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Thought for the Day: So, Wait Are You Allowed to Blow a Shofar Erev Rosh HaShanah or Not?

I really love this Spanish expression:

Más sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo.

 The devil knows more because he is old than because he is the devil. (For your monolinguals.)

The Rema (Shulchan Aruch Orach Chayim 581:3) informs us that (at least for Ashkenazim) we do not blow shofar on erev Rosh HaShanah. As usual, that is all the Rema has to say. As usual, the Mishna Brura (sk 24) gives the reasoning behind the p'sak. We all know the reasons, but I'd like to unpack this Mishna Brura and get a glimpse of what the saintly R' Yisroel Meir Kagan really gave to us.

The Mishna Brura first tells us that we stop blowing the shofar on erev Rosh HaShanah because we want to make a break between the permitted (that is, blown because of long standing tradition) shofar blasts and the ones we are obligated by the Torah to blow. The Mishna Brura adds two points:

  1. we don't blow on erev Rosh HaShanah even when Rosh HaShanah starts on Shabbos -- so, in fact, we will have a break in any case before the obligatory blows.
  2. even so, to blow for practice is just fine; it is enough that we interrupted the shul blowing

What do we see from here? It is not just stahm hearing the shofar, but there is something about the regularity of blowing at a certain point in the morning service that is the preparation for Rosh HaShanah. Moreover, to properly prepare for Rosh HaShanah, one needs to break that regularity and stop a day early. The fact that we don't blow on Shabbos isn't a break in that regularity, because we never blow on Shabbos. The practicing during the day is not a contravening of the break because blowing during the day for practice was never part of the preparation for Rosh HaShanah. We learn than from the "even so" of both (1) -- the first day is Shabbos, even so we stop erev Rosh HaShanah; and (2) -- even so, we can practice blowing.

However, continues the Mishna Brura, the Minhagim (a sefer, apparently) writes that we interrupt in order to confuse the Satan. According to that reason, we shouldn't blow all day. Wait... that means that it is just the sound of the shofar that is preparing us for Rosh HaShanah? Then why stop? That's confusing...

Oh, right... that is confusing to that little guy with the pitchfork and pointy tail in the red cape on my left shoulder whispering a steady stream of fun things to do in my ear.

My rebbi, R' Dovid Siegel once explained to me that the "satan" is habit. We get into our habits all year. We don't want to just walk into Rosh HaShanah, so we start preparing a whole month ahead of time But the satan is pretty easy going -- that becomes the new normal and so we need to break that in order to really benefit from all the preparation we've done.

One day many years ago at about 4:00 PM, I was talking with my daughter by cell phone; she was in New York and walking home from classes at 5:00PM in the afternoon in the spring... broad daylight. All of the sudden she started screaming -- I was able to make out from her cries for help that she was being mugged! I was so frightened and worried and there was nothing I could do. Then something worse happened -- the phone went dead and there was only silence. Fright and worry turned to terror and dread. Baruch HaShem, he just grabbed her purse and ran off and the Shomrim were there in a flash. When she called back -- mercifully only a few minutes later -- she was shaky but ok.

Every year during the shofar blasts of Elul and especially on erev Rosh HaShanah when there is silence, I relive that moment; only an echo, Baruch HaShem, but enough to encourage me to be better this year.

[A little hashgacha before I end... I actually wrote about this topic 12 years ago to the day and nearly to the hour. TftD: Confusing the Satan. Huh.]

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