“The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: ‘Make two trumpets of silver; make them of hammered work. They shall serve you to summon the community (edah) and cause the camps (mahanot) to journey (Numbers 10:1,2)… And when you shall come to wage war in your land, against the enemy who is oppressing you, you shall sound the broken staccato, sighing, weeping sound (t’ruah) with your trumpets… and on the day of your rejoicings, on your festivals and your new moons, you shall sound the firm, fixed, exultant sound (t’kiyah) with your trumpets…(10:9,10).”   <> Our Biblical portion this week uses two separate words to describe the assemblage of the Israelites and two separate words to describe the sounds which is to emanate from their trumpets: the trumpets shall summon the “camps” (mahanot) of Israel as well as the “community” (edah, literally the group bearing witness) of Israel, and in time of war they shall sound the broken, weeping t’ruah sound whereas in times of Festival they shall sound the firm, exultant t’kiyah sound.

My revered teacher Rav. J.B. Soloveitchik ztz”l distinguished between the encampment of Israel, which herded the Israelites together as a form of protection against the external elements of warring enemies and difficult climatic and topographical conditions, (mahaneh  is Biblically used for protective army encampment, as in Genesis 32:8,9), and the edah or community of Israel which suggests a positive, united – commonalty of purpose, testimony or mission to the world; similarly, the t’ruah, a broken, weeping sound signals tremble or fear whereas the t’kiyah a firm, fixed and exultant sound resonates resolve, commitment and victory.

These different terms – and realities – hark back to two Biblical covenants which formed our national and religious being as a distinct people; The Covenant between the Pieces and The Covenant at Sinai.  The Covenant between the Pieces (Genesis 15) established the nationhood of Israel . It guarantees Abraham progeny and delineates the boundaries of the homeland which his descendants would inherit. It comes following a war, contains an element of great, black fear (15:12), foretells a period of servitude and affliction in a foreign land but guarantees eternal survival and eventual occupation of the Promised Land. This is what Rav Soloveitchik calls the covenant of fate. After all, an individual neither chooses the family or nation-state into which he/she is born nor the external persecution he/she may be singled out to suffer. The familial solidarity and the haven of secure boundaries of a national state will enable us to survive despite the external challenges and obstacles. 

The Covenant at Sinai (Exodus 19, 20) infused and inspired our nation with a singular purpose and goal, a system of commandments which would enable us to serve G-d and eventually bring the world to peace and redemption. This Covenant was not inflicted upon us externally; indeed, it is only when we voluntarily cried out that we would perform and internalize the laws that the Almighty ratified this second covenant. (Ex. 24:7,8). 

The first covenant was our covenant of fate, the formation of the encampment of Jacob, the fearful, trembling sounds of the t’ruah which encourages us to seek refuge in the solidarity of a family-nation-State united against inimical forces threatening our destruction. The second covenant was our covenant of destiny, the formation of Israel as G-d’s witnesses, the exultant, victorious sounds of the t’kiyah which express the resolve and commitment of a people imbued with a Divine mission, united in order to perfect the world in the Kingship of the Divine.

From this perspective, we can well understand the initial definition of the Rosh Hashanah sound of the shofar as being described as “a day of the broken, weeping sound” (Yom t’ruah yiheyeh lakhem – Numbers 29:1), since Rosh Hashanah – the anniversary of the creation of the world – brought us into an incomplete, imperfect and not-yet- redeemed world, replete with suffering and tragedy. On Rosh Hashanah we take the exultant t’kiya sound from the promise of the Jubilee year, when everyone will be free and secure in his/her own homestead and which serves as our metaphor for world redemption (Leviticus  25: 8-10, with the word shofar – meaning beautiful, complete – referring to the t’kiya sound, according to our Talmudic Sages), in order to remind us that by means of our repentance we have the mandate as well as the ability to perfect the world under the Kingship of the Divine. Rav Soloveitchik maintains that both in national as well as in personal terms, our greatest challenge is to transform fate into destiny, to turn bitter lemons into sweet lemonade, to develop our persecuted encampment into a nation of G-d’s witnesses dedicated to redeem the world with love and peace.

I would merely add that these two covenants, our national covenant “between the pieces” and our religious covenant at Sinai, are not two separate and distinct covenants, the first being the covenant of fate and the second being the covenant of destiny, with the national homeland of Israel serving as our ultimate destination whereas the Bible and its laws are our true calling and destiny. No, the two covenants must amalgamate into one since both are inter-related and even inter-dependent.

The holocaust tragically proved to us that we cannot exist as a religion alone without the necessary backing and protection of a nation-state, replete with secure boundaries and an Israeli Defense Force; and it is only through the medium of a nation-state, where we must tackle the very real issues of poverty and unemployment, peace and war, democracy and despotism, that we can ever hope to fulfill our ethical mission of teaching the world the importance of universal freedom and peace. It is for this reason that the Biblical introduction of the Divine revelation at Sinai reads: “And now if you will hearken, yes hearken, to My voice and observe My covenant, then you shall be for Me a treasure amongst all nations, since I am concerned about the entire earth. And (then) you shall be for Me a Kingdom of priest-teachers and a holy nation” (Ex 19:5,6). And as the Sforno interprets these words, “Since the entire world is Mine, and the righteous of all nations are precious to Me without a doubt… you must serve as priest-teachers to understand and teach every human being to call upon the name of the Lord and to serve Him shoulder to shoulder, as it is written, ‘From Zion shall come forth Torah’ (to the world).” (ad loc) 

It is our mission as a nation not to merely be a nation like all nations but rather to teach the message of peace and freedom to all nations.