Bais HaVaad on the Parsha, Parshas Pinchas

A Blast from the Past

Excerpted and adapted from a shiur by Rav Moshe Yitzchok Weg 

July 6, 2023

In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, there shall be a holy convocation for you; you shall do no work of labor, it shall be a day of shofar sounding for you.

Bemidbar 29:1

The mitzvah de’Oreisa of tekias shofar requires three series of tekiah-truah-tekiah (Rosh Hashanah 33b). But the Gemara says we don’t know whether truah is medium-length sounds (shvarim), very short sounds (what we know as truah), or a combination (shvarim-truah). Therefore, R’ Avahu instituted that we blow a minimum of thirty blasts on Rosh Hashanah: three sets with shvarim-truah, three with shvarim, and three with truah.

The simple meaning of the Gemara, which appears to be adopted by the Rambam and Shulchan Aruch, is that we are uncertain about how to blow the truah, and thirty blasts are necessary to ensure we fulfill the mitzvah. But Rav Hai Gaon maintains that there is no uncertainty. Rather, each of the three versions of truah is kosher, and different communities used different versions. R’ Avahu’s takanah unified the practice of Klal Yisrael.

According to the Rambam and Shulchan Aruch, it is difficult to understand why a shvarim blown within the set of tara”t (tekiah-truah-tekiah) would constitute a hefsek. Within this set, we should view the shvarim as not even being a kol shofar, because it is not significant (and non-shofar sounds don’t constitute a hefsek). Moreover, why does the Rambam write that during each section of Chazaras Hashatz we blow only one set (tashra”t, tasha”t, or tara”t), if we don’t know which is correct?

R’ Yaakov Schneidman (Sefer Derech Hamelech) answers that even the Rambam and Shulchan Aruch agree that all three shofar blast types are valid, and historically, each community used the type that corresponded to its particular needs that year, but the associations between needs and kolos were forgotten over time. Therefore, R’ Avahu enacted that every community should blow all of the variants.