The Spiritual Power of the Shofar | The Special Power of Rosh Hashanah 5785 in Light of Chassidus

00:00 People ask: What are we carrying with us into the new year? The year we have been through was especially hard for every one of us, and we felt it firsthand. We still feel it firsthand. Those days were full of tension and anxiety. The Jewish people are going through difficult days. A long, hard war is taking lives. Much blood of our fellow Jews has been spilled, and we ask ourselves: What are we carrying into the new year? With what strength? What words of hope, what words of confidence? We are all looking forward, waiting and yearning for Hashem’s salvation. Each of us wishes himself and his friends: “May the year and its curses come to an end; may the new year and its blessings begin.” May the coming year truly be a good year, a blessed year. And indeed, we are all certain that, with Hashem’s help, it will be so—that even before this year ends, we will merit to hear the news of the Geulah. Before the year ends, we will merit to see the light of the true and complete Geulah. We do not want small miracles and wonders. As the Frierdiker Rebbe said in his time, we do not want salvations and consolations. We want one salvation, but a complete and genuine one, and with Hashem’s help, that is what will happen. But where do we draw the strength? Where do we find the encouragement to rise, to lift ourselves up, to enter the new year and Rosh Hashanah with uplifted spirits and complete trust in Hakadosh Boruch Hu that the coming year will surely be a blessed, joyful year, right from its beginning? We draw our strength from the words of the Torah. A Jew opens a book, looks inside, and draws strength from it, as the Midrash says on the verse “If you walk in My statutes.” The Midrash gives a parable of a noblewoman, a queen whose husband went overseas. He traveled away and left her alone, and she went through especially hard days, days when she felt lonely and faced difficulties, trials, and so on. But she had a document, a letter her husband had written and left for her, and every

02:55 time she felt distressed, she would open the document, open the letter, and read words of encouragement, comfort, and hope from it. That gave her strength. The Jewish people, says the Midrash, read verses of comfort in the Torah, verses of hope, verses of Geulah. They know it is just about to arrive. And precisely as we say on Rosh Hashanah, “From the narrow straits I called to Hashem; Hashem answered me with expansiveness.” From the narrow straits—precisely out of those straits—we cry out to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So we are certain that this is what will happen. There is a well-known saying of our Sages. The Gemara in Tractate Rosh Hashanah says: “A year that is poor at its beginning becomes rich at its end.” It says, “This is the beginning of the year.” In Parshas Eikev it is written: “A land upon which the eyes of Hashem your G-d are always set, from the beginning of the year until the end of the year.” The word for “beginning” is written without an alef. It should have been written with an alef, but it is written without one. So the Gemara explains that it suggests the word rash, meaning poor. A year that is poor at its beginning—“poor” spelled with a hei—when the Jewish people feel poor and needy and offer prayers and supplications before Hakadosh Boruch Hu, we are assured that it will become rich at its end, that it will be a year of abundance. So first of all, since we are at the end of the year, this is the right time to ask Hakadosh Boruch Hu that this request truly be fulfilled. We have already suffered a great deal this year from that poverty, that need. Now the time has come for us to merit to see, already in the final days of the year, how it “becomes rich at its end”: the abundance, the expansiveness, Hashem’s blessing, the great victory, and the great miracles we are all awaiting. So today, in our class, we will discuss ideas connected with Rosh Hashanah that will give us strength—teachings of the Baal Shem Tov and of Chassidus. Some of what I will speak about today are also things I had the privilege of hearing myself at holy farbrengens, on various occasions when I had the privilege of spending Rosh Hashanah with

