Shofar in the Pit: Blessed is the People who Knows

The Mishnah, in the third chapter of Masechet Rosh Hashanah, presents the following scenario:

It’s Rosh Hashanah, and, shofar in hand, you’re out for a walk. You come across some fellow Jews who are in a bor, a chavit, or a dut—a pit, a cistern, or a barrel. You want to help them fulfill the mitzvah of shofar on Rosh Hashanah, so you blow the shofar into the pit.

And now the Mishnah’s question: Were they yotzei the mitzvah of shmiyat kol shofar? Did they fulfill the mitzvah of hearing the voice of the shofar?

At first glance, it may be a little hard to relate to this Mishnah, but it opens up some interesting questions about the nature of the mitzvah of hearing the shofar’s sound:

• How much of the sound do I need to hear?
• What if I heard the sound of someone blowing the shofar while I’m in the pit, but I didn’t intend to hear it?
• What if I only heard the echo of the shofar in the pit, but not the shofar itself?

Later commentaries explore these questions and provide deeper insights into our understanding of the Mishnah. The Geonic commentaries suggest our Mishnah references a time of shmad, a time of persecution—when the shofar had to be blown in hidden locations.

Interestingly, commentaries also change the context. When discussing the Mishnah’s scenario, the Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chayim, 587) states:

הָעוֹמֵד בְּתוֹךְ חָבִית גְּדוֹלָה, אוֹ בְּבוֹר, אוֹ בְּדוּת

“One standing inside a large barrel, or in a pit, or in a cistern…”

Not blowing from the outside, but standing inside the pit.

Why the change in language? Maybe it’s because they couldn’t imagine a scenario where you would come across acheinu kol beit Yisrael, your Jewish brothers and sisters stuck in a pit, and say, “Oh, here, let me blow shofar for you!” and then walk on your way. Chas veShalom! The first thing you would do is get them out of the pit!

But perhaps they could imagine being betoch, inside a pit, together.

This is an image I can relate to also—being in a pit together resonates after the last year.

It’s been quite a year.

I’m not a superstitious person, but as I was preparing this drasha, I kept thinking about the Gemara from Masechet Rosh Hashanah we learned together last year:

“כל שנה שאין תוקעין לה בתחילתה, מריעין לה בסופה.”

“Any year when the shofar is not blown at the beginning will end in bitterness.”

That bad omen applied to last year, 5784, which began on Shabbat, and as halacha dictated, the shofar was silent on the first day. Indeed, this year there was much bitterness, ending with rocket attacks on all of Israel.

I’m still not superstitious, but I do believe in the power of symbols. And the symbol of the half shofar—the shofar and its absence, the symbol of the shofar in the pit, the symbols in the shofar itself—echo as we reflect back on 5784.

Today, as we move from the sound of sirens to the sounds of the shofar, each of the shofar’s sounds connects so deeply to what we’ve experienced this year:

The Tekiah: the alarm clock, the wake-up call, as the Rambam writes:

“Awake, O sleeper, from your sleep; O slumberer, arouse yourselves from your slumbers.”

This year was a rude awakening.

The great Jewish Chicagoan, Saul Bellow, wrote in Humboldt’s Gift about Humboldt—a mid-century American poet who was the son of a Jewish Hungarian immigrant father—who believed that “history was a nightmare during which he was trying to get a good night’s rest.”

We were awakened from the good night’s rest.

October 7th woke us to the threat and the evil of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.

And we were shocked awake again on October 8th, less than 24 hours after the worst pogrom on our people since the Shoah, with solidarity marches, protests, social media supporting Hamas! We woke up to the prevalence of antisemitism.

Following the Tekiah, the awakening, we have Shevarim, the sound of brokenness, and Teruah, the sound of tears.

After those awakenings came great loss. In Israel, we lost loved ones on October 7th and in the fighting that followed, many with connections to our community. We dealt with the brokenness—family members and friends’ lives upended as husbands went to milum, children slept in bomb shelters, regular life broken.

