcement is that baruch hashem the bananas charity campaign their stucco campaign has already reached 80 percent of the goal i'm not sure if i should announce that because you might not bother to contribute because so much of the goal has been realized but remember number one eighty percent is not a hundred percent and number two you know it's okay to go beyond the goal because the goal can keep on getting more because unfortunately there are many many needs that are met and needless to say giving stucca is by far a two-way benefit it is obviously a benefit for the people receiving the very very necessary funds but it is a tremendous benefit for us particularly as we're approaching the days of judgment and the days of awe and we need as many mitzvos as we could possibly do in this time of the time of judgment and our sages have taught us that stakka might be one of the greatest of those mitzvahs everyone knows the famous refrain of the rosh hashanah in yom kippur liturgy uttashuva uttavila utstaka maviran zera repentance prayer and charity they will annul if god forbid there is a negative or evil decree upon a person uh through repentance prayer and charity one can have the mercy of god to beam a vatel to cancel that evil decree so because hashem we should all continue to be marba in stukka and in fact after rosh hashanah during the 10 days of repentance there's even more of an indian to give stukka than there would be in the month of ello prior to to russia shut up we are in of course the last week of the year there's an old kabbalistic tradition that the last week of the year you can rectify that particular day of the week by proper repentance so the last tuesday of the year one could still of course it's already not tuesday anymore but one could fix all of the tuesdays the last wednesday of the year you can fix all of the wednesdays the last thursday of the year the last friday of the year the last shabbat of the year is especially significant the last sunday last monday so this week is very very pivotal because this can define the entire year based on how we end it and therefore every single day is a tikkun for that particular day of day of the week when we come to the holiday of rosh hashanah rosh hashanah in some ways is a schizophrenic holiday is rosh hashanah supposed to be a happy day or is rosh hashanah supposed to be a scary day and the truth of the matter is yeah that's exactly right the truth of the matter is rosh hashanah embodies both of those elements because on one hand it's a very very happy day because on some level according to the zoar this is very very fascinating rosh hashanah is not about us at all rosh hashanah is about proclaiming god as king it is called the coronation day it is the anniversary of the creation of the world by creation of the world i mean the creation of adam which was the sixth day of creation so god actually began creating the world six days earlier 25th of ello but since man is the purpose of creation so we consider the creation day to be the day that hashem breathed into adam the spirit of life the godly soul and that is rosh hashanah rosh hashanah is our birthday and on that birthday that is when hashem became a melek now why is that so why is that so because i'll have a statement ain't melech below um there is no melach unless there is a nation that accepts him as a melech in fact the vilmigon writes that melech is not a term that we use for a dictator a melech is someone whose people voluntarily accept him now the only creature in the entire universe that has free autonomous will is mankind animals don't have free will they act on instinct angels do not have free will they are programmed to behave a certain way so when god is surrounded by angels and animals god rules over them to be sure but god is not a melech god is called a moshell so when does god become a melech only when we who have free will and autonomy to reject god come together and proclaim him as our sovereign as our king then we are making hashem the melech quite literally and rosh hashanah is called the day of coronation yom hamlacha the day of coronation yom hakessa which means the day of enthronement so to speak and seen on that theme in that light rosh hashanah is not about asking god for this or for that or for that or for that in fact the zoa we may not possibly like this however but the zoar actually describes people who come to shola and rosh hashanah and they ask god give me life give me parnassa give me health give me shidduchim they are like a bunch of dogs gathering under a window barking for meat and in the deepest level therefore rosh hashanah is not about gimme gimme gimme rosh hashanah is about proclaiming god is king and even when we ask for life we're asking for life in order to serve him we're asking for life so we can have a part in sanctifying his name we want a life of meaning a life of purpose we're asking hashem in a way it's like enlisting in the army we're asking to be part of hashem's army not in a militaristic sense but in the sense that we want to have a life where we bring glory to the name of hashem and that he's proud of us so according to that understanding everything that we're asking for you know health life all of these things is really only a means to a much higher end okay i want a life of purpose i want a life of meaning you know it's reminiscent of something very uh i'll mention two quotes which are almost the same one is uh from abraham lincoln and the other is from the perhaps i shouldn't i shouldn't juxtapose them abraham lincoln raided by everybody as the greatest president the united states ever had a tremendous person a person of not only a brilliance but a person of great emotional intelligence and depth so he was in a cabinet meeting in the middle of the civil war and one of his cabinet members said to him mr president the union shall certainly win because god is