Laws of Blowing the Shofar - Rabbi Boruch Lavkivker shlita

00:02 Speaker 1 You are listening to the “Lema’an Yishme’u” podcast from Machon Halacha Chabad.

00:09 Speaker 2 We are approaching Rosh Hashanah, and we’re going to discuss its laws. In general, Rosh Hashanah is the Yom Tov on which we accept Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s kingship over us. We crown Him as King; we accept the yoke of Heaven. The central mitzvah of Rosh Hashanah is a positive commandment from the Torah: blowing the shofar. Although shofar blowing is, fundamentally, a decree of Scripture, like every mitzvah we have accepted upon ourselves, the Torah says, “In the seventh month, on the first of the month, it shall be a day of sounding the shofar for you,” and, “In the seventh month, on the first of the month, you shall have a day of rest, a remembrance through the sounding of the shofar.” The mitzvah itself is to blow the shofar. As for the meaning of shofar blowing, the Baal Shem Tov explains it with a parable, and there is also a parable from Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, the defender of the Jewish people. The Baal Shem Tov tells of a king’s son who was exiled from the royal palace for a long time. The king sent him to a remote place, where he became close to the people living there, who were not particularly desirable company. Eventually, he even forgot the language spoken in the king’s country and in the royal palace. One day, his father, the king, summons his son and tells him to return. The son reaches the royal palace but no longer knows how to speak to the guards and tell them, “I am the king’s son.” So he cries out, “Father, Father, save me!” When the king hears his son’s cry, it touches him so deeply that he hurries to bring his son back to him. Hakadosh Boruch Hu sent the souls of the Jewish people into this world. A soul descends into a body, and sometimes it forgets. The body conceals things so completely that we even forget the language. Rosh Hashanah comes, and we cry out to Hakadosh Boruch Hu: “Father!”

02:46 Speaker 2 As the Rebbe Maharash says, it is not so much the content of the cry that matters, but the very fact that a Jew cries out to Hakadosh Boruch Hu from the depths of his heart. Hakadosh Boruch Hu accepts that cry and brings us to Him, into His royal palace. That is one parable. The second parable, from Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, is about a king who became lost in a forest and could not find his way out. It was rainy and cold, and no one paid any attention to him. Eventually, he found a hut with a man inside. The man did not know he was the king, but he brought him into his home, warmed him, gave him clothes to wear, and looked after him so that he could return home. The king appointed the man who had saved and cared for him as a minister. One day, this minister did something wrong and was sentenced to death. Before the sentence was carried out, he made one final request: that he be dressed in the clothes he had worn then, and that the king wear the clothes he had worn when he came to the man’s hut in the forest. When the king put on those clothes, he remembered everything that man had done for him—how he had welcomed him without recognizing him or knowing his stature. His compassion was aroused, and he revoked the sentence. So too, when Hakadosh Boruch Hu came to give the Torah, none of the nations of the world paid attention to Him or wanted to accept it. The Jewish people were the only nation who accepted it and said, “We will do and we will listen.” When Rosh Hashanah comes, the Jewish people ask Hakadosh Boruch Hu: Put on the same garments

04:58 Speaker 2 You wore when we received the Torah. At the giving of the Torah there were thunder and lightning, and the sound of the shofar grew louder and louder. When we blow the shofar and envelop ourselves in its sound, Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s compassion is aroused for each and every one of us. Especially in the time we are living through, as we wait for the great shofar to be sounded for our freedom, we ask Hakadosh Boruch Hu to sound that great shofar. May we merit, even while we are learning the laws of shofar blowing, the revelation of the Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach, and the sounding of the great shofar for our freedom. We will mention this in the Rosh Hashanah prayers as well, but by then it will already be after the Geulah, and we will have merited—and will be meriting—the revelation of Melech HaMoshiach, immediately, right now. Regarding the mitzvah of shofar blowing, the word teruah appears twice in the Torah in connection with Rosh Hashanah. The third time teruah is mentioned in connection with the mitzvah of shofar blowing is not about Rosh Hashanah, but about sounding the shofar in the Jubilee year. We learn from the comparison between Rosh Hashanah and the Jubilee that, taken together, there are three teruahs. We are therefore commanded to sound three teruahs on Rosh Hashanah. But the Torah says, “You shall sound a teruah on the shofar,” and, “You shall sound the shofar throughout your land.” In other words, there is not only a teruah; there is also the sounding of the shofar. What does that mean? It means a tekiah, a single, unbroken sound, blown once before the teruah and once after it. So on Rosh Hashanah we would be expected to blow nine sounds: three teruahs, each with a tekiah before it and a tekiah after it. Yet we know that we blow many more sounds than that—not just nine, but ultimately a hundred. How did we arrive at that number? Why do we blow so many sounds? It is true that Jews