Some of us have faced challenges in our schools and campuses as our children were confronted with antisemitism. There are so many examples locally: the Chicago City Council passing its anti-Israel resolution, “River to the Sea” chanted in Skokie high schools, a Chicago bookstore removing Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow because its author, Gabrielle Zevin, is a Zionist.

We blow these sounds—Tekiah, Shevarim, Teruah—awakening, brokenness, and tears, 100 times.

The number 100 has two midrashic sources, each profound.

The first: we blow 100 to remember the one hundred cries of the mother of Sisera (Talmud Rosh Hashanah 33b). Sisera was a warrior who went out to battle.

Sisera’s mother peers intently out of the window, waiting for her son’s return from battle. She quickly begins to lose hope. She fears the worst. Reality begins to set in. Sisera’s mother begins to weep. Her son has been killed.

But Sisera was not a Jewish general. Sisera was a Canaanite general who cruelly oppressed the Jews for 20 years and was killed by Yael in an act of tremendous daring.

Sisera was like Nasrallah! And the 100 shofar blasts are the sound of his mother weeping. This is very powerful – and something that we have also struggled with – the human costs of defending ourselves. The rabbis sensitize us, even Sisera had a mother. Even Nasrallah has a mother. And their cries echo in our shofar.

The other source for 100 blasts symbolizes a different cry: the one hundred cries of our matriarch Sarah upon seeing her son Isaac departing for the Akeidah, fulfilling the Divine call to Abraham to sacrifice his only son. She cries over the potential loss of her most precious and only child.

How many tears, hundreds by hundreds, have cast into an echoing, empty pit of loss, antisemitism, and despair… like Yosef

וַיִּקָּחֻהוּ וַיַּשְׁלִ֥כוּ אֹת֖וֹ הַבֹּ֑רָה וְהַבּ֣וֹר רֵ֔ק אֵ֥ין בּ֖וֹ מָֽיִם׃

“They took him and cast him into the pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it.” (Genesis 37:24)

But let’s come back to our original Mishnah for a moment. Can we blow the shofar in a pit? Can the mitzvah be fulfilled in such a place?

The Mishnah is very clear. It depends:

אִם קוֹל שׁוֹפָר שָׁמַע, יָצָא. וְאִם קוֹל הֲבָרָה שָׁמַע, לֹא יָצָא.

“If he heard the sound of the shofar, he has fulfilled his obligation. But if he heard the sound of the echo, he has not fulfilled his obligation.”

Acoustically, it’s very easy to only hear the voice of the pit. The pit’s echo might last longer, might travel farther, might even seem louder, but it’s not the shofar.

The echo distorts the original sound. It’s not the shofar. The shofar is clear and loud. The echo is ambiguous, distant, unsettling. The echo is inherently lacking something of the original. It’s not the real thing.

If you really listen to the full shofar, you will hear much more than the sound of alarm, weeping, and brokenness. If you hear the fullness of the shofar, you will also hear the sounds of action, hope, and strength.

The wake-up call of the Tekiah is also a call to come together—a call for a collective response to challenges. That is a call that we have answered across ideology, geography, and religious orientation.

Think of the hundreds of thousands of reservists who traveled from literally across the globe, including right here in Skokie, to serve.

Think of the mobilization of volunteers—in Israel, across the world, and right here in our shul. Think about all that we did this past year: by the hundreds, we wrote letters to soldiers and elected officials, marched in Washington, marched in Skokie, flew to Israel. We raised well over one hundred thousand dollars for Magen David Adom, Kibbutz Be’eri, Kitat Konnenut, supplies for soldiers, parties for displaced children. We opened our arms to survivors of October 7th, parents and family of hostages and soldiers who fell in battle, welcomed wounded soldiers, made podcasts, created a home for the Israeli scouts, and so much more.

Think of the people who have been awakened to Jewish identity and connection. Shuls, including ours, are seeing rises in memberships. Hillels are full. People are leaving jobs in the for-profit sector to work for Jewish non-profits.

