Shimon HaAmsuni, a relatively obscure figure mentioned in the Talmud, is one of my Jewish heroes and I think that he should be your hero too. In the generations before Rabbi Akiva, Shimon HaAmsuni promulgated a theory of Torah scholarship in which not only was every word of the Torah laden with significance and therefore grist for the sermonic mill, but so too were grammatical placeholders like the word “et” as a signifier of a direct object. The word doesn’t mean anything. It follows most transitive verbs in the Torah and so can help us to understand what a sentence means, but most Hebrew sentences can be equally understood without it. In fact, David Ben Gurion, in his free time, waged a decades long quixotic crusade to eliminate the word “et” from Hebrew speech and writing.
One can imagine Shimon HaAmsuni teaching Torah, applying his theory to chapter after chapter of the Torah and his confidence building as he manages to darshen, to derive meaning, from each and every et in the Torah. Anachronistically, we can imagine the kiddush he sponsored when he completed Sefer Bereishit. Even more anachronistically, we can imagine the academic conference he convened when he finished Sefer Shemot and was granted tenure on the basis of his scholarship. He must have become a minor celebrity when he completed Sefer Vayikra, plumbing the depths of each and every “et” for meaning and significance and sharing his discoveries with a community of students and colleagues. When he completed Sefer Bamidbar, his detractors must have felt a bit sheepish. His method seems too bold, his theory seems too good to be true, and yet how can one argue with success? He had made his way through book after book after book of the Torah and convincingly found ways to interpret each “et” that he encountered.
And then he got to Devarim, the final book of the Torah, his life’s work nearly complete, and in the sixth chapter he encountered the verse אֶת־ה אֱ-לֹהֶ֛יךָ תִּירָ֖א וְאֹת֣וֹ תַעֲבֹ֑ד וּבִשְׁמ֖וֹ תִּשָּׁבֵֽעַ׃ you shall revere, with the word “et” indicating a direct object, the Lord your God and serve God and take oaths in God’s name. Shimon HaAmsuni couldn’t figure out anyone or anything that could be deserving of reverence or fear alongside God.
And so he gave up his theory. Of course his students were confused. But he reassured them with a line that has reverberated through history:
כְּשֵׁם שֶׁקִּבַּלְתִּי שָׂכָר עַל הַדְּרִישָׁה, כָּךְ אֲנִי מְקַבֵּל שָׂכָר עַל הַפְּרִישָׁה
Just as I received reward for interpreting, so too I shall receive reward for refraining.
Just as I was rewarded for my bold theory and for my cutting edge investigations and for the Torah that I shared far and wide, so too will I receive reward from withdrawing from that public discourse, keeping quiet about my theory, and listening to others in silence.
Today we are going to be quiet at a time when we usually make a lot of noise.
When Rosh Hashanah occurs on Shabbat we omit the mitzvah of Shofar. Next Shabbat, my Shabbat Shuvah Shiur will explore the halakhic history of omitting the biblical mitzvot of Shofar and Lulav when the Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot coincide with Shabbat. But right now I want to contend with what we can experience and what we can learn from today’s silenced shofar.
In a letter that he sent last week to alumni and the broader yeshiva community, Rav Mosheh Lichtenstein, my son Akiva’s rosh yeshiva at Yeshivat Har Etzion departed from his usual custom of sending a brief note of blessing for the new year and offered a far lengthier and more complex religious analysis of the turn of the year,
Rav Mosheh noted that the wordless cry of the shofar is, perhaps ironically, most appropriate under trying times and challenging situations.
We do not know what scenario is best for us or understand what dynamic is optimal for Am Yisrael. Therefore, we express our anguish via the shofar’s primeval call and pray to HaShem that He not only answer our prayers but also formulate them for us. Let Him take the incoherent sounds of the ram’s horn, decipher them and determine the best course.
Even on years when we are able to call out with the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, the absence of words in our loudest prayers signals our acceptance that some things are unknowable, some truths unnamable, and some realities ineffable.
And today, even the shofar is silenced.
Rav Saadia Gaon, the great 10th century scholar identified ten purposes or impacts of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah. His list was collected by the 14th century work of liturgy and minhag Sefer Abudraham and that is how it was preserved and is known. Among Rav Saadia’s list of ten shofar tasks (1) are the coronation of God as sovereign, (2) a wake up call to inspire us to teshuvah, and (3) a reminder of Akeidat Yitzhak, the story of the binding of Isaac which had a happy ending due to the substitution of a ram caught by its horns.