07:26 Speaker 2 are meticulous in their observance of mitzvos. And as our Sages say, we blow the shofar while sitting and blow it while standing, thereby silencing the accusations of the adversary, the Satan. But still, how do we arrive at that number? The Torah says teruah, and a teruah can be understood in several ways. In the language of our Sages, it might mean groaning: when a person is in pain, he begins to groan. That is one kind of teruah. Or it might mean wailing, as when a person cries and makes shorter sounds. A third possibility is that it means both groaning and wailing: the teruah begins with groans and continues with wails. Since there are these three possibilities, we blow all three ways we have just described, so as to fulfill the mitzvah properly and completely. This is the order: first we blow a tekiah, then the groans—which we call shevarim today—then the wails, which are the short sounds of the teruah, and then another tekiah. As we mentioned, we need to sound three teruahs, so we repeat this sequence—tekiah, shevarim, teruah, tekiah—three times. According to this explanation, the teruah consists of both shevarim and teruah. This sequence is known by the acronym tashrat, for tekiah, shevarim, teruah, tekiah. The teruah is represented by the letter resh, since using its first letter would give us the same letter as tekiah; that is why the sequence is called tashrat. Next, we blow the sequence in which teruah means groaning alone: tekiah, shevarim, tekiah, three times. Finally, the third sequence is tekiah, teruah, tekiah. That is the order of the shofar sounds. When we add them up, it turns out that we actually blow

10:29 Speaker 2 Thirty sounds in all, because in each set we have four sounds in tashrat, three in tashat, and three in tarat. That gives us ten sounds altogether. Multiply that by three, and we get thirty. These are the shofar blasts a Jew is obligated to hear in order to fulfill the mitzvah according to Torah law. These are indeed the thirty sounds we are obligated to hear to fulfill the mitzvah of sounding the shofar according to Torah law. The Sages, however, instituted that in addition to sounding the shofar to fulfill the Torah obligation, we should also sound it during Musaf. The Musaf prayer on Rosh Hashanah is distinctive. Throughout the year, Musaf has seven blessings: the first three blessings of Shemoneh Esrei and the last three, with a middle blessing for Shabbos or Yom Tov. In that blessing we mention the offering of that day, whether it is Shabbos, Rosh Chodesh, a festival, or Yom Kippur. On Rosh Hashanah, Musaf is different. Instead of seven blessings, we add two more, so that there are three middle blessings. As the Sages put it: “Recite verses of Kingship before Me so that you may crown Me as your King; verses of Remembrance so that your remembrance may rise before Me. And through what? Through the shofar.” So the third of these blessings concerns the shofar. In each blessing we speak about its theme, quoting verses from the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. In the blessing of Malchiyos, the verses speak of Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s kingship. In Zichronos, the blessing of Remembrance, the verses speak of how Hakadosh Boruch Hu remembers the deeds of mankind and remembers the Binding of Yitzchak.