Think of the more than 24,000 people who have made aliyah to Israel from dozens of countries since October 7.

These are all Tekiot.

Tekiah is also a military call—of mobilization and movement—a spiritual weapon used to knock down the walls of Jericho, as it says:

“יִתְקְעוּ בַּשּׁוֹפָרוֹת”

“Blow the shofars…”

Blow the Tekiot and the walls will fall. After the shocking, painful military failures of October 7th, we have also seen some spectacular military successes.

It is very important to continue to remember and pray each day for the safety and success of all of our chayalim and chayalot.

And while the Tekiah is a more obviously inspiring sound, even the brokenness of Shevarim and the tears of the Teruah possess strength.

There is a famous story of the Baal Shem Tov and his disciple, R. Wolf.

The Baal Shem Tov told his disciple, R’ Ze’ev Wolf, to prepare the mystical kavanot, combinations of God’s names to visualize, for the shofar blowing on Rosh Hashanah. R’ Ze’ev spent hours carefully researching the esoteric combinations of names and letters, diligently writing each one down and keeping the list in his pocket.

When the moment to blow the shofar arrived, he took his shofar and ascended the bimah. Reaching into his pocket for the kavanot, he realized with horror that the list was missing. His mind went blank. But it was time to blow the shofar. So with deep bitterness, he blew the shofar, weeping throughout.

He left shul as soon as it was over, distraught and ashamed. Later that day, the Baal Shem Tov sought him out and told him:

“There are many locked doors in the palace of the king. Each door has a secret key of its own. There is, however, one tool which can open all of them—an axe. The kavanot are the keys which open the gates of heaven, each gate having its own particular kavana. But when a person’s heart is broken before God, his tears become an axe that can smash through any door.”

Broken hearts are a powerful spiritual weapon. And things happen when we cry.

Our tears didn’t fix all our problems this year, but they were not in vain. 

See, this is the fullness of the shofar: vulnerability and heartbreak, strength and power, in the same sounds.

And today I’m asking you to listen to fulfill the mitzvah of shofar by hearing its full sound. Whether you’re standing in the pit or outside the pit—don’t listen to the kol havarah; you won’t fulfill the mitzvah! Don’t listen to the voice of the pit.

• The voice of the pit will say: This is the worst.
• The voice of the shofar will say: This is bad, and we’ve seen worse, and we’ve overcome.
• The voice of the pit will say: There is so much brokenness, nothing you can really do.
• The voice of the shofar will say: There is so much brokenness, and you can do a lot, and there is hope.
• The voice of the pit will say: You are completely alone.
• The voice of the shofar will say: As I was with your ancestors, I am here with you.

Even in the darkest pit, listen for the true sound of the shofar.

One of my darkest moments this year was the news that Hersh, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi had been cruelly murdered. It devastated me and so many of us.

They day after I heard, I saw a video report from the tunnel where they had been found. Watching it on my computer, I got the smallest taste of the nightmare they had endured 60 feet underground – a tunnel, a pit, with no air, no room, no light, no running water.

And then something else happened.

I stopped to really think about what it took him to survive 300 days in hell with a horrible injury. I learned that they found signs they fought back in the tunnel. Completely vulnerable, emaciated, in hell, and they still fought back. And I was able for the first time not just to hear the awfulness of that pit but also to hear the sound of their lives, values, spirit. His determination to just live 300 days in terror tunnels with his arm blown off.

And so too with all our losses—can we hear the beautiful souls at the Nova festival? Can we hear the brave soldiers who held off hundreds of terrorists before they were killed? Can we hear the determination of our brothers and sisters in Israel? 

That is the full voice of the shofar—not just the loss but also the strength, not just the death but also the life.

“Ashrei Ha’am Yodei Teruah,”
“Praised are the people who truly understand the call of the shofar.”

