Rosh Hashanah 5787 | The Secret of Rosh Hashanah Falling on Shabbos, in Light of Chassidus

00:00 What is special about Rosh Hashanah that falls on Shabbos? This year, we have a special Rosh Hashanah. The first day of the year falls on Shabbos, and we do not blow the shofar. The Mishnah in the fourth chapter of Rosh Hashanah says: “When the Yom Tov of Rosh Hashanah fell on Shabbos, they would blow the shofar in the Beis Hamikdash, but not elsewhere.” They blew the shofar in the Beis Hamikdash, but nowhere else in the world. Since the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash, when the first day falls on Shabbos, there is no shofar blowing until the second day. But it seems that we are missing something. We begin the year wanting to blow the shofar, to fulfill such a special mitzvah, and this year we cannot do it on the first day. Yet Chassidus looks at this in an exceptionally positive way. Rosh Hashanah falling on Shabbos means something very, very special. As the Rebbe wrote in many letters and discussed in many sichos and maamarim, in a year like this one, when the very first day of the year is Shabbos, the whole year is special: a year of Shabbos, a “Shabbos year,” as the Rebbe called it. In other words, beginning the year on Shabbos permeates every day of the year. All the days of this year are imbued with the holiness of Shabbos, the loftiness of Shabbos, and the delight of Shabbos. This means that this year is a year of delight, of special abundance, special delight, and special rest. We receive these from Shabbos, and the fact that the first day of Rosh Hashanah began on Shabbos affects every day of the year. So today we will discuss this in depth. What exactly is so special about Rosh Hashanah falling on Shabbos? How does it affect every day of the year? To understand this, today we’ll go into

02:06 it a little; we’ll delve deeper. What does Chassidus teach us about this? What does it mean that when Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbos, we do not blow the shofar? On the face of it, this seems like the opposite of something positive—a loss, something missing. A Jew waits all year for Rosh Hashanah, when we will crown Hakadosh Boruch Hu as King. And the coronation takes place through blowing the shofar. “Recite the verses of kingship before Me so that you will make Me King over you; the verses of remembrance so that your remembrance will come before Me for good. And how? Through the shofar.” By blowing the shofar, we bring Hakadosh Boruch Hu into the world and crown Him King, and we are remembered before Him for good, for a good and sweet year for the entire world. And suddenly there is no shofar. Surely something is missing. But as with everything, Chassidus reveals the inner meaning, the depth, the soul of the matter, and turns the whole subject around: there is something very, very special about a Shabbos like this, a year like this, and a Rosh Hashanah that falls on Shabbos. We all know the Mishnah. It says: “When the Yom Tov of Rosh Hashanah fell on Shabbos, they would blow the shofar in the Beis Hamikdash, but not elsewhere.” In other words, they blew the shofar in the Beis Hamikdash because rabbinic restrictions do not apply there. All the rabbinic prohibitions and decrees did not apply in the Beis Hamikdash, so they blew the shofar there even on Shabbos, but not elsewhere. The Gemara asks why. At first, the Gemara derives it from the verses. One verse says, “It shall be a day of sounding the shofar for you.” Another says, “It shall be a remembrance of the shofar’s sounding for you.” One refers to when Rosh Hashanah falls on a weekday, and the other to when it falls on Shabbos. When Rosh Hashanah falls on a weekday, it is a day of actual sounding: we blow the shofar. When Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbos, we do not blow it. It is a remembrance: we only mention it. We recall it by reciting the verses of Shofaros in the Musaf prayer, but we do not actually blow the shofar. The Gemara

04:19 asks why. The Gemara then says that the verse is really only a supporting allusion; it is not the actual source for the ruling. There is a rabbinic decree, a Shabbos restriction, based on the concern that someone might carry the shofar. Everyone is obligated to hear the shofar, but not everyone knows how to blow it. So the Sages said that a person might not know the laws of shofar, forget that carrying the shofar in the public domain is forbidden, and walk down the street with it, carrying it four amos in the public domain. The Sages therefore decreed that no one should blow the shofar when Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbos. That is the halachah and that is what the Gemara says. This raises a very simple question. The Alter Rebbe asks it in his maamar “Yom Tov Shel Rosh Hashanah Shechal BeShabbos,” from the year 5571. Rosh Hashanah fell on Shabbos that year, and the Alter Rebbe delivered a maamar in which he asked a simple question, one that comes up often in Chassidus. How could they set aside a positive mitzvah from the Torah—and not just any positive mitzvah, but the mitzvah of blowing the shofar, which Chassidus describes as an exalted and lofty mitzvah? It is such a lofty, all-encompassing, special mitzvah. Through blowing the shofar, as we said, we crown Hakadosh Boruch Hu King—King over the Jewish people and King over the world. The shofar is the source of blessing for all the blessings of being inscribed and sealed for a good and sweet year. Blowing the shofar also alludes to the power of teshuvah. As the Rambam says, although blowing the shofar is a decree of Scripture, it also contains an allusion: “Awaken, sleepers, from your sleep,” and so on. The whole idea of teshuvah is alluded to in the shofar. So if blowing the shofar is something so great, so lofty, so all-encompassing, how