on our side and lincoln responded it's much more important that we be on the side of god than god be on our side you see sometimes people look at religion as kind of i get god to be in my corner you know i want this i want that i want that so i figure if i'm in god's good graces i'll get all the stuff that i want which we know is not always the case anyway in other words you're enlisting god to serve your agenda and lincoln said that's not what life is about it's not about getting god to give me what i want it's about getting me to give god what he wants and therefore it's not about egotism it's not about me now by the same token let me just mention the story with the prophet saying the great you know gaza was saying that means when a righteous person decrees something god listens to the decree if it's saddam you go to a sadiq for a blessing that you should have a shidduch you should have children you should have paranasa we believe that the blessing of a righteous person god listens to and sometimes that could even be miracles occasionally so somebody went to the time sun after the time died and said listen cause i'll say when i sadik decrees god listens can you give us some examples of your father that decree and giving brachas and those brachas were fulfilled so the son of the khafiz who himself was a big talmud rablib says i'm sure there are such stories but i will tell you and i'll say it in hebrew first and i'll translate it my father was less interested in sadiq gosai from kurdish barack obama he was more interested naked who goes there with sadiq meaning to say instead of saying that sadiq decrees and god listens my father was interested in god decrees and the psychic lessons okay so based on that idea rosh hashanah is not a day about me it's about coronating god and that's a joyous day that's a simbra in fact according to this view the blowing of the shofar is a time of great joy we're coronating the king on the other hand we also know that rosh hashanah is a day of judgment that god is deciding who will live and who will die who will be healthy and who will be poor who will be successful who will not be successful and there's even an undercurrent of terror in their liturgy of the yom narayam davening particularly i called your attention maybe the best known prayer i think i've already alluded to it in some other classes the nisana tokef which is a prayer in the repetition of the musa before kedusha and it's a little unusual because we say it uh both days of rosh hashanah and jim kippur again without getting into liturgical detail uh for every other holiday there actually is a prayer before the kedusha that we usually don't even say it's the outros and when you say it it's a different one for every musa every day of yamthev but the son of tokef is so powerful that number one we say it which we don't do for most of the yautz rose prayers before muslims it's called the silver technically the prayer reformed music again you can give a whole class on this but it's very technical but the there actually is a name for the pia the poetic composition that appears before music it is called sea look and there is a sea look for every empty and most people don't even say it at all it's not even in a sitter but but it's there i mean it you can find it uh the sea look for yom narayan is the son of tokyo and that's that's the only select that is universally stated said by everybody and uh the one thing that's very characteristic of the son of together is the fear the trepidation typically often when a cousin will be saying the son of tokef he will be brought to tears that's why by the way and the whole thing sometimes you know khazanim today or not kazana maybe but ballet fila today like to incorporate popular nigunim whether it was the karlbach or whatever it is and the reason is because classical hazanas you know you don't necessarily sing along with and people like to have a davening that they can sing along with and again i i endorse and i'm not i'm not against that but but you have to be very very careful to match the into the words so sometimes people people take the sign of together and they sing it to a jaunty like uh you know puff the magic dragon or something like that or whatever it is and uh it does not fit the contents of the words so when a negan does not fit the content of the words it's not the right musical choice music has to match the mood of the prayer and that's a skill a very good friend of mine a very very great loss to quality cells some of you may have heard of cantor sherwood goffin sherwood goffin was the cantor in the lincoln square synagogue for many many years for over half a century and he died last year but but in addition to his beautiful voice he was a great great expert in jewish music and the history of jewish music and the modalities and one of his great themes was that on one hand he was supportive of innovation and bringing in new types of musical expression but the musical expression had to be linked thematically to the prayers and therefore you have to combine old new and you have to know the question has to know what the words are okay but that's a little bit of a digression but going back to the son of the tokens is trembling because of the day of judgment so rosh hashanah is a bit of a schizophrenic holiday in many ways because we have the joy of coronating god and that is a joy and then we have the trepidation but side by side with the trepidation there's joy even in that because i have confidence and trust in god's mercy and god's compassion so there's the joy of the carnation there's the trepidation of the day of judgment but then there is the joy and the serenity of believing and trusting in god's mercy so the joy surfaces even in the second aspect of rosh hashanah as well so that's why there actually is a machlokis what is the dominant emotion of chauffeur blowing is the dominant