Shabbos shofar that we are willing not to hear

Seven years ago, I stood at the bris, eight days after my son’s birth, and said his name out loud for the first time. We named him Akiva Yosef after his great-grandfather, who was himself named after Rabbi Akiva Yosef Schlesinger. Rabbi Schlesinger was a relative whose life and Torah have always fascinated me.

I remember feeling, even in that moment, that I was handing him something with weight attached, a name that carried a whole argument inside it. Rabbi Schlesinger, who lived in Yerushalayim in the nineteenth century, devoted significant effort to trying to reinstate the blowing of the shofar when Rosh Hashana falls on Shabbos. His efforts were controversial and ultimately did not change the accepted practice. But this year, as Rosh Hashana falls on Shabbos and my son answers to that name for his seventh year running, I find myself thinking about him and about the question that motivated him.

What exactly are we giving up when we put the shofar aside? 

The question becomes more significant in light of a striking Gemara in Rosh Hashana (16b). Rabbi Yitzchak teaches that any year in which the shofar is not sounded at its beginning will experience difficulty at its end, because the Satan was not confused. Tosafos, quoting the Baal Halachos Gedolos, clarifies that this cannot refer to a year when Rosh Hashana falls on Shabbos and halacha tells us not to blow. Rather, it refers to a year in which the shofar should have been blown but, because of some unforeseen circumstance, was not.

The distinction makes sense, but it leaves us with another question. The Gemara in Kiddushin (40a) teaches that when a person intends to perform a mitzvah and is prevented from doing so, Hashem considers it as though the mitzvah was performed. If the Jewish people wanted to blow shofar but simply could not, why should the year suffer as a result? 

The Meshech Chochmah, in Parshas Emor, offers a fascinating answer.

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Shofar is not only a mitzvah for which we receive credit. It also accomplishes something. He compares it to medicine. A sick person may desperately want to take their medicine, and may be entirely blameless if circumstances prevent them, but the medicine still never entered the body. Good intentions cannot produce the effect of a dose one never took. If we were prevented from blowing shofar through no fault of our own, we receive credit for our desire, but we still lack the spiritual effect the shofar itself produces. Its sound awakens Divine mercy, recalls the Akeidah, and silences the accusations against the Jewish people. Wanting to hear that sound is not the same as hearing it.

That explanation makes our situation this year even more difficult.

If the shofar is our medicine, what happens when Rosh Hashana falls on Shabbos and we deliberately do not take it?

The Gemara in Rosh Hashana (29b) teaches that blowing shofar on Shabbos is permitted on a Torah level, but Chazal prohibited it because someone might take the shofar to an expert to learn how to blow and carry it four amos in a reshus harabim. We enter Rosh Hashana knowing how desperately we need the shofar and put it aside anyway to protect the sanctity of Shabbos.

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I think about that trade differently now than when I first learned it. A parent who loves a child does not prove that love only through what they give. Sometimes the clearer proof is what they withhold, even something good, even something the child wants, because a larger relationship asks it of them.

Shabbos is not competing with the shofar. When we set it down for Shabbos, we are not choosing one mitzvah over another. We are letting the deeper relationship define what we are willing to give up.

We believe in the shofar’s power, and still, when Shabbos asks us to put it down, we do. On an ordinary Rosh Hashana, the blast of the shofar expresses our devotion. On a Shabbos Rosh Hashana, our willingness to leave it untouched expresses it differently.

We surrender something precious because sometimes our relationship with Hashem asks us to give up even the spiritual protection we desperately seek.

Perhaps this is why I keep returning this year to Rabbi Schlesinger, and to the boy who carries his name. He understood just how much we lose without the shofar’s sound, which is why he fought so hard to restore it. When I named my son at his bris, I was not naming him after a man who won his argument. I was naming him after a man who could not accept that loss without wrestling with it.

On the first day of Rosh Hashana, there will be a moment in shul when we reach the place where we are accustomed to hearing the shofar. There will be no tekiah, no shevarim, no teruah. My son will be sitting there, seven years old, carrying the name of a man who never stopped wanting to hear that sound.

But the silence is not empty. It represents a people willing to surrender one of the day’s most powerful mitzvos because Shabbos asks it of them.

Most years, we stand before Hashem with the sound of the shofar. This year, perhaps our greatest merit will be the shofar we are willing not to hear.

Rabbi Benny Berlin is spiritual leader of BACH in Long Beach. www.bachlongbeach.com.