The Power of Crying

Rosh Hashanah has a plethora of different names and identities only one of which is found in the Torah. It is Yom Hazikharon – the Day of Remembrance, Yom Hadin – the Day of Judgment, Rosh Hashanah – the Beginning of the Year, but in the Torah, it is known exclusively as Yom Hateruah:

The Lord spoke to Moshe, saying: Speak to the children of Israel, saying: In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe complete rest, a sacred occasion commemorated with loud blasts (zikhron teruah). (Leviticus 23:24)

In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe a sacred occasion: you shall not work at your occupations, you shall observe it as a day when the horn is sounded (it shall be a day of teruah to you). (Numbers 29:1)

Still, we are left with an anomaly. What is a “teruah”? And most significantly, what is the sounding of the horn supposed to represent? Is this day a day of trepidation or a day of rejoicing?

This mystery likely prompted the great sage, Rav Saadya Gaon (9^th century – Egypt, Eretz Yisrael, Babylonia) to make a valiant attempt to answer these questions by scouring the Tanakh for references to the sounding of the shofar in order to compile a list of ten ideas to consider when the shofar is sounded: 1. Creation of the world and the coronation of God as King; 2. Inspiration to do teshuvah; 3. The revelation of the Torah at Sinai; 4. Reminder of the words of the prophets; 5. The destruction of the Temple and the yearning for its rebuilding; 6. The binding of Avraham’s son, Yitzhak; 7. Bending our will to that of our Creator; 8. Reminder of the great day of Judgment; 9. The ingathering of the exiles; 10.  The resurrection of the dead. (See Abudraham Hashalem – Rosh Hashanah)

This year, however, I found particular inspiration in one Talmudic sages’ etymological attempt to determine the exact meaning of the word “teruah” – the sound which inspired the Torah’s name for this special day.

The Talmud records the opinion of Abaye, one of the famed sages of the Babylonian Talmud:

Abaye said: … It is written: ‘It shall be a day of teruah to you’ (Numbers 29:1), and we translate [in Aramaic], ‘a day of yebava’, and it is written of the mother of Sisera (the enemy general of Israel in the days of Devorah the prophet and judge): ‘Through the window Sisera’s mother peered, behind the lattice she whined [wa-teyabab] (Judges 5:28).’ One authority thought that this means drawing a long sigh (gnukhi ganakh), and the other that it means uttering short piercing cries (yelulei yalel). (Rosh Hashanah 33b)

Abaye did his homework. The first step he took was to check the earliest translation of the word “teruah” known to him – that of Targum Onkelos – a Jewish Aramaic translation of the Torah. This gave him the word “yebava”. Still at a loss, he found that this word was actually used in the ancient Shirat Devorah – the song of the prophetess Devorah, where it describes the reaction of the mother of Sisera at the death of her son, an enemy general, noting that the word means “a cry”. Abaye, therefore, concludes that “teruah” is a plaintive cry. He further notes that people cry in different ways. Some sob. This accounts for the “shvarim” – three consecutive short sounds, while others whimper. According to Abaye’s telling, this became the teruah – rapid staccato blasts on the shofar. Another sage, Rabbi Abahu asserted that people combined the two. This became “shvarim-teruah”.

Whether this accounts for the actual historical account for how these sounds came about is an open question, but the idea that the sounding of the shofar can be understood to be an outcrying of the heart, a desperate prayer, is especially significant. All the more so, this year, where we so need to bring our hopes and prayers before God to tide us through these very difficult times. May the clarion blasts of our shofrot soar heavenward with the sounding of the “teruah” – our “yebava” – our outcry to God.