Conversation During The Shofar Blowings On Rosh Hashanah

Orthodox Jews are reminded yearly on Rosh Hashanah [1] that it is required that the shofar be blown one hundred times and [2] that it is not permitted to speak or engage in conversation between the commandment blessing “to hear the sound of the shofar” and the final, one hundredth shofar blast. Rabbi Gil Student, an erudite, exacting, thoughtful, and intellectually honest Orthodox thinker and scholar, reports:

I cannot recall attending a synagogue for Rosh Hashanah in which the rabbi or gabbai did not announce before the shofar blowing that one is not allowed to talk from the beginning of the shofar blowing until the very end, at the end of services (around two+ hours later). When I was single, refraining from speaking was never a challenge. But once I had little children who needed attention and instructions, maintaining silence became more difficult. And, frankly, I never quite understood the reason for this required silence. One fulfills the mitzvah of shofar with the first 30 blasts. So why the silence until the end of the full 100? After all, the 100 blasts is only a recent custom. Its true that there is a rabbinic requirement to hear the shofar blasts within the blessings of the Amidah prayer, but one who prays in a Nusach Sefard synagogue accomplishes that by the end of the silent Amidah, before the very long chazzan‘s repetition. So are you allowed to speak (if necessary) after the silent Amidah?… Are you allowed to talk? No. It is a huge deal? I don’t think so.[1]

The Halakhically canonical Oral Torah understood Scripture to require nine shofar blasts,[2] and R. Abbahu decreed that in order to avoid any doubt whether the actual, Torah mandated blast, the teru’ah, is a sob or a wail, the shofar is blown according to every possible permutation,[3] with each teru’ah accompanied by a preceding and following plain, tequi’ah blast, yielding a total of thirty blasts which are mandated by Rabbinic rule.[4] Maran Joseph Karo appropriately forbids talking between the shofar commandment blessing and the immediately designated shofar blasts. And he also rules that one ought not to converse [lo yasiah] between the earlier shofar blasts [teqiyyot de-mi-yoshev], which occur after the Torah reading, and the later shofar blasts [teqiyyot de-mei-‘omed], which take place during the Musaf prayers.[5] Maran Karo’s exquisitely precise diction indicates that the ban on speaking between the initial commandment blessing and the final liturgical blast [a] is a proper and appropriate practice [b] but this restriction carries a legal valence beneath that of a formal rabbinic decree.  Accordingly, R. David Segal here implicitly concedes that while conversation, because it is not forbidden by any formal Oral Torah norm, does not invalidate the accompanying prayers, an individual who violates this no-talking policy ought to be scolded for breaching the accepted, standard practice, or minhag, in this case a binding communal by-law,[6] and not just a convention, custom, or habit. Ever consistent, Maran Karo also regards piyyutim, liturgical poetry, to also be inappropriate interruptions of and intrusions into the formal prayer service,[7] just like conversation.

According to the letter of formal Jewish law, no talking is permitted between the shofar commandment blessing and the first thirty blasts, after which one’s Toraitic[8] as well as Rabbinic obligations have both been fully, completely, and satisfactorily discharged. However, R. Student’s ambivalence remains well-placed. If we are not permitted to engage in conversation from the shofar commandment blessing until after the last shofar blast, then the inclusion of other post-Talmudic liturgical additions, e.g. Henneni, Zochreinu le-hayyim, Mi Khamocha the pre-qedushah qerovot piyyutim, and Areshet sefateinu would require an act of hora’ah, or Halakhically authorized legislation, in order for these post-Talmudic, intrusive innovations to be normative.[9] But the legitimating, legal authority to promulgate this legislation lapsed with the passings of Ravina I and R. Ashi.[10] Jewish legal logic would therefore require that Henneni, Zochreinu le-Hayyim, Mi Khamocha the pre-qedushah qerovot piyyutim, and Areshet sefateinu all of which are interposed between the initial commandment blessing and the last shofar blast, should either be deleted from the Rosh Hashanah liturgy or else all one hundred blasts be blown at one time. While Maimonides vigorously—and consistently—opposed piyyut recitation,[11] While R. Isserles disagreed with those who opposed piyyut liturgy collegially,[12] in our own time, R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik protested Maimonides’ piyyut denial vehemently.[13] On one hand, R. Soloveitchik insists, like Maimonides, that “Halakhah wishes to objectify religiosity not only through introducing the external act…[it] sets down statutes and erects markers that serve as a dam against the surging, subjective current[.]”[14] He astutely affirms that the letter of the Law functions as a culture boundary line in the sand that neutralizes the social forces of chaos, syncretism, communal dissolution and disintegration. He therefore presents Orthodox Judaism as the singular, eternal, inerrant, and therefore unchanging, living embodiment of Torah Judaism. In contrast, R. Isserles is less troubled by dissenting voices, as long as they are not socially disruptive:

There are voices who declare that there is no restriction [regarding piyyut recitation], and this is the practice in all places [=our local communities]. However, one who is lenient [and sits silently during piyyut recitation] has incurred no loss [=is not worthy of impugned bona fides]. In any case one should not engage in any [other] activity, even Torah study, when the community is reciting piyyutim. One who learns by thinking[15] has not committed a violation of [inattentive] thinking [during the communal piyyut recitation] because thinking is not talking.[16]

Underlying R. Isserles’ Legal Realism is a concern that communal solidarity and cohesion should not be compromised. If individuals exercise their conscience with a well-mannered respect for the majority view, R. Isserles is prepared to accept a somewhat pluralist stance. I suspect that R. Soloveitchik, in hindsight prophetically, feared that removing piyyut in an Americanized Orthodox synagogal setting would give the false and misleading perception of a precedent approving of liturgical Reform, and on that ground, he opposed the Reform impulse to abandon past practice. It seems that R. Soloveitchik insists that piyyut recitation must be preserved because the accepted and expected Orthodox culture package must be upheld in its entirety. Orthodox folk culture’s “tradition” is social, not theological, and is not attuned to conceptual niceties, hairsplitting, and subtleties. And to R. Soloveitchik’s view, this second sense of “Tradition” is just as normative as the “Book” Tradition.[17] For R. Soloveitchik, the rabbi must also be a social engineer. One can be juridically correct and still be religiously irresponsible.