05:19 the Rebbe. Words that will give us strength specifically in this period, in these days. And also, what are the things we need to do, according to the... according to what we have heard? According to what is explained in the books of Chassidus? What is it? What is the vessel, the power we have, through which we will truly merit that this Rosh Hashanah will indeed be the beginning of the year, and that it will come to pass, that this truly will be a year of Geulah, a year of the salvation we are all waiting for? Among the verses we say on Rosh Hashanah, among the most important, are the verses of Malchuyos, Zichronos, and Shofaros. These are a central part of the Rosh Hashanah prayers, as the Gemara says in Tractate Rosh Hashanah. In the Musaf prayer there are ten verses of Malchuyos, ten verses of Zichronos, and ten verses of Shofaros—verses full of hope and confidence, through which the Jewish people crown Hakadosh Boruch Hu as King. And as our Sages say in Tractate Rosh Hashanah: Hakadosh Boruch Hu said, “Recite Malchuyos before Me on Rosh Hashanah so that you will crown Me as King over you; Zichronos so that your remembrance will rise before Me for good. And through what? Through the shofar.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu pleads with and asks every single Jew. That is how the Rebbe understood this Gemara. “Hakadosh Boruch Hu said”—Hakadosh Boruch Hu speaks, asks, and pleads with every Jew, saying: “Recite before Me.” Say the words: through your prayers and the verses you recite, you do this. You crown Hakadosh Boruch Hu as King over the world, so that your remembrance will rise before Me for good. And through what? Through the shofar. Among all these verses is the final verse, the one saved for last: “And on that day...” Not actually the final one—sorry, it is one of the last verses. “And on that day a great shofar will be sounded, and those lost in the land of Assyria and those cast away in the land of Egypt will come.” A wonderful verse in Yeshayahu that speaks of the Geulah, of the shofar of the Geulah. We say it among the verses of Shofaros that we recite year after year. It is truly remarkable. On the face of it, this is not about

07:46 the shofar of Rosh Hashanah. It is about the shofar of Moshiach: “On that day a great shofar will be sounded.” And it is precisely this that we read and say on Rosh Hashanah. Not only that: we conclude the blessings, the blessing of Shofaros, with it. This is how we end our request and prayer: “Sound the great shofar for our freedom.” This is what a Jew asks for on Rosh Hashanah—that we merit to see this verse fulfilled with our own eyes. So let us look a little more closely at this verse. What does “On that day a great shofar will be sounded” mean? What is this great shofar that we will hear? There is an ordinary shofar, and there is a great shofar. It says, “will be sounded.” Very interesting. It does not say who will sound it. There is another verse we say in the Rosh Hashanah Musaf prayer: “And Hashem Elokim will sound the shofar and advance in the storms of Teiman; Hashem Tzevaos will protect them.” May Hashem indeed protect us. Wonderful verses that are also very relevant to our times. They speak of the shofar that Hakadosh Boruch Hu sounds amid the storms of Yemen, a country we have been hearing about over the past year, and the verse tells us that Hakadosh Boruch Hu watches over us and protects us. But there it does say who sounds it: “Hashem Elokim will sound the shofar.” Here it says “will be sounded,” as though, so to speak, the sounding happens of its own accord. A shofar will be sounded—and not just any shofar, but a great shofar. What is this great shofar? Then it says, “And those lost in the land of Assyria and those cast away in the land of Egypt will come.” What does the land of Assyria represent? What does the land of Egypt represent? Who are those lost in the land of Assyria? Who are those cast away in the land of Egypt? Why does it say “lost” about the land of Assyria, but “cast away” about the land of Egypt? What is the difference? And then the verse gives the great promise: “And they will bow before Hashem on the holy mountain in Jerusalem.” But what is this about? It was during World War II, in the midst of the fiercest fighting. The Frierdiker Rebbe wrote a maamar of Chassidus on this verse at the time—a wonderful, moving maamar, in the spirit of that period, which explained