emotion of chauffeur blowing joy because that's the coronation or is it fear because it's like the summons to judgment the chauffeur is the call that you're just like in a jury right when the jury is ready to come in and tell the person the verdict a buzzer sounds the chauffeur is the buzzer god is going to be judging us so it's a mach lokas some say chauffeur is simbra some say shokur is and rav soloveichik actually has an interesting essay in which he wants to say that the chauffeur blowing before musa the theme is fear of judgments the shofar blowing during musaf is coronation so he wants to split it in that in that in that way and rishishana baklal is kind of schizophrenic because on one hand you're intensely daubening for many many hours a very long service but then you go and you have a meal and a party and you relax again you know it's like uh going back and forth i mean you know you're going from very intense prayer you know yom kippur in some ways is an easier day to handle yom kippur is totally spiritual forget about food forget about meals forget about even socialization i am with god in the middle of my community and the day is devoted to spiritual purification and introspection that's jim kipper maybe it's physically hard well although many people find even it's not even physically hard because it's kind of just a delight to be with god in that state of purity and often when your kipper is over there's a certain sadness maybe rightfully someone had tremendous joy but maybe a sadness that i'm no longer in that in that special place but rosh hashanah is a little harder to deal with because you're dealing with the intense worship of hashem and then you go back to socialization and you know in fact some people uh don't even like tasha look you know you go okay you should lime of course you always have probably you're going to find the water everyone has their own their own minute about that uh but you know their work itself we did not like tashlich so much as a ceremony because there was too much socialization and you know you know schmoozing and talking and rosh hashanah is not about that there's only got to be you know serious introspective you don't spend a lot of time socialization okay so beat us at may i just wanted to underscore the kind of schizophrenic aspect of simcha on one hand on the other hand but even simpler within the because of trust and faith in compassion you know again i have to make this point and i probably have made it uh you know five consecutive weeks already or four consecutive weeks and that is god is not out to get you it's not that god is scrutinizing you for the littlest fault i gotcha there is accountability in life and judaism there is responsibility god wants us to be the best people we can be and sometimes he will convey this to his lessons through discipline and chastisement i mean the jews have been in galut for 2000 years part of that is god's chastisement of course and we've been through many many tragedies and we don't always understand the ultimate meaning but the point to know is that it it it all comes out of i mean again it's hard to say it it's hard to understand it but it ultimately comes out of the love of a parent i mean the torah gives you the key to this even though it's almost impossible for us to totally grasp this the torah says as a father chastises his son so hashem will chastise us a father may discipline a son in fact in the olden days you know corporal punishment right got a spanking but it came out of love it did not come out of rejection and that's the nature of what's going on so god is not out to get you can i i think i refer to jonathan edwards the famous puritan preacher speech where he describes i guess he stirred up his audience that uh he said you are like a repulsive insect that someone is holding over the fire that he just wants to squish and throw into the fire that is how god looks at you well that's one type of muscle but but that's not it that's not it one has to understand that everything is in the context of love in fact this beautiful story you know just last shabbos we read all of these awful curses and unfortunately you could match them up to jewish history particularly the holocaust by the you way this will happen this will happen and the story that the balatanya the alta rabbi used to be there was he was the balkari and one and the shabbos of the one year he was gone he wasn't he was out of town somebody else read the tokuga and they called up the altar rebbe's son who later became rabbis called the mittler rebbe the middle rebbe he was because he was only arabia a short time he was between the alta reby and the semester both of whom had long uh terms so he's called the middle rebbe and when they read the taj and they pronounced all of the awful curses the son fainted and he couldn't be revived and he was catatonic for virtually three weeks and dr rebbe was almost going to give him a header to eat onion kipper because his life was in danger the curses devastated him they broke him they shattered him so when he got better somebody said you know i don't really get this this is not the first time you've heard the token you hear the toga every single year this never happens before what happened this year he said when my father read them i didn't feel they were curses this is actually quite an amazing statement meaning somehow the altar rebbe was able to communicate that even the most awful punishments are coming from love and concern the other balcory was not able to necessarily convey that idea to the same depth so the middle of rebbe said i didn't feel they were curses until i heard somebody else read that when my father was reading them all the years it didn't affect me in that in that way so now i i want to talk a little bit about shofar because shofar is of course the central mitzvah of rosh hashanah and chauffeur is one of those