Q&A: Questions About the Commandments of Rosh Hashanah
Questions About the Commandments of Rosh Hashanah
Question
Honorable Rabbi, hello, and a good year,
Two questions came up for me during the holiday, and I couldn’t find an answer to them:
1) Why don’t we say Hallel? The rule is: when something is frequent and something else is not frequent, the frequent one takes precedence. Is the reason of confusing Satan really so weighty for us?
2) Rabbi Abbahu of Caesarea instituted that they should also blow tekiah-shevarim-teruah-tekiah.
But we know that one must have a tekiah before and after the teruah, based on the halakhic midrash on the verse about sounding the shofar.
So it comes out that for the shevarim there is no tekiah after it, and for the teruah there is no tekiah before it.
I would understand if they treated it like Hillel the Elder’s sandwich on Passover, something like adding it without a blessing, just as a marker, but most opinions say that one must also sound the tesharat formula, otherwise one has not fulfilled the obligation. How can that be?
Answer
- You could say it is because this is a Day of Judgment, but I do not really see why one should say Hallel at all. I didn’t understand the rest of the questions.
- I didn’t understand the question. You yourself brought the source.
Discussion on Answer
A. I don’t know. Maybe Rosh Hashanah includes within it the fact that it is also the New Moon, so there is no need to mention that separately. By the way, it is not connected to the issue of “frequent and infrequent,” because it is not mentioned at all.
B. Shevarim-teruah is one sound for this purpose. Before every sound there must be a tekiah before it and after it. From this it follows that there is a tekiah before and after the teruah, before and after the shevarim, and before and after the shevarim-teruah. The question is whether that is sufficient or not. On the face of it, it is sufficient, but the Arizal claimed that all of it is required from the outset.
Sorry for the confusing writing; I’ll try to phrase it better:
1) There is no mention at all, not even in Musaf, of the New Moon offering. In the Torah itself it is of course written that the offering of the Day of Blasting is to be brought in addition to the Musaf of the New Moon. I would have expected that the New Moon, which is more frequent than Rosh Hashanah, would get priority in the prayer, the Torah reading, etc. But here that principle is not followed, and that is puzzling.
2) I brought the source, Rabbi Abbahu of Caesarea, who took the two methods of the teruah and combined them. In addition, there is a source that says there must be a tekiah before the teruah and a tekiah after the teruah. In Rabbi Abbahu’s case, there is a tekiah before the “shevarim,” but after them there is no tekiah. And there is no tekiah before the “teruah,” only after it. I would have thought that from his perspective, perhaps since both shevarim and teruah are valid, they can be combined so that a long teruah is formed, and then the tekiot before and after count for it. But if so, according to that approach, why is there any need at all for the separate sets of tashat and tarat? Let them just do several tesharat sets and that’s it.
And also, in counting the number of blasts, tesharat is counted as 4 sounds, so they are certainly separating the sounds here, and we still have the problem that there is no tekiah before and after some of the teruot.
Hope I made myself clear.