10:11 This verse in a very, very special way. Years later, after the World War—sorry, after the Six-Day War, in 5727, or rather on Rosh Hashanah 5728, there was also a maamar of Chassidus, along with several maamarim during the holidays of Tishrei following the Six-Day War. The Rebbe returned to that maamar, spoke about it, and explained it in a wonderful and profound way, in the spirit of that time and the war that had taken place. The same thing happened years later, around the time of the Gulf War. There was also a maamar on this subject for Rosh Hashanah 5752, in 1991. Anyone who remembers, remembers. It was after the Gulf War, and there was an especially great awakening then too. The Rebbe also spoke about this subject in an extraordinarily wonderful and profound way. A great shofar: “A great shofar will be sounded.” The Frierdiker Rebbe says that the great shofar means a Jew’s great awakening. We know what the sounding of the shofar is about. If we look deeply at it, what happens when the shofar is sounded? There is the well-known parable of the Baal Shem Tov about the king’s son. The Baal Shem Tov explains the depth of the sounding of the shofar through the parable of a prince who grew up in the king’s home. The king gave him everything, both materially and spiritually. He grew up in the royal palace, and then the king sent him far away to reveal his abilities, to uncover the powers hidden within him. The king knows his son has wonderful abilities, but as long as he remains in the king’s home, he cannot uncover and develop them. So he sends him to a distant place—not only geographically distant, distant in a physical sense, but spiritually distant too, among lowly people. The prince is there, and he is meant to fulfill his mission: to uplift the place, to influence its people, and there

12:29 to develop his own strengths—so that he is not shaken and does not fall, but on the contrary, stands firm. And not only does he himself stand firm; more than that, he transforms the entire place. Sadly, sometimes the prince does not fulfill his mission. Not only does he fail to remember why he was sent; on the contrary, he forgets, mingles with the people, and follows their ways. Eventually, after a long time, the prince forgets the king, forgets the king’s home, forgets the royal language, forgets everything. He dresses in the dirty, degraded, lowly clothing of the people among whom he lives. Then a letter arrives from the king’s home, awakening a memory in the prince: I’m not just one of the people here. Who am I? I’m the king’s son. What am I doing here? A longing, a thirst, a yearning to return to the king’s home awakens within him. He decides to go, though he no longer even knows which way to go, and at last he arrives. After a long, grueling journey, he reaches the king’s home. But now they do not want to let him in; they do not recognize him. The guards stand at the entrance and will not let him enter. Who is he? They do not recognize his name. He no longer knows the language. He does not know what to do. And then comes the cry, says the Baal Shem Tov. The prince cries out from the depths of his heart, and that cry has no words, because he has lost the words. He has no words, but the cry from deep within his heart is heard all the way in the king’s chamber. The king, sitting in his chamber in the royal palace, hears the cry and says, “Wait, that’s my son’s voice—my only son!” And then he himself goes down to him, without an intermediary, without ministers, without servants or attendants. He himself goes down to his only son, takes him,

14:19 embraces him, brings him into his chamber, cleans him up, and so on. This is what happens every year on Rosh Hashanah, says the Baal Shem Tov. A Jew’s cry, the sounding of the shofar, the simple sound that comes through the shofar—that is the voice of the king’s son returning to his father, the king. This voice comes from the depths of a Jew’s soul, from the fact that I am a Jew. That is what “a simple sound” means. It does not come from the place of “I am a Jew and I do good things.” On the contrary, it comes from the innermost, purest, simplest place, from the depths of the heart: I am a Jew. And through the shofar, the Jew cries out to Hakadosh Boruch Hu: “Our Father in Heaven, Father, Father, have mercy on us. We are Your people and You are our Father; You are our King.” This awakens love in return, like water reflecting a face, and from there come the sound of the shofar and all the blessings for a blessed year. So that is the essence of the shofar: an awakening—or, in the language of Chassidus, the awakening of the essential point of Jewishness. The shofar awakens the innermost point of a Jew. That innermost point is what awakens above Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s love for the Jewish people, and from there come all the blessings: forgiveness, pardon, atonement, being written and sealed for good, a good and sweet year with every blessing, materially and spiritually. That is true every year. This is the spiritual work of sounding the shofar. It is the very essence of Rosh Hashanah, year after year. Then the verse comes and tells us what will happen before the coming of Moshiach. “And it shall be on that day” refers to the period before the coming of Moshiach. The preceding verses in Isaiah, chapter 27, say: “And it shall be on that day that Hashem will thresh from the flowing stream of the River to the Brook of Egypt.” There will be days of war; Hakadosh Boruch Hu will thresh, wage war, and wipe out all our enemies. “And you will be gathered one by one.” The entire Jewish people—there will be a time of the ingathering of the exiles, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu will gather each and every Jew with love and affection. So