symbolic mitzvots that has so many meanings meaning someone asked me what do you think about chauffeur blowing you know uh what do you say uh there are gazillion things to think about during silver blowing number one it's coronation of god i mean your sagittarius gives ten reasons and if you look in the art school monster you can see them i'll mention probably most of them then i'm going to add some things that he doesn't mention number one it is coronating god number two it is like an alarm clock as the rambam says wake up sleepyheads to look at your deeds and do shiva number three which is related it is the summons to judgment god is judging you number four it is connected to the receiving of the torah where god gave us the ten commandments through the sounding of the shofar number five it is connected to the in-gathering of the exiles back to the land of israel when mashiach comes those of us who didn't yet make it it's better to come beforehand but if you didn't make it they'll be the blowing of the shofar kibbutz goliath there is the chauffeur that announces the coming of mashiach there is the chauffeur of resurrection of the dead so when you think about chauffeur oh yes and finally of course the fact that it's a ram's horn now now again let me let me point out all of the things i mentioned until now are not connected to a ramshorn they're just generally chauffeur now a a chauffeur does not have to be a ramshorn and indeed many spardim in particular do not use a ramstorn they use an antelope or whatever so there's no halacha that a chauffeur has to be the horn of a ram but the minute of most ashkenazim is that they do use a ram's horn so that's not a halacha but some say it's a hidr mitzvah and that's connected to the al-qaeda of yitzhak when avram was willing to sacrifice his only son yitzhak and hara maria and yitzhak was willing to die and when god was convinced so to speak of avraham and yitzhak's loyalty he substituted yitzhak with a ram and on rosh hashanah we want god to think about so to speak remember is not accurate god we say we want god to remember god remembers but we want to bring it up uh and therefore we blow the chauffeur of the ram to connect to akedat right so there are many many things to think about but i want to add a few additional ramasim to show for that um that saddagon does not does not mention and they come up in later later ideas uh first is a beautiful thought from of shimsha rafal hirsch of the 19th century and he says if you think about it rosh hashanah was the day that god blew into man the divine breath which was his soul and what is shofar we're blowing our breath into the show part so our first wants to say shofor is a reenactment of the creation story we are remembering by blowing that sound blowing that breath we are reenacting we are commemorating hashem blowing his breath into us seen in this way first says we can analyze the different sounds of the chauffeur as part of our story of what we've done with our lives the first sound of the shofar is takiyah a long strong unbroken sound that represents the soul that god breathed into us which was pure which was strong which was righteous which was confident so to speak but what did we do with that precious soul we smashed it right the next sound of the shofar are the three blasts ah we took the preciousness of the divine image within us and we broke it in various ways by not living lives of righteousness and integrity so the shavurah the shivarim represents losing the wholeness of the soul but what then happens you then have the whimpering sound of the ah and that refers to the cry of the baltuba the cry of the penitent who cries over the beauty that he once had that he lost and what do you get after the trua you get another tequila you get it back you've been repaired the place where the penitent stands is even greater than the person who never said that's why actually the last takia is longer tequila godola because it represents the idea that the baal shuba is greater than the sadiq who never who never sinned so according to is beautiful analysis it is a reenactment of the creation story and through that reenactment we understand that in the course of our lives we've lost something very precious but we can regain it we can fix it we can even make it better than it was when it started and therefore the multiple sounds of the shofar i represent the idea of chuva being a tikkun being a rectification for that which we lost that is perspective number number one uh perspective number two i want to share with you is from ravitzra kutner the receiver of high in berlin the author of pakha jitsak one of the most interesting brilliant colorful uh godzilla of the uh of the 20th century he was actually a hostage in one of the hijacked planes in the 70s going all the way back but he's not he hasn't been alive for many many years but still his words are always worthwhile and he says he points out he takes ref hershey's insight but he wants to go the opposite way because instead of looking at it as a reenactment of the creation story it's actually a reversal of it because in the creation story god blew his breath into us in shofar i'm blowing my breath out of me it's as if he wants to say i'm giving my life back to god shofar as a symbolic experience of death and you know let's imagine you rent a car for a week and you want to extend the rental all right so today you can do it online but but in the olden days what you have to do is you really maybe even now maybe sometimes you have to do it you have to physically bring the car back to the rental office it's almost like a symbolic thing and you have to give them back the keys and then they will re-hand you the keys as a re-enactment of the lease it was kind of a certain ceremonial aspect about it i think today i think you can do a lot of stuff online so when god gives us life he gives us life in