R. Student’s conclusion is very well, and responsibly put; since this “no talking until the last shofar blast” rule post-dates Rav Ashi’s Talmudic authority to legislate apodictic rabbinic law, and since post-Talmudic and hence post-canonical interruptive insertions were indeed accepted by Jewry, the incidental interruptive insertion is not a “huge deal,” to use R. Student’s idiom.

But non-emergency conversation during the Amidah repetition is in any case forbidden by law. Gratuitous conversation diminishes the solemnity of communally accepted if not formal, expectations. According to Oral Law legislation, non-liturgical conversation ought to be delayed until the prayer service’s conclusion. Because piyyutim are not authorized or vetted by the Oral Torah, their inclusion in the obligatory liturgy may be considered problematic, as it was for Maimonides.

In conclusion, we cannot with integrity allow piyyut recitation and, at the same time, insist upon forbidding talking between shofar blasts thirty-one to one hundred, because these blasts are not obligatory, and hence not subject to interruption restrictions.  After thirty shofar blasts occur, [a] the shofar obligation is discharged and [b] there would be no further shofar generated restriction on conversation. The piyyutim, especially the qerovot inserted before Qedushah, where additions  are not permitted, are far more problematic then the Hinneni and Avinu malkenu  interruptions of the customary shofar blasts. Rabbis would do well to encourage Halakhic decorum and consistency while avoiding Halakhic hyperbole.

[1] https://www.torahmusings.com/2006/09/talking-between-shofar-blasts/.

[2] mRosh ha-Shanah 4:9. See also mPesahim 5:5, where the teru’ah blast is also enveloped by two teqi’ah blasts during the Paschal lamb rite.

[3] bRosh ha-Shanah 33b-34a, which is codified at Shulhan ‘Aruch Orah Hayyim 590:1.

[4] bRosh ha-Shanah 34a.

[5] Shulhan ‘Aruch Orah Hayyim 592:3.

[6] Taz, Ibid., n. 3.

[7] Shulhan ‘Aruch Orah Hayyim 68:1. Maran’s Hebrew, ve-nakhon limno’a me-le-omram, should probably be rendered “it would be proper to forbid—not prevent—their recitation,” as the root mn’ means “prevent” in Hebrew and “forbid” in Arabic.

[8] “Toraitic” does not refer to Scriptural law, but to de-Oraita laws, i.e. norms which carry Torah authority because the Written Torah at Deuteronomy 17:8-13 grants the authority to promulgate these rules to the Halakhic Supreme Court, whose rules have the status of Torah [17:11]. Furthermore, the root of “Torah” is yrh, which means “oracle.” This rendering is corroborated by Isaiah 2:3, where “Torah” is paralleled to and therefore synonymous with “the word of the Lord.” For the jurisprudential significance of this doctrine, see Jose Faur, Studies in the Mishne Torah: Book of Knowledge (Jerusalem: Mossad Ha-Rav Kook, 1978), pp. 25-32.

[9] bBava Metsi’a 86a. The norm creating authority to issue apodictic Oral Law valence or canon lapsed with the passings of Ravina I and R. Ashi. See David Halivni, “Mavo le-Masechet Bava Batra,” in Mevo’ot le-Meqorot u-Mesorot: ‘Iyyunim be-Hithavvut ha-Talmud (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2009), pp. 20-22 and 62-65, where it is suggested that the anonymous Talmudic passages which provide dialectic interpretation are the product not of Ravina I and R. Ashi, but the historically subsequent stamma’im. In other words, Ravina I and R. Ashi ended the period of apodictic legislation, and they were not the Bavli’s editors. In point of fact, it is claimed that the Bavli did not undergo editing altogether. Halivni, pp. 75-76.

[10] Maimonides, Introduction to the Yad Compendium and the Rosh, Shabbat 2:15 both affirm the legal doctrine that post-R. Ashi rabbis are not empowered to legislate for all Israel.

[11] Maimonides strongly objected to unauthorized liturgical intrusions, i.e. the piyyutim. See his Responsa, 180, 207, 254, 260, and 261. At 207, Maimonides grudgingly allows for the recitation of piyyutim if they do not intrude the required prayer rubric.

[12] Rama to Shulhan ‘Aruch Orah Hayyim 68:1.

[13] Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1982), p. 58. R. Soloveitchik’s unhappiness with Maimonides’ piyyut ban is expressed in his contrasting Halakhic Man with Maimonides who, by implication, would not be considered to be an Halakhic man.

[14] Ibid., p. 59.

[15] Hebrew, “hirhur,” which refers silent learning. R. Isserles regards hirhur learning to be technically permitted, he fears that the license be abused if conversation ensued. Rema, Supra.

[16] Ibid. Talking is a social event, while meditation, cogitation, and musing are not.

[17] Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Sheni Sugei Masoret, in Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Shiurim le-Zecher Abba Mori, zal, (Jerusalem: 5743). Avrohom Gordimer calls this second sense of Tradition to be the “uncodified” part of Torah. http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2013/07/18/from-openness-to-heresy/