Rosh Hashanah Schmooze 5780

Rav Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (Maamar Hachochmah):

Blowing the Shofar on Rosh Hashanah is so powerful, its effects reverberate throughout creation. The Shofar boosts the forces of good in the world and subdues the forces of evil. These good and evil forced were created to be exist in opposition to each other as separate entities. However when Adam & Chavah sinned, good and evil became intermingled. The forces of evil overtook and overpowered the forces of good. When the Torah was given it was the sounding of the Shofar that prompted the good to attempt to break free. The shofar served as a the signal for the good to cast off the shackles of evil and strive to rid the world of all wrongdoing.

However the good only succeeded in escaping from from the influence of evil , thus achieving independence.

There will eventually be a time when the good will be able to eliminate the forces of evil from the world. In the Time to come when God gathers in the Jews from exile through the blowing of the Shofar!

Sod Meshalleshei Qodesh: The Qedushta From its Origins until the Time of Rabbi El‛azar berabbi Qillir (Prof. Shulamit Elizur)

A qedushta is a series of piyyutim for the ‘Amida prayer, which is expanded in honor of the recitation of the Qedusha, and includes many complex components. Its origins are in the Land of Israel, in the fourth or fifth century. We first see it as a constructed composition with set, complex, rules in the work of the poet Yannai, who lived in the mid-sixth century, the teacher of Rabbi El‛azar berabbi Qillir (who is known popularly as “the Qallir”). The qedushta, as it appears in the hundreds of compositions by Yannai and his followers, conceals many secrets: mysterious strings of biblical verses.