one year increments last rosh hashanah god decreed who will have life for this year so god decreed who will live for 57.81 god did not decree who will live 57-82 that's going to be determined this rosh hashanah so every year we kind of give back the car every year we give back our life to god and we say god it's all up to you i don't claim i have a right to life i don't claim it's coming to me it's your gift i ask for a renewal but i don't say i'm entitled to it i don't say i'm guaranteed it so it's the opposite of a first instead of a first kind of reverse understands you're re-experiencing your initial creation rafner is saying you're actually giving your life back to god and it really expresses our vulnerability and our dependence on hashem in the coming year okay so that's perspective number number two perspective number three is from the svas ms and this goes back to something i just began mentioning and that is uh all animal horns are kosher for a chauffeur in fact there's some discussion does it even have to be a kosher animal can you use a rhinoceros horn right there's a discussion about that but it doesn't have to be a ramps or in other words i say a ramsarin is a heater for many for many many people antelopes are kosher goats are kosher but the one animal whose horn is not kosher for a show for is a cow or a bull totally kosher animal cow or a bull you cannot use the horn of a cow or a bull for a shofar and there are a number of reasons given but the main reason that the gemara gives is because a cow a bull a calf is reminiscent of the sin of the golden calf and on the day that you're pleading for mercy you don't bring up your sins there's a famous saying that's even entered modern hebrew aim kategar nasa sanegor that means a prosecutor cannot really be your defense attorney now it doesn't mean once again that oh god didn't know about the sin of the golden calf until i reminded him he knew about it of course but there's a certain arrogance in waving your sins in front of god and saying hey god i'm seeking your mercy by bringing this thing about the golden calf now the gemara rosh hashanah says there's one other instance where we have a very similar halacha and that's in the yom kippur service we know the kohen gado who officiates on yom kippur has two uniforms he has one uniform that has gold in it but whenever he goes into the holy of holies which he's the only person who does it on yom kippur he takes off his gold vestments and he can only put on pure white linen garments because and the gemara says why because gold is a reminder of the golden calf and when he's seeking mercy aim categor so the two content now to this very day by the way many people have a minute it's not a den it's not a den that they will not wear gold jewelry on yom kippur a gold watch a necklace whatever it would be some permit white gold because it's not the yellow gold of the golden calf others no don't differentiate and the like but it's not a din because the den only applied when the colleen guttal actually went into the holy of holies so the two cases where we have this rule a vein katagar nasa sanegor one is the chauffeur of a cow or a bull and the other is the khalin gadol going into the kodasaka dosha and both of them are based on the premise that when we're seeking divine mercy we don't want to invoke the golden calf whether via the calf or via the gold but the gemara then asks akasha that there seems to be an inconsistency in this rule because on yom kippur i'm only concerned with kits rook prosecution when the coming gunnel is in the holy of holies when he's not in the holy of holies even on yom kippur he wears gold now shofar is not in the holy of holies so the same way the coloring gutter wears gold on yom kippur when he's not in the holy of holies because it's not there it's not in the sanctified place then why by shofar am i worried about it right so the gemara's answer is quite amazing that when you blow the shofar all of us are transported to the holy of holies the shofar is a moment of intimacy that is equivalent to the kodachak dashing so the one place where only the kohingol could enter and only on yom kippur the kiosk chauffeur is that moment for all of us and that's why the koda shakitashum rules apply to the chauffeur right have thought about the sanctity this is the gemara this is not yet the sfademas so we see now that the moment of rosh hashanah we are literally standing in the code of saktashan and when we plead for mercy we're not supposed to bring any evidence of our sin such as the golden calf so here's what the swastika says the prayer that you offer with your mouth with your dibor with your speech in itself has the same taint as the shofar of the cow or the gold of the cohen goddess garments because how can i plead for mercy with my dibor my debor was used for lash and hara it was used for sin it was used for embarrassing people my deeper itself is ain kate how can the vehicle of your sin be used to plead for mercy in the code of succession and not only that but even when we turn to god our divorce is often insincere it's not genuine it's hypocritical it's egotistical so when you're in the kodashak russian the vehicle of prayer that you need to use must be something that's pure that's untainted that comes from the highest place and that comes from the gut the shofar is a cry that comes from the innermost depths of your personality that is pure untainted united with god it is a pre-verbal reality because i think all of us have this experience that our words do not fully express the totality of our thoughts everything gets lost in the process the conscious thought is only a fraction of the subconscious the verbalization of a thought is only an approximation of the thought things get lost in fact that's the meaning of the famous verse that we say at the end of every amidah you lim may the words of my mouth find