All creatures connected
Ha'azinu | Shabbat Shuva
May all your creatures be blended together in one united bond to do your will with a whole heart…. Our God and God of our ancestors…may every product know that you were its producer; let every creature know that you were its creator…."
—Rosh Hashana Amida
When we think of all the possible symbols of Rosh Hashana, the awesome anniversary of the world's creation, we ask why a primitive ram's horn is the focus of our celebration of creation.
If sounding the ram's horn is the essential mitzva of Rosh Hashana, why does its triplicate sounds of teki'a, tru'a, teki'a (straight, staccato, straight) derive from the Jubilee laws (Leviticus 25:9)? What does the Jubilee year have to do with the creation of the world?
We sound the shofar so many times and in so many permutations on Rosh Hashana that the sages of the Talmud ask: "Why do we blow straight sounds (teki'a) and broken, staccato sounds (tru'a, nine sobs, and also sh'varim, three sighs, as well as sighs and sobs together) both when the congregation is ‘seated' (after Torah reading) and when the congregation is standing (during the additional Amida)? In order to confound Satan!" (B.T. Rosh Hashana 16a, 16b). What does Satan have to do with all our shofar sounds?
We derive the necessity to sound 100 shofar blasts —and indeed the very definition of tru'a —from the mother of the Midianite general Sisera, who sobbed as she watched through her window the returning survivors of the vanquished army and did not see her son among them (B.T. Rosh Hashana 33b). Why link the shofar command to the sobs of our archenemy's mother?
We are prohibited from using as the shofar the horn of the "cow" because additional layers grow on that horn, making it appear like several horns (B.T. Rosh Hashana 26 a). What is the problem with a horn enhanced by additions?
Finally, why is the shofar blown by one individual while the rest of us listen? The mitzva could just as well have been for everyone to bring individual shofars to blow together.
I believe that the answer to all these questions may be found in a brief incident recorded in Talmud Gittin (52a): "There was a husband and wife in whose home also lived Satan; every Friday evening the couple would get involved in a loud and angry dispute. Rabbi Meir moved in with them, and after three Friday evenings —when he served as referee-peacemaker —he succeeded in bringing peace to the home. He then heard Satan crying, "Woe is me, Rabbi Meir has expelled me from this house."
We see from this story that Satan represents strife and disunity —the causeless hatred that brought about the destruction of our Holy Temple and is the root of all evil.
Rosh Hashana is the anniversary of the world's creation, a world whose creatures emerged from our One Divine Presence (Shechina), and which must be united if humanity is to endure.
There is no time of greater unity and peace than the Jubilee year, when all lands return to their original owners, when slaves are freed and debts rescinded. It is a year virtually devoid of social divisions.
It's not only unity of the Jewish people but a oneness between the Jewish people and the nations of the world that we must strive for on Rosh Hashana. The Talmud, in Rosh Hashana, quotes a verse in Shoftim as evidence that tru'a means a sobbing sound, yevava in Hebrew. "The mother of Sisera looked out at the window and sobbed through the lattice" (Judges 5:28). The Jerusalem Talmud says she cried 100 times, and that's why we blow the shofar a total of 100 times. Sisera may be the enemy of the Jewish people, but the pain a mother feels when her son is killed transcends Jewish-gentile divisions. Rosh Hashana reminds us of the evil of war, the unity of all peoples in their love for their children and their desire for life, and the necessity for peace in the world.
And even beyond the unity of all humans, is the unity of all creatures. The shofar, after all is said and done, is the horn of an animal, a ram. In the sound of the shofar we hear how the very desire for life is something irreducible; it combines and unites every creature of the world. And if Rav Aharon Karlier once taught that anyone who cannot say Shabbat Shalom to a dog (or a ram) doesn't understand the message of the Sabbath, that is certainly true of Rosh Hashana, the anniversary of the creation of the world. The universal symbol of the ram's horn must itself be united, without any appearance of separations or divisions. Yes, this is the day when we must blend together in unity with every creature to do God's will with a united heart in order to unify a fractured world.
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