Rosh Hashanah

In Kabbalistic teaching, angels are created by the deeds of man and woman in accordance with the nature of the deed. On one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar year - Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the year - the mitzvah of sounding the Shofar, the ram's horn, is ordained in the Torah. Though there are a number of explanations for this, the clearest of them is that the Shofar's sounds are wake-up calls reminding the Jew that Rosh Hashanah is the day of judgement and that he/she must search his/her soul for the purpose of its purification so that he/she might be inscribed for the coming year in G-d's book of life. One of the powerful prayers of the day, the Untaneh Tokef, includes the following description of the "day of awe and dread":

"A great shofar is sounded. A still small voice is heard. The angels hurry to and fro. Fear and trembling seize them, and they cry out: Lo, the day of Judgement! To arraign the heavenly host in judgement, for in Your sight not even they are pure. All mortals, too, are caused by You to pass before you as a flock of sheep. As a shepherd counts his herd and makes each sheep pass beneath his staff, so do You record and number and take account of every living soul, setting a limit to every creature's life and passing sentence upon all of them."

In keeping with Kabbalistic thought, the very sounds of the Shofar, if produced with the proper intent and in pious concentration, send angels upward to the Throne of G-d. They then serve as advocates on behalf of the congregation in which the Shofar is sounded. The Kabbalists introduced prayers to that effect following every series of the various Shofar sounds, such as:

"May it be your will, O Lord our G-d and G-d of our fathers, that the angels emerging from the sounds of the Shofar will ascend to your Throne of Glory and will speak kindly in our behalf to help in the atonement of all our sins."

A Gathering of Angels / Angels in Jewish Life and Literature.
Mossis B. Margolies pgs 228-229

Abigail Sarah Bagraim, Email info@abigailsarah.co.za

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