What you need to know about Rosh Hashana: The first & last Shofar blasts in History. - Jeremy Gimpel

You know, we are standing now um a day before I mean what's really a day? 24 hours really. We're just moments before the new year and before Rosha Sha. So, this is really an opportunity uh to prepare and in order to get the most out of the holiday. I want to try to dive into the spiritual roots of this holy day. And then from that place we can really celebrate the feast with joy knowing that we've aimed for the heart of it. And so Rosh Shana is one of the most unique holidays. It's not clear from the Torah exactly what we're celebrating. It's really peculiar in that way. Other holidays like Sukkot, we're told what to do. Sit in a suka. We're told that we're going to, you know, do these spiritual practices, these mitzvot. Passover is about freedom. We need matzah because we want to remember the way the Israelites left slavery from Egypt. Yom kipur. We're told to fast. It's a day of atonement. We're told all of this in the Torah. But Rosh Sha is mentioned twice in the Torah. But both times we're not given much information at all. It doesn't tell us that it's a new year. It doesn't really give a clear commandment like take a lulav and shake it, sit in a suka, you know, fast from eating food. It doesn't say that to us. It also doesn't tell us why this day is holy and what we're trying to achieve in celebrating the day. So let's really dive in. Leviticus chapter 23:es 23 and 24. And the Lord spoke to Moses saying speak to the children of Israel saying in the seventh of the month on the first day of the month you shall have a Sabbath a remembrance of truon tru a holy convocation. So first off we know it's a day of remembering. We're not necessarily commanded to remember, but it's remembering specifically the true ah, the sound of the chauffar. It's remembering the true ah. The next verse is in numbers 29:1. And in the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall have a holy convocation. You shall not work. It shall be a day of truh for you. A yum trua. All right. So that's it. That's all we got. So, both verses in the Torah say that it's a day of trua, a blasting of the chauffear. It doesn't tell us to take the chauffeur sound. It it it doesn't really command us to eat matzah on Passover or anything like that. It does say it's a day of true ah or a day of remembering the true. So, if the goal is to remember, that means there's something in our consciousness, in our collective consciousness, and we need to bring it to the forefront of our consciousness. We need to remember it. So then I want to know what are we remembering? Where is the first true uh the first chauffeur sound in the Torah? I want to go right to the very beginning and for the first time we hear the chauffeur blessed at Mount Si in the great revelation at the giving of the Torah. Exodus chapter 19 uh 16-19. And it came to pass on the third day in the morning that there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud upon the mount and the voice of the chauffar exceedingly strong so that the people who were in the camp trembled and the voice of the chauffar grew louder and louder. Moses spoke and God answered him with a voice. So Mount Si was this amazing spectacle, lights and sound and the sound and light show. The sound was the sound of the chauffar and it got louder and louder and people were trembling from the sound of the chauffar. So that's something that we would remember that's something that we should remember. So it's clear that remembering Mount Si, the revelation of our entire nation receiving the Torah, the people of Israel, it's like okay that's critical. It seems obvious that as the next holiday is Yom Kipur that Rosha Shana should always go back to Mount Si. I mean biblically there should be a holiday that recognizes and remembers the day at Sinai that ultimately culminated in the golden calf and gave us the need for Yom Kipur and to receive the second tablets. Yum Kipur was birthed but to really celebrate the original experience of Sinai. That's really maybe what Roshashan is calling us to remember a day of atonement when Moses came down with the second tablets. So before that we got Roshashana 10 days earlier to remember the actual giving of the ten commandments. So Rosh sha yumra brings us back to the original Sinai moment when we heard the chauffar blast and experienced the complete revelation for what it was. And in some ways that was the beginning. Remember the first chauffar. Remember when you received your mission. And now I want to know what's the last chauffeur sound. What is the last chauffeur blast? That's when Mashiach comes. The final chauffeur blast is the chauffar of Mashiach. The chauffar announcing the redemption has come. Isaiah 27 verse 13. And it shall come to pass in that day that a great chauffar will be blown, and they shall come who were lost in the land of Assyria, those who were outcasts in the land of Egypt, and they shall worship the Lord on the holy mountain in Jerusalem. So we have the first chauffar, the giving of the Torah, and then we have the last chauffar of redemption. And perhaps that's what yom tru means. It's the beginning of the year because right now we set our aim. How do we aim? We start at the beginning. We start when we received our national mission, the Torah, and we end with Messiah. We end with redemption. And now we have the complete path from the beginning until the end. The straight line between two points. Those two points in time, our history and our future destiny, they create the path in life. Sometimes we're walking on that path and sometimes we're not. Sometimes we align ourselves with God's will and we're less slowly but surely becoming the person Hashem created us to be. We have our mission. We have our goals in sight. And every day we make more progress down the path. That's on a personal level. But really we think Rosha Sha was on a national level. We need to think on an international level. Where is the world going? Yum churah was a national celebration, an international celebration. It's the celebration for the whole world. It's when we make God king. It's like a gathering in the temple. The world is invited and we're talking about something that has international implications and not just national implications. And so what are we talking about? We have the starting point Sinai where the world receives God's will. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love life. Be kind. Be compassionate. Live a Torah life. And then we have the finish line, the redemption. And that's, you know, so often we veer from the path. We lose sight of our mission. We lost sight of our destination. We wandered off the path. What is tshoua? Chuva, we all know now means to return. But it's not only returning to ourselves. It's not only returning to God. It's literally returning to the path that is set out from the beginning until the end. that path from giving getting our mission at the Torah to the final redemption is the path. And if we're veering from the path, Chuva is pushing ourselves right back, making sure that our year is aimed right. And so what happens then, returning to the path that Hashem laid out for us, that is chuva, what do we do? We're going to be anointing a king in Israel. And with that, you can see Kings 1, Kings 1 verse 34. there. Let Sadok the priest and Natan the prophet anoint him king over Israel and blow the chauffear and say long live King Solomon. And so what is this remembering this true ah we're meant to remember where we come from. We're meant to remember where we're going. We have a very clear path and on that path we're going to blast the chauffear to anoint the king of Israel that's going to usher in the redemption for Israel. And so the chauffar started when every Israelite took responsibility to live by the Torah. And now the world needs to take responsibility to live by the Torah, to live by God's will. The chauffear ends with redemption. The chauffear ends when we anoint the king of Israel. Rosha Shana is the practice of remembering where did we start from? What's the core here? Where are we going? And then make God king in our life by walking the path that he laid out from us from point A to point B. It's a straight line. And when we veer from that path, Chuva is just returning. And so really, I want to bless everyone with a good and sweet year. May we remember our mission. May we remember our destiny and may we hear the sound of the chauffar and remind us that we are in the era of Msiach right now. Soon that chauffar will sound and we're we'll enter into a new stage in world history. And so with that, my friends, [Music]