13:10 Speaker 2 And so on. There are ten verses there as well: three from the Torah, three from the Writings, and three from the Prophets, followed by a tenth verse from the Torah. Then we have the blessing of Shofaros, which speaks about the revelation at Mount Sinai and the shofar sounded there: “You revealed Yourself in Your cloud of glory to Your holy people to speak with them… You gave us the Torah.” And that blessing concludes, of course, “Who hears the sound of the shofar blasts of His people Israel with mercy.” The Sages instituted that, in addition to the blasts we have already sounded consecutively to fulfill our Torah obligation—the thirty sounds—we also sound the shofar during the prayer. We sound a number of blasts after the blessings of Malchiyos, Zichronos, and Shofaros. What is the order, and how many sounds do we sound at each blessing? Here there are several customs. First of all, the shofar blasts during Musaf are sounded only with a congregation. An individual does not sound these shofar blasts during Musaf if, unfortunately, he is praying alone—someone who is unwell, for example, or a shliach somewhere without even a minyan on Rosh Hashanah. He prays on his own, and no shofar is sounded during his prayer, even if someone is available to sound it for him. In other words, even if someone can sound the shofar for an individual praying Musaf, sounding it during Musaf applies only to communal prayer. There are differing customs about this. Some sound tashrat for each blessing. Also, some sound the shofar only during the chazzan’s repetition, not during the silent prayer—I’m speaking about a congregation. That is, there is the congregation’s silent prayer and then the chazzan’s repetition. Some sound the shofar only during the chazzan’s repetition.

15:40 Speaker 2 Why? Because during the silent prayer, not everyone finishes the blessing together. One person finishes, another prays more slowly, and a third prays even more slowly. So not everyone finishes the blessing at the same time. That is why some communities sound the shofar only during the chazzan’s repetition. Others—and this is our custom as well—sound it both during the silent prayer and during the chazzan’s repetition. What they do is this: when the baal tokeia, or someone else such as the rabbi, finishes the blessing, they knock to signal to the congregation, since they cannot speak. They are in the middle of Shemoneh Esrei, so a knock lets everyone know that the shofar is about to be sounded. Each person pauses wherever he is. There is no need to rush to finish the blessing; he simply stops where he is. If he is afraid of losing his place, he puts his finger there and waits for the blasts. He listens to the shofar and then continues praying. How many sounds are sounded? Here, too, customs differ. Some sound tashrat for Malchiyos, tashat for Zichronos, and tarat for Shofaros. That means they do not sound all thirty sounds during the prayer, but fewer. Our custom, however, is what the Alter Rebbe calls the preferable custom: we sound tashrat, tashat, and tarat for each blessing. In other words, we sound ten sounds at each blessing. During the silent prayer, we sound tashrat, tashat, and tarat at Malchiyos, and the same at Zichronos and Shofaros. So thirty sounds are sounded during the silent prayer, another thirty during the chazzan’s repetition, and our custom is to complete the shofar blasts while the chazzan recites Kaddish Tiskabel. Before he reaches the words “Tiskabel tzelosehon uva’usehon,” before he asks that the prayers be accepted, we sound another ten blasts.

18:11 Speaker 2 That means we have sounded seventy blasts during Musaf altogether: thirty during the silent prayer, thirty during the chazzan’s repetition, and ten during Kaddish. Add the thirty sounded earlier to fulfill the obligation of hearing the shofar, and we have a total of one hundred sounds. Now we’ll discuss the blasts through which we fulfill the obligation, and afterward we’ll return briefly to the shofar blasts during Musaf. After we finish the Torah reading, we prepare to sound the shofar. The Alter Rebbe’s wording in the siddur is: “He should prepare himself to sound it.” What does that preparation involve? There is a preparation, and then the siddur says, “And he should say,” referring to certain verses we recite before sounding the shofar. The preparation is simply for each person to reflect on how he accepts Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s kingship upon himself: how he will make sure that, with Hashem’s help, this coming year will bring greater care in his service of Hashem and observance of mitzvos, greater hiddur, in his Torah study, in the education of his children, and in his dedication to the Rebbe’s concerns—to preparing himself and all of us for the Geulah. He prepares himself, and each person’s preparation is according to his own capacity, his own situation and level. Afterward, we recite verses, beginning with the psalm “For the conductor, of the sons of Korach, a psalm” seven times. Then come the verses of Kera Satan. The baal tokeia, or whoever leads the recitation, says a verse, and we repeat it after him. The psalm beginning “For the conductor” is recited straight through seven times, the entire psalm each time. With the verses that follow, usually the baal tokeia says each verse and everyone repeats it after him. Ah, of course.

