"zichron teruah"
Can we remember an event we did NOT attend? Can we SEE the sounds of an instrument, that no-one is playing?
This week's Torah portion "Emor" contains the inscrutable passage about the holiday of "remembrance of teruah(trumpeting/blowing)" which by traditional association to passage Lev 25.9 we know it is a shofar specifically which is to be blown. So what are we supposed to be remembering?
By the way, it is the holiday we all know as Rosh Hashanah""Head/beginning of the year" , but that is NOT the Biblical name, and indeed passover is the first month, and this is at the beginning of the 7th month!
The Biblical description/name in another parsha is "yom teruah" "a day of teruah (trumpeting/blowing)", in this week's Torah portion, is "Zichron teruah" "remembering teruah".
All the holidays have clear meaning except this one.
Yom Kippur is a day of atonement, sukkot is remembering the travel in the desert etc, passover is clear, shavuot is harvest and omer etc. What is this holiday for?
Though the meaning/purpose of the holiday is unclear from the text, it could have been apparent to those who received the Torah, ie the word "zichron teruah" must have meant something particular to them, remembering an seminal event they all attended - namely Sinai, and they are to remember the shofar blown when they were assembled there. However, shofar was among the sounds which they SAW, as described in the passages there (Ex 20:15). And NO-ONE was blowing a shofar!
According to tradition ALL future generations of the Jewish People were there as souls, so WE TOO can remember seeing the sounds of the shofar that no-one blew. And by remembering that on "Rosh Hashanah", we return to the purity of the state of being at that moment, as part of the process or 'return' (teshuva/repentance).
May we all be blessed to tap deeply into our soul and remember seeing those sounds, and thereby catalyze the return to our essence!
.................
When I was young, when hearing the shofar I would imagine being in a mountainous forest, hearing the wild rams blowing their horns in an eerie morning mist.
.
However when I was older i attended a shofar-making workshop and relaized the obvious - that the sound of the shofar is never heard in nature, since the ram's horn growns out of its head, not near its mouth, and in fact it is "upside down" with the narrow part at the tip not at the base, and in fact it is not hollow but rather filled with organic matter.
.
So it became interesting to think of when it WAS heard - at Sinai - and then the connection to Rosh Hashanah became evident.
Since Rosh Hashanah is in some sense all about returning to the committment at Sinai, and being true to our soul, and since we were all at Sinai as souls, it made sense that the sound of the shofar was meant to evoke the Sinaitic experience as a catalyst for the desired "soul-return".
https://www.facebook.com/groups/80847655150/permalink/10165822981140151/?comment_id=10165833627510151¬if_id=1619868920932904¬if_t=group_comment&ref=notif
Emor, ch 21-23
ch23,32: YK is "shabat shabaton": maybe because the first shabbos was righ after the exile from Eden, so YK is tied to shabbat. And indeed YK overules shabbos, no 'oneg' etc.
....
Ch 23, pasuk 22: "לעני ..ta'azov oso" : כב וּבְקֻצְרְכֶם אֶת-קְצִיר אַרְצְכֶם, לֹא-תְכַלֶּה פְּאַת שָׂדְךָ בְּקֻצְרֶךָ, וְלֶקֶט קְצִירְךָ, לֹא תְלַקֵּט; לֶעָנִי וְלַגֵּר תַּעֲזֹב אֹתָם, אֲנִי ה' אֱלֹקֶיכֶם.
The above is shvuos then is RH and then YK: כז אַךְ בֶּעָשׂוֹר לַחֹדֶשׁ הַשְּׁבִיעִי הַזֶּה יוֹם הַכִּפֻּרִים הוּא, מִקְרָא-קֹדֶשׁ יִהְיֶה לָכֶם, וְעִנִּיתֶם, אֶת-נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם; וְהִקְרַבְתֶּם אִשֶּׁה, לַיהוָה
לב שַׁבַּת שַׁבָּתוֹן הוּא לָכֶם, וְעִנִּיתֶם אֶת-נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם; בְּתִשְׁעָה לַחֹדֶשׁ, בָּעֶרֶב--מֵעֶרֶב עַד-עֶרֶב, תִּשְׁבְּתוּ שַׁבַּתְּכֶם.
pasuk 27 & 32: "ועניתם et nafshotechem" where "ועניתם" is written without a "י", ie not "ועיניתם".
So they share the main letters - maybe this is a clue to the enigmatic intent of the commandment?
[and is there for some reason an echo of "al ken ya'azov" in "ta'azov oso"? but elsewhere the chumash says "azov ta'azov imo" which is not related, unless it is a play on words, imo with aleph instead of ayin! : ) . Alo: ve'initem et nafshotechem", the word "nefesh" is evocative of creaiton/eden as well... ].
....
"Ki basukos hoshavti es bney yisrael be'hotzi'i osam me'eretz mitzrayim", so it was not "in the desert" but rather "when I took them out of Egypt", so maybe indeed it is referring to the place called succos, and it indeed had something to do with a succa, but what succah and why was it so important?!
....
24:6-7: ז וְנָתַתָּ עַל-הַמַּעֲרֶכֶת, לְבֹנָה זַכָּה; וְהָיְתָה לַלֶּחֶם לְאַזְכָּרָה, אִשֶּׁה לַיהוָה."zakoh...le'azkoroh" both have zayin & kaf together - how common is this? has someone tested to see if the chumash uses combinaiotns close to each other that are more rare elsewhere?
....