Shofar (שופר) — The Ram's Horn

Core definition

The shofar — the ram's horn sounded on Rosh Hashanah — is the instrument of the day's central mystery: at its sound, the Holy One rises from the throne of judgment to the throne of mercy. The Midrash (Vayikra Rabbah, Emor 29) ties this specifically to the seventh month, "the month of the oath" sworn to Yackov — and the corpus unpacks both the shofar's power and the seventh month's secret [15911/maamar_001 :: Overview; 15962/maamar_001 :: Overview].

How the Rebbeim develop it

The Midrash teaches: when Israel take their shofars and blow before the Holy One, He rises from the throne of judgment and sits upon the throne of mercy — "Elokim ascended with teruah, Havayah with the shofar's voice" (Tehillim 47:6). Two things emerge: (1) the shofar's voice seats Him on the throne of mercy, and (2) He is filled with mercy — and both happen specifically in the seventh month [15962/maamar_001 :: Overview; 15962/maamar_001 :: phr. 31–64].

Why the seventh month? The Midrash calls it the month of the oath sworn to Yackov. The Pardes develops the oath (shevu'ah) in Malchus, Yesod, and Binah — Binah's influence and light, sometimes through Yesod, sometimes through Malchus itself [15962/maamar_001 :: Overview; 15962/maamar_001 :: kitzur, phr. 303]. The oath invokes "chai Havayah" — chai, Yesod — and the maamarim spend their bulk clarifying what "chai" (alive) means, through a long anatomy of the soul: general vs. particular vitality, enclothement vs. automatic vivification, and the discovery of a third level — the soul's essential point (nekudah), changeless and unrelated to the body, which alone is truly "chai b'etzem" (essentially alive) [15911/maamar_001 :: Overview]. The soul's essence is above chai altogether; the general vitality cannot be essentially alive because it weakens with the body in old age; the particular powers are hislabshus requiring tzimtzum and toil. The resolution: the neshamah's nekudas hachiyus — the essential point of vitality, unchanging from birth to death [15962/maamar_001 :: Overview].

From this anatomy the maamar derives two modes of avodah: the soul's work of refining the animal soul (weekday prayer — tumult, fire, toil) and the soul's own service of essential deveikut (Shabbat prayer, Shemoneh Esrei — the still small voice) [15911/maamar_001 :: Overview]. General vitality is not enclothement at all (sunlight in a room); particular faculties are (requiring tzimtzum, toil, vessel-preparation); and "chai b'etzem" is neither — it is the essential point of the soul, whose service needs no toil because nothing conceals [15911/maamar_001 :: Overview].

"Zichron teruah" (a remembrance of teruah) is the root of the shofar matter — which is from Yitzchak's ram [15962/maamar_001 :: phr. 109]. The Midrash's summary adds a second instrument of the seventh month alongside the shofar's blowing: the mentioning of the fathers' merit — "through the shofar's blowing He sits in the mercies' throne; further through mentioning the fathers' merit" — the seventh month itself availing nothing without these two [15962/maamar_001 :: kitzur, phr. 303]. And the shofar's reach extends to the eschaton: the great shofar — Adam Kadmon's revelation, reaching past Atzilus to the end of Asiyah — will arouse even the lost in Ashur, sunk in cold pleasure, who have no arousal from below [31633/maamar_011 :: Overview].

Key distinctions

Related concepts

Rosh Hashanah, the Throne of Mercy, the Seventh Month, the Oath to Yackov, Yitzchak's Ram, the Great Shofar, Teshuvah.

Sources