20:48 Speaker 2 When the Rebbe says the verses, it is an entirely different kind of excitement. But of course, even when any Jew says them, he needs to reflect on them. Someone who was privileged to be with the Rebbe and hear the verses from the Rebbe certainly reflects on them before the shofar blowing. It brings him to a different kind of preparation, a different kind of contemplation, so that he can fulfill the mitzvah with the proper intention and with the proper, elevated devotion. Then come the blasts: as we mentioned earlier, we sound the thirty blasts. Of course, since this is a mitzvah, we recite a blessing, as we do for every mitzvah. We bless Hakadosh Boruch Hu, Who sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us. We have merited that Hakadosh Boruch Hu sanctified us and gave us a mitzvah through which we connect with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, with His very essence. The blessing before the shofar blowing is: “Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to hear the sound of the shofar.” The mitzvah is not to blow the shofar, nor is it to listen to the shofar itself, but to hear the sound that comes out of the shofar. That is why the blessing says “to hear the sound of the shofar.” Of course, we should take care to say the blessing as our Sages formulated it: “to hear the sound of the shofar.” If someone instead said “to blow the shofar,” he has fulfilled his obligation after the fact. After all, he intended to hear it and fulfill the mitzvah of shofar blowing. But of course we should say the blessing as it is formulated and written. We have recited a blessing over the mitzvah, but this is a mitzvah we do not perform during the year apart from Rosh Hashanah. So we recite an additional blessing: that we have merited that Hakadosh Boruch Hu has given us life, sustained us, and brought us to this time. First we recite the blessing over the mitzvah, and then the Shehecheyanu blessing. Of course, since the congregation fulfills its obligation through the blessings recited by the person blowing the shofar,

23:26 Speaker 2 they answer only “Amen” at the end of each blessing; they do not answer “Boruch Hu uvoruch shemo.” Then we take the shofar and place it on the right side of the mouth, with its narrow end at the mouth and its wide end pointing upward. The narrow end is at the mouth—“From the narrow straits I called to Hashem”—and we should try to keep the wide end pointing upward. We should not hold the shofar tilted, but in this way, with its mouth, its wide end, pointing upward. Of course, if someone held it a little differently or tilted it slightly, he has fulfilled his obligation, but it is preferable to do it this way. “G-d ascends amid the sounding of the shofar”—upward. That is how we try to hold and blow the shofar. After finishing the blessings, we sound the first sequence, as we said. The first sequence is tekiah-shevarim-teruah-tekiah, three times. Between one sequence and the next, it says, “Confess quietly.” This does not necessarily mean confessing aloud in a whisper, but doing so in one’s thoughts. What a chossid generally does during this quiet confession is picture the Rebbe—picture the Rebbe during the shofar blowing, and the Rebbe in general. That already brings about true confession and a real transformation in each and every one of us. After the quiet confession, we continue with the next sequence: tekiah-shevarim-tekiah three times, and tekiah-teruah-tekiah three times. When the blasts are finished, the person who blew the shofar says the three verses, and we repeat after him: “Fortunate is the people who know the shofar’s call,” and so on. These are three verses recited to a special melody. Afterward we proceed to the Musaf prayer. As we mentioned earlier, the shofar blasts during Musaf are a rabbinic enactment that follows the blasts we sound to fulfill the Torah obligation. Therefore, the blessing also