16:49 the great shofar is a loving call, the Frierdiker Rebbe says in his wonderful maamar. The great shofar is the loving call with which our Father in Heaven reaches the innermost heart of every Jew. It will be the great sound that awakens the innermost soul of each and every Jew—like water reflecting a face. And that is why the verse does not say who sounds the shofar. We know that Hakadosh Boruch Hu has many names. Sometimes we speak of seven names; sometimes it says ten names; sometimes it even says seventy names. There are many names. The Midrash says that these names represent different levels and forms of Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s revelation: “I am called according to My deeds.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu is called by different names according to His actions, according to what He does. But when we speak of Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself, He is beyond any name, beyond any description. The very essence and being of Hakadosh Boruch Hu cannot be called by any name. As the Zohar says, Hakadosh Boruch Hu cannot be called by a name, a description, the tip of a letter, or a letter. There is no description, image, or name by which He can be called. And that is the meaning of the verse here. Specifically, no name is mentioned, because this revelation of the great shofar, this revelation that awakens a Jew’s soul before the coming of Moshiach, will come from the deepest, most wondrous place—from, so to speak, the very essence and being of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. “On that day it will be sounded”—sounded, as it were, by Him Himself. There is no name for it. You cannot say who sounds it, because it comes from the deepest, innermost place, from the very essence and being of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. A place where there are no distinctions, no levels, no sefiros. There is only one thing there: the Jew and Hakadosh Boruch Hu. As explained at length in the works of Chassidus, a Jew’s soul is rooted in the deepest place, beyond all description,

19:07 From every name. The soul of a Jew. The Midrash says: Before the creation of the world, with whom did Hakadosh Boruch Hu consult? With the souls of Israel. So to speak, before deciding to create the world—and “the world” means not only our physical world, but all the higher worlds, the higher sefiros, the angels, everything that exists, the entire chain of worlds in the language of Kabbalah—before all of that, He consulted the souls of the righteous. In other words, the souls of the righteous exist before creation, before the worlds, before the entire order of hishtalshelus and all the higher sefiros. There are only Israel and the King alone, as the Midrash puts it: Hakadosh Boruch Hu and the Jewish people alone. And there, at that level, He consulted the souls of Israel. That is where the Jew is with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and with him He decides on the creation of the world, on the flow of blessing, and on crowning the King anew. So when Rosh Hashanah arrives, we say that just as we blow the shofar, Hakadosh Boruch Hu also blows the shofar. There is an awakening from above, coming from the very highest place, to arouse a Jew’s own awakening to teshuvah: that the king’s son should want to return to his father the king, so that father and son can be close again. That is the avodah of Rosh Hashanah. As we said, before the coming of Moshiach, this will happen on the grandest scale. So the Frierdiker Rebbe says in the maamar: The wars we see these days, the wars we see in our generations, in these last generations—especially these wars, these things happening in the world—a Jew must know that, G-d forbid, they are not by chance. Rather, this is the great shofar. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is awakening the heart of every single Jew. That is really the purpose: to awaken Jewish souls. We see it tangibly, particularly over the past year, in the awakening across every part of the Jewish people, an awakening to teshuvah.