06:21 could it be set aside merely because of a decree? After all, the concern applies only to people who are careless, who simply forget or do not know. Rosh Hashanah arrives, and someone does not know how to handle the shofar; he forgets that it is Shabbos, and so on. That is the basic question the Alter Rebbe asked. On the other hand, another question arises: if we do not blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, why do we recite the verses of Shofaros? When Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbos, why not omit those verses too? All the verses of Shofaros in the Musaf prayer should have been omitted. After all, we are not permitted to blow the shofar. So why do we recite the verses? Here we come to a wonderful explanation. To understand what is special about not blowing the shofar when Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbos, we need to understand what actually happens when we blow the shofar. As we said, the Gemara in Rosh Hashanah states: “Recite the verses of kingship before Me on Rosh Hashanah so that you will make Me King over you.” By blowing the shofar, a Jew crowns Hakadosh Boruch Hu as King. Rosh Hashanah is, essentially, the day of the King’s coronation. In Kabbalah, it is specifically called the day of building malchus, kingship. So to speak, we bring about Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s becoming King anew. In the language of Kabbalah, the kingship withdraws on the night of Rosh Hashanah, or on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. This means that Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s kingship withdraws from the world. So to speak, Hakadosh Boruch Hu says, “I no longer want to be King. I no longer want to bestow anything. I no longer want this role of King of the world.” He expects and waits for a Jew to stir himself, to ask and pray, to plead, “Reign over the entire world in Your glory,” and thereby renew the kingship. This raises a simple question: if Hakadosh Boruch Hu ceases to be King for even a moment, then surely the world should be

08:34 Nothingness. How does the world exist on the night of Rosh Hashanah, before the shofar is sounded? After all, we all know that the entire existence of creation—every bit of it, from beginning to end, all the worlds, all created beings, and everything in the world—exists only because Hakadosh Boruch Hu is King. “Your kingship is a kingship over all worlds, and Your dominion is throughout every generation.” Hashem’s kingship is the secret of creation’s existence. In particular, as explained in Tanya and in Chassidus, the sefirah of malchus is called the word of Hashem: “By the word of Hashem the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their hosts”; “For the word of a king is sovereign.” With a human king, things happen when he speaks and issues commands; that is how he governs the country. How much more so with Hakadosh Boruch Hu: His speech is what brings creation into existence. More than that: as explained in Chassidus, a human king only governs the country through speech—directing it, providing for it, giving to it. But with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, it is not only a matter of governing the world. The world’s very existence, the existence of all creation, is Hashem’s speech. “Forever, Hashem, Your word stands firm in the heavens,” says the Baal Shem Tov. Divine speech sustains creation at every single moment. So if, on the night of Rosh Hashanah, Hakadosh Boruch Hu says, so to speak, “I am no longer King,” and withdraws, conceals, and removes His kingship from creation, what happens to creation during those hours until we sound the shofar? How does it continue to exist? The Alter Rebbe explains this to us. There is the speech, there is the kingship, but there is also the will and delight in kingship. These are two different things. A person can be speaking, doing things, and being active, but sometimes a person

10:42 does things without finding any delight in them, without any vitality in them. He is tired, half-asleep, unenthusiastic. He does them because he is forced to, because he has to. But we can see that there is a very big difference between doing something when you are alert and alive, fully engaged, with feeling and delight, and doing it without desire or enthusiasm. And this is the special point about crowning the King on Rosh Hashanah. Certainly Hakadosh Boruch Hu continues to reign over the world, to provide for it and give to it. But what is renewed on Rosh Hashanah? We bring about that Hakadosh Boruch Hu should be King with delight, with desire. When we say that kingship withdraws on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, it is the delight and desire within kingship that withdraw. So to speak, Hakadosh Boruch Hu says: “I continue to govern creation. I continue to sustain it and give it life. But the desire and delight withdraw.” In other words, on Rosh Hashanah, through our prayers, our requests, and the sounding of the shofar, we, the Jewish people, awaken anew within Hakadosh Boruch Hu, so to speak, the desire—and not just desire, but a desire filled with delight: delight in creating the world, delight in being King over the world. A Jew brings this about through his service of Hashem on Rosh Hashanah. That is why Chassidus explains that the central point of our avodah on Rosh Hashanah is to accept upon ourselves the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven with desire and delight. Or, as we say in the prayers, “They willingly accepted His kingship upon themselves.” We must accept His kingship willingly, with delight and with joy. The Frierdiker Rebbe says in one of the maamarim: “The crowning of the King is accompanied by great awe and profound self-nullification, but at the same time by the greatest joy.” For it is precisely this way that we awaken within