26:10 Speaker 2 applies to those blasts. So it is especially important to try not to speak from the time we hear the blessings over the shofar blowing until after the Musaf prayer and its shofar blasts are finished, since the blessing applies to those blasts as well. The blasts we sound immediately after the Torah reading, as we said, fulfill a positive mitzvah from the Torah. These blasts are called the “seated blasts.” Why did they get that name? Because the congregation is not required to stand for them. The person blowing the shofar should stand; if he did not, everyone has still fulfilled their obligation after the fact, but ideally he should stand. The congregation does not have to stand. In practice, though, since this is such an important mitzvah, performed once a year, we do stand, or try to stand. Those who are able to stand do so during the shofar blasts. As we mentioned earlier, we have a tekiah—and let us now discuss the first sequence, tekiah-shevarim-teruah-tekiah. In this sequence we sound a tekiah, shevarim, teruah, and another tekiah. We explained why we sound both shevarim and teruah: the teruah the Torah speaks of may be both a groan and a wail. How should this be done? Each blast has to be sounded in one breath. Each shofar sound has to be sounded in one breath. I cannot stop in the middle of a tekiah to take a breath and then continue it. The tekiah must begin with a breath: I breathe in before the tekiah, and when I finish the sound, I must take another breath. In other words, if I sound a tekiah and immediately continue into the next sound without taking a breath, I have not sounded it properly. I will give you an example; I will even demonstrate it. In that case,

29:01 Speaker 2 I did not pause to take a breath, so I have not fulfilled my obligation with that tekiah. What I need to do is sound the blast, pause, and then move on to the next sound. I will demonstrate. Here I sounded a tekiah and paused to take a breath. But now the question is: what happens with the shevarim and teruah? Since shevarim-teruah together make up the teruah, do I pause for breath between the shevarim and the teruah, or sound them in one breath? Some say that groaning and wailing are not normally done in one breath. A person groans a little, pauses briefly, and then begins to wail. It is hard for him to groan and wail without a break. On the other hand, some say that since this is the teruah written in the Torah, and each shofar sound in the Torah is a sound of its own, made in one breath, the shevarim and teruah together must also be sounded in one breath. In practice, for the seated blasts we sound them in one breath, with a slight pause—not a pause to breathe—between the shevarim and the teruah. So I sound a tekiah, take a breath, sound shevarim-teruah, take a breath, and then sound the next tekiah. Let us remember again: if we do not take a breath between the teruah and the tekiah that follows, we have not fulfilled our obligation. I have to go back and repeat it, because the teruah was not sounded properly: it is joined to the tekiah. There must be a separate tekiah, separate shevarim-teruah, and then a tekiah after them. The same applies to the next sequence: tekiah, then shevarim, then tekiah. We take a breath between the tekiah and the shevarim, and between the shevarim and the tekiah, and likewise in the sequence after that. I cannot sound one long tekiah and count it as two. For example, I finished a sequence, I sounded tekiah-shevarim-teruah-tekiah, and I make the tekiah after the shevarim-teruah very long, and I come

31:57 Speaker 2 to myself and say: I’ll make half of this the conclusion of the shevarim and teruah, and the other half of the tekiah a preparation for the shevarim and teruah that follow. You can’t do that. As we said earlier, you do have to pause for a breath. During the Musaf prayer. During Musaf, we blow the shevarim and teruah with a pause for breath. We mentioned earlier that there are two opinions. The primary opinion is that the shevarim and teruah are joined in one breath. But since there is another opinion, during the shofar blasts we blow in Musaf, we pause between the shevarim and teruah—that is, in the tashrat sequence. We pause briefly for a breath, not a long pause, and immediately afterward blow the teruah. Tekiah, shevarim, tekiah, a pause for breath, shevarim, a pause for breath, teruah, a pause for breath, and tekiah. So between the shevarim and teruah in Musaf, in the blasts blown while standing—because then we’re all standing for Shemoneh Esrei—we pause for a breath. When we finish Musaf, we say Tehillim after the prayer, and after Tehillim we again—blow another thirty blasts, as it says in the machzor, to confuse the Satan. With those thirty shofar blasts, all thirty of them, we also try to blow without a pause for breath, as with the blasts blown while sitting. Because some people in the shul rely on those blasts to fulfill their obligation, in these blasts after the recitation of Tehillim, the blasts after the prayer, we blow the shevarim and teruah in one breath. The length of the blasts. A tekiah must be as long as—at least as long as—the teruah. In other words, if we’re blowing the tashrat sequence, our teruah is shevarim

