“A day on which the horn is sounded” (Num 29:1)—was this really the best description the Torah could use to refer to Rosh ha-Shanah? Apparently, it was simply all that was needed in biblical times. After all, the entrance of a mighty king was regularly announced with a blast of trumpets. So the shofar was similarly intended as an announcement: The heavenly King is about to enter the human realm. And why would He do so if not first and foremost to judge His subjects?

 

So today as well, the shofar’s first meaning, before all the other ones that are given, is that the King is about to enter the human hall and judge us for the coming year. True, one hears a lot of other explanations: the ram’s horn commemorates the ram that was offered by Abraham instead of his son Isaac; the ram’s horn is sounded to call to mind the shofar blasts at Mount Sinai (Exod 19:19); a blast of the shofar is intended to awake people from the spiritual slumber, or to scare off malevolent demons; and so forth. But before all else, the shofar remains an announcement of impending judgment.

 

But if so, what was the point of having a single day of judgment set aside for everyone? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the Almighty to judge each offender on the spot and carry out the sentence while the crime was still fresh in everyone’s memory?

 

But that’s just the point. If people were punished immediately, say, with a bolt of lightning from heaven, I’m sure that after a while, onlookers would get the idea of why such punishments were meted out, and they might indeed be frightened. But they would still be missing that element in divine-human relations that is absolutely crucial for Judaism: repentance. Allotting people a set of ten days each year, from Rosh ha-Shanah through Yom Kippur, was a way of allowing humans to turn their thoughts to the preceding weeks and months and set out to effect a complete change in direction (this, by the way, is the original meaning of the word teshuvah, “change in direction”).

 

If it were being conceived of today, the process of God’s simultaneously judging everyone all at once could be accomplished by a simple click of the mouse or a key-stroke on the celestial computer. Similarly, the Mishnah describes Rosh ha-Shanah in then-contemporary military terms: “all people pass before Him as soldiers in a military troop (a numeron).” Either way, the process needn’t take ten days—surely one day of repentance would be enough. So if the Day of Atonement has been accorded a fixed date on the tenth of the month (an odd time for any significant day on the Hebrew calendar), it is to give people some time to reconsider, starting from the first day of the month of Tishrei. This, of course, implies more than reconsidering our own individual deeds. For good or for ill, we are all part of a larger group or groups.

 

To put all this a little differently, the whole reason for Rosh ha-Shanah is Yom Kippur, or rather, the ten days that separate the two. Starting now.

 

With best wishes for the coming year,  Shanah tovah!