21:30 How many Jews have begun putting on tefillin; how many Jewish women have begun lighting Shabbos candles. How many Jews have awakened to Torah, teshuvah and prayer in a truly astonishing way. “It is a time of distress for Yaakov, and from it he will be saved.” The Baal Shem Tov says: “It is a time of distress for Yaakov, and from it”—from the distress itself—“salvation will grow.” Let’s go back to the verse. The verse tells us, “A great shofar will be blown,” and this is what it will bring about: “Those lost in the land of Assyria and those banished in the land of Egypt will come.” Who are the lost, and who are the banished? What are Assyria and Egypt? Listen closely; this is a wonderful explanation. Assyria—the exile of Assyria. Egypt—the exile of Egypt. What is the difference between the exile of Egypt and the exile of Assyria? In Egypt, the Jewish people performed backbreaking labor, a harsh, crushing exile of physical suffering. Assyria was the opposite. In the land of Assyria, as described in Tanach and the Midrashim, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, took the Jewish people—the Ten Tribes—into exile by persuading them. He told them, “I’ll give you a spacious land, a land as good as your own, a wonderful land.” In other words, spaciousness of all things. There are two kinds of exile. There is an exile of poverty, pain and suffering. And there is an exile of wealth and comfort, and that too is exile. Sometimes, on the contrary, it is an even harder exile. When a person is poor, life is hard, but he remembers Hashem. It is hard for him to serve Hashem; he is full of fear, pain and worry, but he is not completely lost. On the contrary, he remembers Hakadosh Boruch Hu, though things are difficult for him. In Assyria, we sometimes see that when there is too much material comfort and pleasure, when nothing is lacking, that very thing causes a person to forget Hakadosh Boruch Hu. He thinks, “My strength and the might of my hand made me all this wealth.” He thinks, “There is only me.” All the wealth is mine and belongs to me, and he becomes disconnected, so to speak, G-d forbid, from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So that is really

23:51 what the verse is saying: Mitzrayim, Egypt, is related to meitzar, a narrow place. That is an exile of poverty and pain. Assyria is related to pleasure; it is about spaciousness. He is happy there, comfortable; he has everything. Of the exile of Assyria, the verse says “lost”: amid all that comfort and pleasure, he is lost. He loses his connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. In the exile of Egypt, in poverty, people become “banished.” A person feels cast away, far off. It is hard for him to draw close to Hashem; he is full of pain, suffering and anxiety. And this is the good news the verse gives us: Do not be shaken. Know that everything happening in the world now is the great shofar of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Our Father in Heaven blows the shofar and awakens the innermost heart of every Jew. This applies to every single member of the Jewish people, whether a person is among those “lost in the land of Assyria,” in the exile of the test of wealth and comfort, or a Jew is in the exile of poverty, “the land of Egypt,” among those who are banished. “Those lost will come.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu gathers every single Jew. At the end of the exile, the Rambam says, in forceful words based on the Gemara in Sanhedrin, “The Torah has promised that, at the end of their exile, Israel will ultimately do teshuvah, and immediately they will be redeemed.” We learn this from a verse in the parsha that we always read before Rosh Hashanah: “Hashem your G-d will restore your captives and have compassion on you, and He will again gather you from all the peoples. Even if your banished ones are at the end of the heavens, from there Hashem your G-d will gather you, and from there He will take you.” The verse also says, “You will return to Hashem your G-d.” Before the coming of Moshiach, there will be an immense awakening to teshuvah, and that is what will bring about “Hashem your G-d will restore your captives.” Or, as Rashi brings these verses we mentioned earlier—Rashi brings this in the weekly parsha, Parshas Nitzavim—Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself will gather “you, one by one, all the House of Israel.” So to speak, Hakadosh Boruch Hu takes every Jew by the hand and brings him to the Geulah. These are the words of

26:15 Rashi, whom a five-year-old beginning to learn Torah studies, describing what the ingathering of the exiles will look like. We are all witnessing these days, when we are truly, truly close to those moments. “And they will bow before Hashem on the holy mountain in Jerusalem.” The whole purpose of the great shofar is to awaken Jews to teshuvah, to bring the Jewish people close to Hakadosh Boruch Hu and to bow on Hashem’s mountain in Jerusalem, with complete awe. That is the meaning of Jerusalem: utter self-nullification, absolute closeness, bowing on the holy mountain in Jerusalem. Or, as it says in the sefarim, Jerusalem also has the same numerical value as shofar. The shofar awakens complete awe in every Jew, so that he draws close to Hakadosh Boruch Hu and serves Him with true and complete awe. What is the means to achieve all this, as we said? We asked: What do we do to make all this happen in actual practice? Here I want to share, and conclude with, a teaching of the Baal Shem Tov. This teaching was passed down to us from Rebbe to Rebbe, down to the Alter Rebbe. He related that he had heard it in Mezritch from his Rebbe, the Maggid of Mezritch, who had heard it himself from the Baal Shem Tov. The Baal Shem Tov said: On the Shabbos before Rosh Hashanah, we do not bless the new month. After all, it is the Shabbos before Rosh Chodesh, Rosh Chodesh Tishrei. Before every Rosh Chodesh there is a Shabbos Mevarchim. Why, then, do we not bless the new month on the Shabbos before Rosh Hashanah? Of course, there are explanations in the works of halachah, such as to confuse the Satan, and so on. But the Baal Shem Tov says that the real reason we do not bless the month on the Shabbos before Rosh Hashanah is that Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself blesses it. The month of Tishrei is a month that Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself blesses. And what is His blessing? The Baal Shem Tov says: The blessing is the verses of the weekly parsha: “You stand today, all of you, before Hashem your G-d.” That, in fact, is the blessing.