13:04 the King a genuine desire to be King—a King who reigns with desire and delight. When, on Rosh Hashanah, we renew Hashem’s kingship—“Sound the shofar at the new moon”—and His kingship is renewed with a new desire and a new delight, then surely what He bestows is of an entirely different kind as well. As we said, when a person does something without vitality, enthusiasm, or delight, he does it only outwardly. He does no more than necessary; his effort is limited and restricted. He does what he has to do. But when a person does something and takes delight and joy in it, when he is eager to do it, then of course he does it with much more energy and much greater care. He attends to every detail in the finest way. So to speak, the same applies to what Hashem bestows. When we awaken His kingship so that it is accompanied by desire, joy, and delight, then all the blessings and bounty that Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives us for this year will make it a year of abundance, a year of light, and a year of delight. Now, what happens on Shabbos? We are talking about delight, and Shabbos is the day on which delight is central. In the words of the prophet, “And you shall call Shabbos a delight.” We all know that one of the fundamental mitzvos of Shabbos is oneg Shabbos, the mitzvah to delight in Shabbos. So delight is at the heart of Shabbos. This is not only our own delight—the obligation we have on Shabbos to enjoy fine meat, aged wine, and all the things described in the Shulchan Aruch about how a Jew should delight in Shabbos in a physical sense. It also refers to the spiritual delight of Shabbos. And above all, as explained in Chassidus, the delight of Shabbos is the delight of Hakadosh Boruch Hu.

15:25 Hakadosh Boruch Hu, so to speak, takes delight on Shabbos, as we say in the prayers: “He called the seventh day a delight.” The seventh day is the day on which Hakadosh Boruch Hu, so to speak, delights in creation. What does it mean that Hakadosh Boruch Hu delights in creation? Let’s look in Chumash, at the six days of creation. On the sixth day it says, “And G-d saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” Then it says, “And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. And the heavens and the earth were completed.” In other words, before the passage with which we begin Kiddush—“the sixth day. And the heavens and the earth were completed”—the Torah says, “And G-d saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” We see something similar with a person who builds or creates something, who undertakes some kind of work. Until he finishes, he is busy, working and exerting himself. You cannot really say that he is feeling delight. He is simply occupied, toiling and working hard. But when he reaches the final stage and sees that everything he has done is very good, he looks at this wonderful thing he has made and brought about. He sees that his work has succeeded. What he made has turned out perfectly, in the most wonderful way, fitting the purpose he had dreamed of and wanted to achieve with his creation. Then he is filled with delight—the wonderful delight of having completed his work and succeeded in doing what he set out to do. When a person comes home after a day’s work and sits down in his armchair, he thinks, “I worked today; I accomplished things.” He looks back over what he did during the day and is filled with delight. That is essentially the spiritual meaning of Shabbos. Hakadosh Boruch Hu, so to speak, “For six days Hashem made the”

17:40 the heavens and the earth. The six days of creation. Every week has six weekdays, days of doing and activity. So to speak, above as well, with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, there is the creation of the world each and every day, each and every moment. That is the work a Jew does: bringing Divine influence into the world. We have to work within the world and make it a dwelling place for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. When Shabbos arrives, “for on it He rested,” Hakadosh Boruch Hu, so to speak, rises and is elevated. The Divine powers are elevated, and all of creation rises to a higher level. Then the Divine delight within creation is revealed. “The heavens and the earth and all their hosts were completed.” The word vayechulu, “were completed,” suggests being consumed with longing, the soul’s yearning, and consummate beauty. The perfection of creation arouses, so to speak, longing and delight in Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And that is what it brings about in a Jew as well: on Rosh Hashanah we rise to a higher level, and the delight of Shabbos is awakened within a Jew too. That delight is in the Shabbos prayers, in learning Torah on Shabbos, in the Shabbos meal, and in Shabbos rest. It is holy rest, rest filled with delight. Based on this, the Alter Rebbe says, we can understand why, when Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbos, we do not blow the shofar. Why not? After all, what did we say? The whole purpose of blowing the shofar is that, by blowing it on Rosh Hashanah, a Jew awakens, so to speak, the delight and desire within Hakadosh Boruch Hu to renew His kingship for the coming year. But since Shabbos is a day of delight, Shabbos itself accomplishes what blowing the shofar accomplishes. If so, the shofar is not as necessary when Shabbos has the same effect. When Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbos, as Shabbos begins and a Jew enters into it and observes