34:42 Speaker 2 teruah. Shevarim-teruah takes a little longer, so that tekiah is longer than one for shevarim alone. The tekiah before it and the tekiah that concludes it must therefore be long—at least the minimum length of the shevarim and teruah together. When we’re talking about shevarim, the tekiah can be shorter, because the sound of the shevarim isn’t that long. The shevarim aren’t that long, and neither is the teruah on its own, so the tekiah can be adjusted accordingly. How long? We know how long shevarim is. Shevarim consists of three broken sounds, and we also try to add—as the Rebbe does—a small, plain sound after the shevarim, like a short tekiah. So it comes out to three broken sounds and a little more. A teruah is a minimum of nine short sounds. Now, how long is a teruah? Some people make the teruah sounds very short. I’ll demonstrate. Those are very short teruah sounds. The Rebbe blows the teruah sounds more slowly, and it comes out roughly like this. And of course, as we mentioned earlier, a teruah has nine sounds. In our case, if I make them shorter, it’s obviously very easy to blow many more than nine. The Rebbe, too, with the short teruah sounds he blows—the slower teruah sounds—blows more than nine. I haven’t counted exactly, but it’s more than... much more than nine. And the tekiahs are relatively long as well. They aren’t short, precisely matched to the length of the teruah; the tekiahs are quite, quite long. The final tekiah, which is a tekiah gedolah, the Rebbe blows for a very, very, very long time. Of course, when blowing the shofar, you have to remember that it doesn’t necessarily take great effort. You have to understand that it’s a wind instrument, like any wind

37:37 Speaker 2 instrument. Someone who knows how to do it can blow quite a lot in succession, breathe into a wind instrument, and play for a long time. But it depends on the person’s ability—both how much breath he has and how much effort he puts in to make sure everything can indeed be heard. Each sound must be distinct, and sometimes a person makes a mistake. Let’s take an example. A person begins and blows a tekiah. Then he needs to blow shevarim. Let’s take that example. Instead of shevarim, he blows a teruah. Can he go back, blow shevarim, and then a tekiah? No. Why? Because what sound came before the shevarim? The teruah. What sound needs to come before the shevarim? A tekiah. We must have tekiah, shevarim, and tekiah. If I blew tekiah, shevarim—uh, teruah—and then shevarim, I don’t have a tekiah before the shevarim, so I need to blow the tekiah again. In other words, if I blew the wrong sound after the tekiah, I don’t go back just to the sound I was supposed to blow. I go back to the beginning of the line, so to speak. “Line” means that if I have tekiah, shevarim, tekiah, shevarim, tekiah, and I’m in that sequence, I go back to the beginning of the line: the first tekiah before the shevarim. Not the beginning of the entire sequence, but the beginning of the part where I made the mistake. We need to pay attention to this, especially when we go to help other Jews fulfill the mitzvah. Of course, we need to know these halachos when we go to help Jews perform the mitzvah. We need to do it correctly, in accordance with halachah, so that we can indeed fulfill the obligation on their behalf and they can fulfill their obligation. That’s about the shofar sounds. So, as we said,

40:02 Speaker 2 let’s go over it again. In the tashrat sequence, the shevarim and teruah are joined in one breath, with a very brief pause. We discussed the length of the sounds, and we need to know that if we made a mistake—if we blew a sound we weren’t supposed to blow—we must go back to the beginning of the line, meaning the tekiah before that sound. But if, for example, the sound simply didn’t come out right: I started, blew a tekiah, and then needed to blow a teruah. I started the teruah and got stuck. I couldn’t blow it. I don’t have to start again with the preceding tekiah; I can correct just the teruah. But if I blew, and instead of the teruah I started blowing shevarim, I’ll have to go back to the preceding tekiah. When we blow the shofar, sometimes a woman hasn’t heard the shofar and we come home wanting to fulfill her obligation on her behalf. She wants to hear the shofar blasts. Even though we don’t blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah unless it’s for a mitzvah, since it’s Yom Tov. We blow the shofar for the mitzvah, not just to play music or anything like that. If someone has already fulfilled his obligation, he may not simply pick up the shofar and start making sounds. We don’t do that on Yom Tov. Women are exempt from the mitzvah of hearing the shofar, as they are exempt from positive mitzvos—from most, not all, time-bound positive mitzvos. Women are exempt from hearing the shofar, but since they want to fulfill the mitzvah, of course we may blow for them. We cannot, however, say the blessing for them—unless someone present has not yet fulfilled his obligation. Someone who has already fulfilled his obligation to hear the shofar cannot say the blessing for a woman, because a woman is not obligated by Torah law to hear it. She is not, not obligated to hear the sound