28:29 What does “Nitzavim” mean? The Midrash Tanchuma offers a wonderful teaching, one that feels especially relevant to these days. It says that even when the world is collapsing, even when there is darkness, even when the whole world is confused and does not know where it is going, you stand firm. You endure. And Hakadosh Boruch Hu uses those very hardships to strengthen and fortify you. You stand firm, you endure, and you emerge victorious in judgment. The Jewish people are confident, as is also stated in halachah. The Tur begins the laws of Rosh Hashanah by saying that even before Rosh Hashanah, Jews are confident. They know that Hakadosh Boruch Hu will surely grant us a favorable judgment. So we return to the teaching of the Baal Shem Tov: this is Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s blessing—“You stand firm.” Nitzav does not mean merely standing; it means standing strong, with resolve and pride. We stand firm, confident that we will emerge victorious in judgment. Why? Because of “all of you”—because we are together, because the Jewish people unite. The Midrash Tanchuma also says that the secret to standing firm and prevailing in judgment is that “all of you are united as one,” that the entire Jewish people unite as one people, with one heart, like one person. The unity of the Jewish people, Ahavas Yisroel, is especially important in these days close to Rosh Hashanah, on Rosh Hashanah itself, when every Jew feels equal to every other Jew. This is also expressed through the shofar: a simple sound, without complications, without any of that. There is no need for an orchestra. It is a simple sound that comes from the depths of the heart, from the point at which all Jews are equal. We are all Jews, children of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel and Leah. The cry of the shofar is “all of you united as one.” That is the vessel for Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s blessing. And that, says the Baal Shem Tov, is the blessing for the seventh month. The Midrash says that “seventh” is also related to the word for being sated: the seventh month is the month that, through Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s blessing, fills all the days of the year. And through the power of that blessing,

30:56 a Jew has the power to bless all eleven months of the coming year. So, in closing, I want to bless each and every one of you. First, may we merit, before this year ends—as we said, it grows rich at its end—to see the miracles and wonders of the Geulah. May we prepare with a whole heart, a joyful heart, and complete confidence that the coming year will truly be a year of Moshiach’s revelation, a year in which we see the fulfillment of the prophecies, of these wonderful verses, and of all the prayers we say on Rosh Hashanah. But for our part, let us prepare ourselves in these very days by awakening true Ahavas Yisroel, by awakening love for every Jew and looking upon every Jew with a favorable eye. This, through Ahavas Yisroel, is the most wonderful thing we can do. As the Midrash says, a single stick can be broken, but if you take several reeds and put them together, they cannot be broken. That is what the Midrash says about the Jewish people: “all of you united as one.” When the Jewish people are united, nothing can break us, and then we will certainly win. We will certainly win the war. We will win the great war against this terrible exile. And with Hashem’s help, as we said, “May the year begin with its blessings.” May the coming year be for the good. May we merit this Rosh Hashanah that the year be a year of light, a year of blessing, a year of Geulah—with blessings from alef to beis and all the way through—a year of Torah, prayer, praise and teshuvah; a year filled with every good thing, a year of abundance. May Hakadosh Boruch Hu fill each and every one of us with an abundance of blessings, materially and spiritually, culminating in the great and true blessing: the blessing of the complete Geulah through Moshiach Tzidkeinu.