20:02 Shabbos, and says the Shabbos prayers together with the Rosh Hashanah prayers, then the coronation takes place through Shabbos itself, through the delight of Shabbos. This already brings about delight in Hakadosh Boruch Hu in the coronation for the new year as well. So there is no longer the same need for the mitzvah of blowing the shofar, and it is postponed. That is the inner, spiritual reason why we postpone blowing the shofar when Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbos: Shabbos accomplishes the very thing the shofar is meant to accomplish. And if someone asks: Why, then, was the shofar blown in the Beis Hamikdash? The answer is that, as we understand from our own experience, there are many levels of delight. Delight is not just one level. There is delight within delight, delight above delight, and the source of all delights. So of course there are many levels of delight. In the Beis Hamikdash, blowing the shofar had the power to awaken a level of higher delight in Hakadosh Boruch Hu, at a level even higher than Shabbos. That is why they could blow the shofar there even on Shabbos. But today, when we do not have the Beis Hamikdash, Shabbos is enough to awaken the delight needed to renew the kingship. This also explains why we do recite the verses about the shofar even when we do not have the Beis Hamikdash. Our Sages say that since the Beis Hamikdash was destroyed, Hakadosh Boruch Hu has nothing in His world except the four cubits of halachah. In other words, learning Torah brings about the same Divine presence as the Beis Hamikdash did. When the Beis Hamikdash stood, the Shechinah rested there. Today, when we do not have the physical Beis Hamikdash, learning Torah brings that same indwelling of the Shechinah. In that sense, Torah is, so to speak, in the place of the Beis Hamikdash. That is why

22:12 we recite the Torah verses even when Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbos. So this is the wonderful explanation Chassidus gives us for the deeper meaning of Rosh Hashanah falling on Shabbos. And it tells us something wonderful. It tells us that this year, although we do not blow the shofar on the first day, we do have Shabbos. The delight of Shabbos brings about Divine delight in the coronation of the King, in the renewal of His kingship for the entire year. And as we said, this affects all the days of the year. After all, Rosh Hashanah is called the “head” of the year. The Mitteler Rebbe explains: Why is it called the head of the year, rather than the beginning? It should be called the beginning of the year. What does “head of the year” mean? Just as a person’s head influences all the limbs of the body, and all the limbs receive their vitality and influence from the head, so Rosh Hashanah influences every day of the year. It is the mind, the head, of the entire year. So if the first day of Rosh Hashanah begins with Shabbos—a day of delight, a day of holiness, a day of upliftment—that means this entire year will be a year of delight. It will be a year of joy, a year of upliftment, a year of holiness. And as we say when we come to Rosh Hashanah, we have to bring the coronation of the King into every detail of creation. We ask in the Rosh Hashanah prayers: “Reign over the whole world in Your glory, and let every created thing know that You created it; let every formed being understand that You formed it; and let all who have breath in their nostrils say: Hashem, the G-d of Israel, is King, and His kingship rules over all.” We have to bring the kingship of Hakadosh Boruch Hu into every detail of creation, so that every detail is permeated with Divine holiness,

24:08 with Divine light, with the kingship of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That also means we are meant to bring the Shabbos holiness of Rosh Hashanah into every detail of the days of the year. I should feel this year’s Shabbos holiness not only when I sit and learn Torah, and not only during prayer, but also when I am occupied with the ordinary things of daily life: while eating, while working and earning a living, in everyday life, in everything a person does. “All your deeds should be for the sake of Heaven”; “Know Him in all your ways.” May the Shabbos holiness of this year come down into everyday life, so that every day of this year, 5787, will be permeated with light, holiness, G-dliness, spirituality, and the holy delight of Shabbos. A year of delight and a year of special prosperity. That is the wonderful thing for which we are preparing this year. We pray and ask that, since this year begins on Shabbos, we should indeed merit, right at the beginning of the year, the great Shabbos for which we are all waiting: “Shabbos and rest for life everlasting.” The Shabbos of the future, of the days of Moshiach, when there will truly be Shabbos and rest for life everlasting, with the coming of Moshiach Tzidkeinu. May each and every person have a good and blessed year, with every blessing from alef to tav: a year of light, a year of blessing, a year of Geulah, all the way through to a year of Torah, prayer, and praise. A year entirely filled with light and Geulah. Shabbos—a year that is entirely Shabbos.