While preparing for this Rosh Hashana I read a drasha Rabbi Moshe Avigdor Amiel from 1919. Rav Amiel went on to make aliyah and become the first chief rabbi of Tel Aviv.  

It had been a terrible year for the Jewish people. Jews were blamed for the turmoil of the Russian Revolution, and 80,000 Ukrainian Jews were killed in pogroms. Neighbors robbed, raped, and murdered their Jewish neighbors with impunity, burning their homes and shuls. It was like 50 October 7ths, all without a Jewish state and a Jewish army to defend them.

Rabbi Amiel said:

“And the hundred voices that you will hear from the shofar blower, the voices of the Shevarim and the Teruah of ‘moaning moans and wailing wails,’ these voices announce to the whole world, to all the inhabitants of the earth and the dwellers of the land, to all the seventy nations that seem like seventy lions rising up over us, over this little sheep—announce to them with a voice:

‘You cannot scare us. Devise your strategy but it will be thwarted; propose your plan, but it will not stand, for God is with us.’ We are the ancient people, so learned in troubles, that we say, ‘Fortunate is the nation who knows the Teruah.’ We know the ‘moaning moans and wailing wails’ for many thousands of years,

וּבְכָל זֹאת הַבִּיטוּ נָא וּרְאוּ, עוֹד אֲנַחְנוּ חַיִּים, וְהַשּׁוֹפָר עֲדַיִן נִמְצָא בְּיָדֵינוּ וּבִלְבָבֵנוּ.”

And yet, look and see, we are still alive, and the shofar is still in our hand and in our heart.

Ashrei Ha’am Yodei Teruah—the shofar is still in our hand and in our heart.

And this year we will blow the shofar to its fullest: today, tomorrow, until the final Tekiah Gedolah we blow at the end of Ne’ilah.

The shofar whose twisted, curving body ultimately points up, sends our prayers and cries to Shamayim.

We’re in the middle of our shofar blowing now. We began this morning with the first set, called Tekiyot D’meyushav—the seated tekiot.

And then we rise for Mussaf and recite the second set—Tekiyot D’me’umad, the standing tekiot.

And so too, us—we rise.

That’s what we do on Rosh Hashanah.

This holiday that begins with the moon Keseh, hidden, and then it grows and grows.

The holiday that begins in harsh din but brings us to the rachamim of Yom Kippur.

This holiday that marks the day when Yosef was freed on Rosh Hashanah, rising up from the depths of the pits of Pharaoh’s prison.

The shofar rises. The moon rises. Yosef rises. We rise.

We rise in tefilah. We rise in prayer.

I pray—this be a year where hostages rise from the pits in Gaza.

I pray—this be a year where the souls of those martyred on October 7th, the hostages who were murdered, the chayalim who fell, through our zechira rise higher and higher.

I pray— this be a year where all those who seek peace, in Israel, in Lebanon, in Iran, across the world, rise against terror and hate and create a better future for all children to know safety and freedom.

I pray we rise to the challenges before us—those we know, those that will inevitably come.

And I pray—that while we’ve been going through so many national experiences, many have struggled in the last year as well: physical health, mental health, financial challenges, fertility struggles, and more.

I pray this will be a year where the shofar helps us rise from the pits of shame, depression, rise from the pits of hopelessness, rise from the pits of despair. And let me tell you – there are a lot of people in this room who have risen from these pits. And if you’re in one, let the shofar remind you – you too can rise.

And I pray—even if we are unable to fully escape the pit, and the truth is, none of us can fully escape—for we are all destined for the grave—let us still rise, turning our ears to the full sound of the shofar, holding the pain and the tears and also the strength, the possibility, the hope… even in the pit, finding the sound of the shofar.

It’s what we do.

It’s what our ancestors did.

It’s what each and every one of us did this past difficult year.

And it’s what we’re doing right here, today.

Ashrei Ha’am Yodei Teruah.

Fortunate, blessed, is this nation that knows how to hear the call of the Shofar.

Together, we hear the call.

Together, we rise.