42:10 Speaker 2 Shofar. But if a woman wants to, she may recite the blessing. That means someone may blow for her: she recites the blessing, and someone else blows the shofar for her. A woman may certainly recite the blessing if she wishes to bless over a mitzvah. She says the blessing “to hear the sound of the shofar,” just as we all do. When we go out to help Jews fulfill the mitzvah of hearing the shofar, if there are many people there and one of them is a man, he can recite the blessings on everyone’s behalf. We ask one of them to say the blessings and thereby fulfill the obligation for everyone. If no one there can say the blessings, but someone there is obligated to hear the shofar, then of course we may recite the blessings on his behalf. Still, we should try to have the person himself say them. It isn’t so complicated. There are only two blessings: the blessing “to hear the sound of the shofar” and the blessing of Shehecheyanu. As for Shehecheyanu on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, we try to ensure that the person reciting it—the baal tokeia—has something new over which he can say Shehecheyanu. That way, the blessing also covers that new item. In other words, the Shehecheyanu is for both the shofar and, for example, the new garment. There is a dispute about whether Shehecheyanu is recited on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, since Rosh Hashanah is considered one long day. The halachic ruling is that we do recite it on the second day. But because this is Rosh Hashanah and we want to satisfy all opinions, we try to have something new over which to say Shehecheyanu. At the time of the shofar blowing, there is a new scarf placed there among the shofars, and the Rebbe puts it on at the end of the shofar blowing. When the Rebbe returns to his place, he puts it around his neck, under his tallis, and wears the new garment.

44:41 Speaker 2 Of course, every baal tokeia can come up with his own idea for a new garment to have at the time of the shofar blowing. If there is no new garment, then, as we mentioned earlier, since the basic halachah is to recite Shehecheyanu on the second day as well, we recite it even without one. When we go out on mivtzoim to help Jews fulfill the mitzvah, how many shofar blasts do we need to blow? As we’ve said, to fulfill the mitzvah in its entirety, we need to blow thirty blasts. It isn’t easy, but it isn’t so bad. It is definitely worth making the effort to blow all thirty blasts so that a Jew can fulfill the mitzvah fully, and it usually doesn’t take very long. You can say to someone: “Today, thank G-d, is Rosh Hashanah. You’re receiving blessing and success for the entire year. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is giving us a good, sweet year. Let’s do this mitzvah.” Usually, even if people are in a bit of a hurry, they are willing to stand for those few minutes and hear all thirty shofar blasts, fulfilling their Torah obligation properly. If the person going out to help them runs out of breath, the question is whether one may recite the blessings when blowing only ten blasts: Tashrat, Tashat, Tarat. There is an opinion that each form of teruah is valid. As we explained earlier, we are uncertain what the teruah mentioned in the Torah is, but some of the early Geonim hold that every form is, in fact,