favor to god my rock and my redeemer and the thoughts of my heart and what's the difference imrae fee is what i articulate hagyon liby are various encode incomplete bits and pieces of thoughts aspirations yearnings that haven't even been formulated in words but they represent a reality that is deeper than the particularization of the words that you put on them and that is what the chauffeur is the shofar is a pre-verbal cry to god that's not covered by the hypocrisies of speech by the insincerities of speech and although normally speech is fine but when you're in the code of dashing right that's the that's the the semester's uh point there in the kodesh akdushin you have to use the medium that's totally pure okay in fact uh now that i think about this the cohen got all did offer a prayer when he brought the incense in the kodasaki but the mishna makes the point that he offered the prayer when he left the kardashian and i didn't until until this minute i actually did not connect it to this fathers but perhaps that's actually the point in the kardashian you don't verbalize anything because verbalization itself is ain't categor maker so i've mentioned three approaches augmenting rapsage again refers the chauffeur as commemorating the creation of man and the chuva process rafner the shofar as symbolic death by giving your life back to god blowing your breath back to god your life lost and this vesemes a prayer that is not yet distorted by verbalization and language a prayer that comes in a pre-verbal reality that is actually deeper than the words that we could put a prayer into okay it's a cry a cry from the soul from the panemius of the neshama so let me just mention a fourth additional perspective uh to the shofar and that is from the shame ishmael again a great great hasidic safer and he takes a little bit of a homiletical license you know the chauffeur is not the only horn that the torah blows the torah says to blow in the time of the basa mikdash we don't do this today there was a mitzvah to blow hatsotzeros rose are silver trumpets and these silver trumpets which were made initially by moshe robeno himself were blown on different occasions they were blown when we would go to war they were blown to gather the people they were blown as assigned to travel and they were blown on shabbatots and in fact they were blown on rosh hashanah in the basement itself in other words in the basamikta it actually describes the silver trumpets being blown and the shofar being blown the chauffeur was blown because it was the unique rosh hashanah mitzvah were blown because it was a yamcha of mitzvah for every yumpta pesach rosh hashanah yom kippur as well right so two different things now technically these are two different mitzvoths but the sounds are the same to kia true all of these different sounds so the shameless shmuel gives himself homiletical license to interpret the sounds of the shofar blowing based on what the tyrus says those sounds mean for the khatsu in other words for the khatsutras the torah does tell me trua takia what does it mean it doesn't tell me what it means by shofar but this but the shame ishmael makes the logical argument that we can borrow from khatsutros to show for by the way the liturgy itself does that you know in the liturgy the music of rosh hashanah we have three extra sections one section devoted to malchuyos god's kingship the other section devoted to god's remembering the good deeds of our forefathers and this third section devoted to shofar and without again we don't have time unfortunately to go over everything but each section follows the same structure you have three verses of the torah three from the kasuvim three from the navium and the tenth one from the torah dealing with maurios same pattern with the chronos same with chauffeurs again it's no note to sequencer it's a little different than usual torah kisuvem navien torah right three three three torah so if you check your maxer you will actually find that the tenth pasuk in the section of chauffeurs is not about chauffeur it is about khatsu so i the shame ishmael has a pretty good source to be able to borrow from khatsoz rose to show for because the liturgy itself in fact the big kasha the liturgy itself uses a verse of hatsodzeros the last one check your matcha the last verse of the section of chauffrost um so based on this borrowing what do we know so here's what the torah says when moshe was to assemble the people and gather them together he would blow it to kyo sound when it was time to travel and journey they would blow a jerusalem either swarm or trua because both of them are variations of the broken sound so the shamishmal says this is like the rosetta stone of chauffeur blowing the the torah has given us the meaning of the sounds of the chauffeur in a different way than our first suggested the tequila is coming together and the trua is journeying forward so what is the shofar we blow the tikiya to signify that we all have to come together we need actress we need unity we need community we need togetherness none of us will be able to make this spiritual journey without being connected you can't live by yourself to be a jew means to be part of a community love your friend like you love yourself can also be translated love your friend because he is like yourself he is also in the image of god and then when we have actus we're then ready to travel into the new year now why is the broken sound of the shofar connected to traveling journeying because the truth of the matter is the broken sound of the chauffeur can be a combination of laughing and crying at the same time laughing and crying are sometimes hard to differentiate you can laugh until you cry you can cry until you laugh and when i look at a new year a new life there is a mixture of laughing and crying there is laughter because there is a newness something fresh beautiful experiences