Teshuvah, Chapter 3

Maimonides' Laws of Repentance, Chapter 3

IV. Maimonides on Shofar

אע"פ שתקיעת שופר בראש השנה גזירת הכתוב, רמז יש בו, כלומר: עורו ישנים משנתכם ונרדמים הקיצו מתרדמתכם, וחפשו במעשיכם וחזרו בתשובה וזכרו בוראכם." אלו השוכחים את האמת בהבלי הזמן ושוגים כל שנתם בהבל וריק אשר לא יועיל ולא יציל. "הביטו לנפשותיכם והטיבו דרכיכם ומעלליכם, ויעזוב כל אחד מכם דרכו הרעה ומחשבתו אשר לא טובה."

לפיכך צריך כל אדם שיראה עצמו כל השנה כולה כאילו חציו זכאי וחציו חייב. וכן כל העולם חציו זכאי וחציו חייב. חטא חטא אחד הרי הכריע את עצמו ואת כל העולם כולו לכף זכות וגרם לו השחתה. עשה מצוה אחת הרי הכריע את עצמו ואת כל העולם כולו לכף זכות וגרם לו ולהם תשועה והצלה, שנאמר "וצדיק יסוד עולם." זה שצדק הכריע את כל העולם לזכות והצילו.

ומפני ענין זה נהגו כל בית ישראל להרבות בצדקה ובמעשים טובים ולעסוק במצות מראש השנה ועד יום הכפורים יתר מכל השנה. ונהגו כולם לקום בלילה בעשרה ימים אלו ולהתפלל בבתי כנסיות בדברי תחנונים ובכיבושין עד שיאור היום. (הל' תשובה פ"ג ה"ד)

Even though the sounding of the shofar on Rosh Hashana is a Biblical edict, it also involves a certain allusion. As if to say: “Awake, o sleepy ones, and slumberers, shake off your torpor. Search out your deeds and turn in repentance and remember your Creator.” This refers to those who forget the truth in transient matters and err all their years pursuing vanity and emptiness, which are of no benefit and will not help. “Look to your souls and improve your ways and your doings, and let each one of you abandon his evil path and his thought that is not good.”

Hence, each person must see himself the entire year as if he is half guilty and half innocent. And similarly the entire world as half innocent and half guilty. If he committed one sin, he has tipped himself and the entire world to the side of culpability, and caused it destruction. But if he did one mitzvah, he has tipped himself and the entire world to the side of merit, and brought to himself and to them salvation and deliverance, as it is said, “the righteous is the foundation of the world” [Prov 10:25]. That righteous man tipped the entire world toward innocence, and saved it.

And because of this matter the entire House of Israel is accustomed to multiply charity and good deeds and to engage in mitzvot from Rosh Hashana to Yom Kippur, more than all year round. And they are accustomed to rise at night during these ten days, and to pray in the synagogue with words of petition, and contrition until day breaks. (Laws of Teshuva 3.4)

Due to the limited time available to me at the moment, I will only touch briefly upon a few points here.

First, by way of introduction, this halakha is really divided into three separate units, as indicated by my paragraphing: a) the “mini-sermon” which Maimonides places, as it were, in the mouth of the shofar; b) the importance of each individual act, in which the individual and the world constantly stand in the ”balance” (this is the central theme of Chapter 3 generally); c) special customs of the ten days of teshuva. Particularly interesting here is the reference to a kind of “Uhr-Selihot.”

Rambam’s introductory words sound almost apologetic. Here, he departs from his usual practice in the Mishneh Torah, in which he presents the formal legal parameters alone, and indulges in a brief excursus on the philosophical underpinnings of the mitzvah discussed, in this case shofar. Hence, he opens with a kind of disclaimer, reminding his readers that all mitzvot are ultimately “Divine edicts,“ meaning that their authority and obligatory nature is independent of whether or not we understand them or, indeed, if we can find reason for them at all (see the perorations to his Sefer Avodah and Korbanot; and my discusion of this in HY I: Hukat). Only after saying this does he feel it proper to engage in the activity of ta’amei hamitzvot.

What is doubly interesting, and somewhat puzzling, is the location of this little discourse on the meaning of the Shofar. He does not present it in the “Laws of Shofar,” to which he devotes an entire section in Sefer ha-Zemanim, the book of laws pertaining to the weekly and annual round of sabbaths and festivals, but here, in the “Laws of Teshuva.” But this very fact may help to explain the reason for his writing this mini - ethical exhortation on this mitzvah, specifically.[1]

The laws of teshuva are concerned, first and foremost, if not exclusively, with human ethical behavior and the dynamic of human improvement. As such, it is uniquely suited to moral exhortation. In this chapter, Maimonides talks of the need for constant awareness of the far reaching, even cosmic, deeper consequences of their behavior: to know that every small action may have unforeseen repercussions, both on themselves and on the world generally (again, in both the spiritual and the practical sense). In the previous chapter, where he discusses the theme of teshuva per se, he has already mentioned the propitious nature of what we call the Ten Days of Repentance. Hence, here he brings together these two elements—the Ten Days (specifically, Rosh Hashana) and the idea of man always standing the moral balance. The shofar fits easily into this rubric, interpreted as a call for teshuva. He thus departs from his usual practice, and explains the rationale for this mitzvah in terms of its ethical-educational function: as a “wake up” call. Hence, it must appear in Hilkhot Teshuva rather than in Hilkhot Shofar.

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[1] But in Sefer ha-Mitzvot it does not appear in an ethical context, but is presented matter-of-factly, without any elaboration, in Mitzvot Aseh §170. There it appears, strangely, after all the other special festival mitzvot, such as Sukkah and Lulav, rather than adjacent to the positive mitzvah to rest from labor on the 1^st of Tishrei. On the other hand, in Guide for the Perplexed 3.43, he does speak of the ethical significance of shofar, and of Rosh Hahana as a “day of teshuvah and of awakening people from their sleep; therefore, one sounds the shofar thereon, as we explained in Mishneh Torah” (incidentally, references from the Guide to the MT are rather unusual).