47:06 Speaker 2 a teruah. Shevarim is a teruah, teruah is a teruah, and shevarim-teruah is a teruah. But since some Jews blew it one way and others blew it another way, the Sages established that everyone should blow it in the same manner: three sets of Tashrat, three of Tashat, and three of Tarat. Some therefore want to say that when we go out to help Jews fulfill the mitzvah and it is exceptionally difficult to blow all thirty blasts, we can blow ten for them: Tashrat, Tashat, Tarat—three teruahs—so that they can at least fulfill their obligation that way. Whether to recite the blessings is a bit of a problem. Should one recite them if one is not blowing all thirty blasts? Each person should ask his rabbi and decide whether to recite the blessings in that situation. But again, we should make every effort to blow all thirty. It isn’t beyond us, and it isn’t so complicated. At most, we can bring along a helper. If it is hard to blow them all ourselves, we can bring someone else to help. But we must remember to blow the blasts properly: take a breath between one blast and the next, and don’t make the blasts too short. They needn’t be longer than required, but we mustn’t shorten them. If we want to fulfill the mitzvah, we need to do it as prescribed, not just say, in plain language, “The main thing is to blow.” Because sometimes a person blows without fulfilling the mitzvah. We are blowing in order to fulfill a mitzvah, so we should do it properly. Anyone who is going out on

49:05 Speaker 2 mivtzoim should prepare and remember, first, the halachos, and second, how to blow: the pauses for breath; that when he blows shevarim, they are shevarim, and when he blows a teruah, it is a teruah—not some mix of sounds where we can’t tell which is the shevarim and which is the teruah. They should truly be a teruah and shevarim, each blown correctly. Then, with Hashem’s help, we will fulfill the mitzvah ourselves and help other Jews fulfill it according to halachah. The baal tokeia should also make the appropriate preparations, whether he is blowing for the congregation in shul or blowing for people elsewhere to fulfill their obligation. There is an instruction from the Rebbe to study the Alter Rebbe’s maamar “Lehavin Inyan Tekias Shofar.” Of course, one can study other maamarim on the subject, including the Rebbe’s maamarim, but the main thing is to study the Alter Rebbe’s “Lehavin Inyan Tekias Shofar.” It is printed in Seder Tefillos Mikol Hashanah Im Dach and now appears in machzorim as well. Some machzorim have printed the maamar at the beginning, so, thank G-d, it is very accessible today. We should simply study it. It doesn’t have to be in the half hour immediately before the shofar blowing. One can study it on Rosh Hashanah morning or in the days beforehand. We should indeed study the maamarim—and not only those blowing for the congregation. Those going out to help Jews fulfill the mitzvah of shofar should also study that same

51:14 Speaker 2 Maamar, and with Hashem’s help, fulfilling this mitzvah will hasten and bring closer—even studying these laws, and then actually putting them into practice—“Sound the great shofar for our freedom.” May we truly merit the revelation of the Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach, immediately, right now. We need to remember that a shofar is an animal’s horn, and we generally try to use a ram’s horn so that Hakadosh Boruch Hu will remember the binding of Yitzchak on our behalf. The truth is, a shofar shouldn’t present major halachic problems. But during production, it often cracks, and because the manufacturers don’t want to lose money, so to speak, they glue it and sand it down. When someone buys the shofar, they can’t tell that it had a problem. That’s why it’s very important to buy a shofar with a reliable certification. We might pay for a shofar—even an expensive one—and it might not be a valid shofar at all. It may be a horn that can produce sounds, but because it’s invalid, we can’t fulfill our obligation on Rosh Hashanah by blowing it. So make sure to buy a proper shofar. Now, what’s the minimum size of a shofar? One tefach. That’s very small, just eight centimeters. But when buying a shofar, it’s also very important to check that it suits you. For someone blowing the shofar, it depends in part on the shape of their mouth, so each shofar needs to be a good fit. One person picks up a shofar and says, “Oh, this shofar is hard for me to blow. It’s very difficult.” Someone else picks it up and says, “What a wonderful shofar!” And that’s simply because it depends

53:18 Speaker 2 very much on the shape of our mouths, because we need to place the shofar against the mouth, as we demonstrated earlier, like this. So each person should check that it really suits them and make sure that the shofar is indeed a kosher shofar. As I mentioned earlier, when choosing a shofar, we should look at its shape: when we place it against the mouth, the upper part should point—the wider part should point upward. We should try to buy that kind of shofar so we can do this in the best possible way. And again, as we said earlier, we need to make sure that the shofar is indeed kosher.