Daily Talk
The mitzvah of Rosh Hashanah is not to blow the shofar but to hear it - the Rambam even rewrites the blessing to say so. And from that one word, everything strange in this chapter follows: you cannot discharge for another an obligation you do not carry yourself, a man who is half-free cannot blow even for himself, and on the year's holiest morning, when it falls on Shabbat, we let the shofar fall silent. What is a mitzvah that lives not in what you do, but in what you are able to receive?
The Sound You Have to Receive
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About This Talk
This chapter turns on a single word: the mitzvah of the shofar is to hear, not to blow. From there the Rambam draws the laws of who is obligated, why one who is exempt cannot sound the shofar for one who is bound, why both the blower and the hearer must intend the mitzvah, and why the shofar goes silent when Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat. The deepest hearing, the Alter Rebbe teaches, needs no sound at all.