This year, all of these tasks will need to be accomplished without the benefit of the shofar. Our prayers will coronate God. Our conscience will stir us to teshuvah, and our commitment and dedication will remind God of Akeidat Yitzhak.
But the absence of shofar is not just an obstacle to overcome, it also offers us the opportunity to engage in the work of this season this year in a different mode. And our role model for this mode of spiritual heroism is Shimon HaAmsuni.
The Talmud tells us that his theory of “et” was ultimately vindicated by Rabbi Akiva. We should cultivate reverence for God, Rabbi Akiva taught, and also reverence for great Torah scholars. Shimon HaAmsuni was not wrong about the Torah. But he is remembered as a hero, I like to believe, for his restraint because he chose silence rather than say something, which he was convinced was true, but that which he could not verify to his satisfaction.
כְּשֵׁם שֶׁקִּבַּלְתִּי שָׂכָר עַל הַדְּרִישָׁה, כָּךְ אֲנִי מְקַבֵּל שָׂכָר עַל הַפְּרִישָׁה
The quest for truth earns reward, and so does refraining from speaking when we lack certainty; even when we may ultimately turn out to be correct.
Rabbi Yaakov Ettlinger, in the 19th century, noted a pattern in Jewish history. The very best years and the very worst years were years, like this one, that begin on Shabbat. I would like this coming year to be one of the best years and I think, one way to contribute to that is by honoring the absence of the shofar today in our way of being in the world.
Can we speak a bit less and listen a bit more? Can we maintain confidence in the truths we hold dear, as Shimon HaAmsuni did, without always sharing them in the public square. There is reward in the quest for truth and there is reward in holding back from sharing it when we lack the capacity to convince others we are right. The truth has a way of making itself known, whether it’s a truth about the Torah or a truth about the world. We do not have to be the ones to share it, right now, with every possible audience.
This is true when we are absolutely convinced we are correct. Is there any relationship, whether within our families or within our community, that is worth sacrificing just in order to be right? If you know that you cannot convince someone to see things your way, consider sometimes choosing silence rather than risk antagonizing a friend.
And there is virtue as well in cultivating the humility of the awareness of the limits of our knowledge. Rav Mosheh Lichtenstein mentioned this as well in his Rosh Hashanah letter. Writing about tumultuous, historic, epoch-defining events, he notes, “we are likely bound to fail in our attempt to interpret the events of the past few years from the appropriate historical perspective, since history by its very definition can only be viewed retrospectively.” Therefore, his suggestion is to “abstain from hubristic attempts to articulate [God’s] plan.”
But if we cannot articulate God’s plan, and if it is wise to cultivate humility about what God’s plan may even be for us this year, we can nonetheless draw comfort in a relationship with God which is not dependent on being clever or finding the best thing to say or convincing others that we are right.
כְּשֵׁם שֶׁקִּבַּלְתִּי שָׂכָר עַל הַדְּרִישָׁה, כָּךְ אֲנִי מְקַבֵּל שָׂכָר עַל הַפְּרִישָׁה
From whom did Shimon HaAmsuni expect a reward for his years of Torah study and intellectual world building? From whom did Shimon HaAmsuni expect reward for his self-restraint when he realized he could no longer defend his theory? The answer is the same. God wants our דְּרִישָׁה our striving for truth, our advocacy for the truth, our creative and generative Torah study. God wants it all and rewards us for it. And God also cherishes our פְּרִישָׁה, our holding back when we reach the limits of what we can responsibly claim.
Today the shofar is silent, and that silence can remind us of all that can be gained from a year of פרישה: from leaving unsaid that which cannot yet be said, from resisting the need to always have the final word, and from accepting the limits of our own understanding.
In the shadow of the absent shofar, we can allow the words in our machzor to penetrate our hearts and then pierce the walls of the Heavens. In the echoing silence of the absent shofar, we can hear the voice of another whom until today we have not been able to hear.
Tomorrow we will hear the shofar again. But it won’t be on the date that the Torah declares is a yom teru’ah. And so perhaps, in the echo of today’s silence, we will hear tomorrow’s shofar somewhat differently. We will hear a sound without words, a sound that invites us to listen rather than insisting that others hear us.
May we enjoy opportunities for דרישה this year, and may we recognize the times that call for פרישה.
May we have the courage to pursue truth, as Lincoln said, “with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right,” and the humility to recognize when we have not yet found it. And may the year that begins with a silent shofar be a year in which we learn to listen.
Shanah Tovah.