that might be waiting for me what will i learn what will i discover who will i encounter there's a sense of excitement about things but there's also a sense of fear and i don't just mean in the most literal way who will live and who will die although that's there too but you know people say you know um i like the hell that i know better than the uh the hell that i don't know you know the old is familiar to us so even if it's negative you know i'm used to it i could take it so when i ca when i contemplate the fact that this is a new time everything's up for grabs new opportunities new potential there's a combination of a laughing and a crying because we're scared and again i say i don't just mean you know i'm gonna die or whatever it is but i'm scared you know a new year what's going to be especially coming out of the past year and a half that we've been through what's going to be the new normal what's going to be the new paradigm what new variants will the medical community undoubtedly discover in covet you know i understand they came out with a new a new south african heritage or something you know i mean i'm saying the dover seif uh not these things boosters right booster got to take the tenth booster whatever okay i don't want to get into it okay but the point there basically is that according to the shame ishmael tikiya is coming together trua shivarim trua is journeying forth laughing and crying and then you have to kill afterwards because that's an important reminder in all of our journeys many of us will be going in different diverse directions but even as we pursue our diverse directions we need that tequila to keep us unified to keep us together in that way so these are our four perspectives again which are a little off the beaten track a bit which hopefully can augment our understandings and our feelings at the moment of the kia shofar show for as reenactment of creation so far as symbolic death surrender of life to god so far as a pre-verbal prayer that emanates from the deepest recesses of your neshama that is not yet tainted by hypocrisy or egotism and chauffeur as a summons to unity and then having the courage to travel forth as we face the new year and that's based on borrowing the symbol of chauffeur from khashoggiros which i think is legitimate given the fact that the liturgy itself makes that connection let me add a fifth one the fifth idea is very interesting and that is chauffeur is a sign of freedom because the jubilee year which is every 50 years was inaugurated by a chauffeur by the way not blown on rosh hashanah yum kippur when there was a jubilee year and that signified that slaves are free so the shofar is the freeing of the slave what slave is being freed me because here's the thing tshuva presupposes free will you know people have all sorts of reasons people think their lives are predetermined i am what i am because of parents i am what i am because of environment i am what i am because of economic conditions i am what i am because of genetics i can't help it that's just the way i am the sound of the chauffeur says you're free you're not a slave you're free you are the master of your fate you are the captain of your ship as the poet i think the poem goes and even though god runs the world what does what do hazal say a kobe de shamayim everything is in the hands of heaven except the decision to serve god that's our decision that's not his decision and therefore perhaps a fifth understanding of the shofar is the chauffeur connotes the freedom now freedom is very scary because freedom creates responsibility if i could blame my external circumstances on the life that i have i would have no compulsion to try to make positive changes it is what it is but once you get the insight that it doesn't have to be what it is what you are today is not compelled by what you were yesterday and what you can be tomorrow is not limited by what you are today that itself is scary right it's like the people uh you know these like 80 year old guys who get released from prison and they have to it's scary a lot of them go back they want to go back you know they want to go back you know you you're taking a person who live you know 40 years 50 years in a very controlled environment and saying go out in the big out you know big wide world are you going to handle that even in black slavery i mean there were slaves who wanted to go back to their memory not not necessarily a majority but there were some that at least if their masters were relatively benign they wanted the slave life and of course the jewish people themselves in their wanderings in the desert kept on saying let's go back to egypt and that's not just delusional see it's not just delusion we typically say oh they're just complaining there is something to be said for the idea of having every decision in your life made by somebody else yeah you can gripe about it it could be awful but it takes something off your shoulders and that is the control over your life chauffeur says sorry no excuses you do control your life therefore you have that responsibility but let me point out that without god we wouldn't be able to succeed we need god meaning to say we decide what we want we decide the goal but it's only god that gives us the power to achieve that goal and i'll just end with a a story they tell the story about a king that constructed a tower of a thousand stories and said that anyone that could climb to the top of the tower in one day gets to marry my daughter usually in these stories the daughter is not consulted so most people even though they would like to be the son-in-law of the king but you know they weren't going to bother what's what's the use of trying to climb a tower of a thousand stories no matter what we do we're not going to get to the top but there was one fellow that said i'm going to do what i can so he climbs five stories 10 stories already a little bit out of breath 15 stories 20 stories it's getting harder and people are laughing at him they're mocking him they're they're making fun of him tony's doing really great you know uh only 980 stories left 30 40 50. so what he gets to the 50th landing he collapses he can't go any further and the 50th landing turns into an express elevator that takes him all the way to the top now i don't know this is based on a marshall from the jupiter market but obviously it's been adapted because they didn't have elevators so i don't know who did the adaptation it's not it's not my adaptation but it's uh but the zebra maggie gave it his similar muscle in a lower technical you and this is actually a beautiful metaphor for the idea of chuva on one hand the man by his own efforts could not have achieved the goal he could not have gone to the thousand story he needed the elevator but the elevator would not have been available until he did everything he could do if he would have stopped at the 40th level the 30th level nothing would have happened he goes as far as he can go and then god blesses his efforts beyond what he thought was possible that's what shiva is we cannot do this by ourselves we need god's blessing we need god to open us up we need god to give us the power and the energy but we first have to go as far as we can go and then the elevator will kind of take over the rest so on one hand chauffeur is the call of freedom but it's a freedom that very much depends again uh you know the alcoholics anonymous 12-step principles uh are very very excellent muscle reflection to read during these times the idea that a person on his own might be powerless until he turns his life over to that higher authority but what's very beautiful about the aaa is that that doesn't it's not fatalistic in other words it's coupled with a very strong sense of personal responsibility it doesn't just say oh i'm powerless you know god has to take care of this situation no we have to do whatever we can do and then akalish barco will take us where we wouldn't be able to go on our own one final story then i'll break and that is uh this is a story of rebellion of berdychev some say the valshamtov says machlokes but i think they're the main sources say revlodicious that one year he had a baltokai who was blowing shofar and the baltokai really wanted to get prepared so he studied all of the kabbalistic meanings of chauffeur one which are huge by the way huge huge pages and pages and pages i mean even to read one line would be hard a very very kabbalistic deep reflection and he spent a whole year learning them and mastering them but of course when you blow sharper how do you think about all of them so he wrote somehow he managed to get them down on a single sheet of paper then the single sheet of paper would jack his memory and he could think about those things wonderful but then rosh hashanah came and he lost a piece of paper he didn't have the piece of paper and you know the way it is sometimes once you commit something to paper you give your mind permission to kind of forget it until it gets jogged again and his mind was blank he didn't remember a thing so he's blowing the chauffeur and all he had was the regular cabanas of doing a mitzvah i mean and he was so he was so heartbroken he was so distraught he was so sad because all of the effort he put into the mitzvah was wasted destroyed the medichiver spoke to him after roshana and said what was your secret this year your chauffeur blowing was so powerful again the british river had a window into heaven the evil decrees were ripped and a null the broncos were open what was your secret what was so special about your show for mine so the person was totally confused he said special nothing was special it was the opposite of a special i wanted to do something special but i lost everything i forgot everything i did nothing special at all it was nothing the predictor told him ah now i understand the secret here in heaven again this is a physical metaphor there are many many chambers in god's palace there is the chamber of parnassa in the chamber of children and the chamber of health and the chamber of wealth and the chamber of marriage and kabbalistic intentions specific kabbalistic intentions are keys that can open up every chamber so certain kabbalistic meditations bring down the blessings of fertility and certain kabbalistic meditations bring shalom and so we study these meditations so we can target ourselves to the chambers that we need but the predictor says what if a person lost the keys he doesn't have the keys to any chambers there's one thing that can break down a door even without a key assuming it's a wooden door at least and that's an axe an axe is better than a key because the key can only open one door and an axe can break every door kabbalistic cabana are keys but the axe is the broken and sincere heart that turns to god you may have lost the keys but you brought to god your heart which was the ax and that ax broke down all the doors as indeed said into him then base and one should look at chapter 52 of the hillam chapter 52 of the hillam was the tehillim that david hameles himself wrote when he did shiva over his sin with bathsheba batsheva talent 52 is called the sheer shelter the song of repentance that's when david asks hashem to give him a pure heart life tahar bharali elohim and at the end of that tehran he says the ultimate sacrifice that god cherishes is the broken spirit lave nishbar venitka a sincere broken heart elo kim loses a god will never despise and that was the prodigious comfort for that person so again i want to wish everyone a wonderful sweet healthy year a year of both physical health spiritual growth closeness to hashem uh inner peace serenity and be israel hashem perhaps we can even be zoha to a goulash lima and a binyan basa miktash that should be bimhera viamenu foreign [Music]